University of California Encampment Ban Is ‘All Smoke and Mirrors,’ Lawyer Behind Antisemitism Lawsuit Says

The policy announcement issued by the president of the University of California to address campus protests is all “smoke and mirrors,” according to a lawyer representing three Jewish UCLA students who accused the administration of allowing “Jew exclusion zones” to exist on campus. The statement released this week by the UC president, Michael Drake, offers various “measures” meant to “strengthen and clarify” the policies and procedures surrounding free speech across the 10-campus university system. The “steps” he lists include clarifying and reinforcing prohibitions on encampments and identity concealments, and developing a framework for consistent implementation and enforcement of the school-wide policies. The plan, he writes, was drafted after he spent the summer “reflecting with students, faculty, staff, Regents, and others.” While many community members — on both sides — took the statement to suggest a sweeping ban on encampments and face masks, the president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Mark Rienzi, the attorney for the three Jewish students, is skeptical that the directive will prompt any meaningful change. The policies that Mr. Drake references “are policies that the UC system has had in place for years — the same policies that were supposedly in place all spring and obviously didn’t work,” Mr. Rienzi tells the Sun. The statement, he adds, doesn’t even mention “discrimination, anything about what happened in the spring, or anything about Jews.” Last week, a federal district court ruled in favor of Mr. Rienzi’s clients and ordered UCLA to prevent student activists from setting up anti-Israel encampments that exclude Jews from areas across the university’s campus. In a 16-page ruling, the judge condemned the school for allowing Jewish students to be prevented from accessing portions of campus because they refused to denounce their faith, adding, “This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating.” The university criticized the ruling and claimed that the judge’s orders “would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community.” The school filed an appeal shortly thereafter — which, Mr. Rienzi points out, Mr. Drake neglected to address in his statement. “So, It remains UCLA’s position that being ordered to stop discriminating against Jews will somehow ‘hamstring’ their management of campus,” Mr. Rienzi tells the Sun. “It is mystifying that UCLA can’t simply say the sentence: ‘We will stop discriminating against Jews.’ Until they say that, this is all smoke and mirrors.”A human rights attorney and chief executive of the International Legal Forum, an organization involved in lawsuits involving college campuses, Arsen Ostrovsky, calls the president’s statement “just the bare minimum the universities can do in the face of the vicious and explosive surge in Jew-hatred and adoration for Hamas terror.” He adds that “more — much more — must still be done,” and argues that universities must make clear that students and faculty who violate the guidelines will be expelled or face disciplinary action. Mr. Ostrovsky also suggests that universities “publicly endorse” the definition of antisemitism offered by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance — which he calls “the most widely endorsed definition of Jew-hatred in all its manifestations” — and be subject to federal funding sanctions should they fail to uphold their obligations to Jewish students. “We are long past mere condemnations and empty promises. With the new academic year approaching, university administrators must show determined leadership and zero tolerance of hatred directed against Jewish students,” Mr. Ostrovsky says. Those involved in the anti-Israel protests denounced the directive, which they took as a total encampment ban. A student at UC Berkeley and spokeswoman for Students for Justice in Palestine, Banan Abdelrahman, described the president’s message as a “desperate effort to break the will” of their movement. “Time and time again, we have seen how this repression fails,” she told the Daily Californian, pledging to “keep fighting for a free Palestine.” Mr. Drake’s announcement comes just a few weeks after California lawmakers stated that they would withhold $25 million in state funding of the UC school system until the governing body developed a “systemwide framework” for regulating free speech on campus. They gave the school system until October 1 to submit a plan. Fall term has already commenced at some campuses under the UC system. Others are set to welcome students back to school in the coming weeks.

University of California Encampment Ban Is ‘All Smoke and Mirrors,’ Lawyer Behind Antisemitism Lawsuit Says

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