LOS ANGELES — Jewish faculty, students and others are calling on UC leaders to improve how they handle complaints of antisemitism — saying university response has been inadequate — but their viewpoints paint widely differing pictures of the campus climate for Jews.

One letter originated from a national group that works to combat antisemitism at colleges and cited its own research to conclude that Jewish UC students have faced "unprecedented harassment, intimidation, and exclusion" since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and Israel's ensuing war in Gaza spurred widespread anti-Israel campus protests.

Separately on Monday, at least 117 Jewish UCLA faculty members released a letter saying they are "absolutely united in our vehement opposition" to a recent Trump administration lawsuit accusing the university of allowing pervasive antisemitism on campus and called on the government to drop the litigation. The faculty members expressed fear that the Trump administration wants UC to "falsely" take on antisemitism by imposing "more draconian limits on academic freedom and free speech, to the detriment of all of us, including Jewish faculty and staff."

Both letters were released after a major Jewish civil rights group said last week that the environment at several UC campuses has improved for the Jewish community since the fall of 2023.

Rankings from the Anti-Defamation League's Campus Antisemitism Report gave UCLA and UC Santa Cruz a "B," up from a "D" last year. UC Berkeley also received a "B," up from a "C." The rankings measure campus policies, the extent of Jewish campus organizations and programming as well as anti-Jewish conduct and climate at schools.

The range of views expressed comes at a sensitive time for UC — amid multiple, ongoing Trump administration investigations into alleged campus antisemitism and before the UC Board of Regents is to meet behind closed doors this week over the allegations.

In a statement, UC spokesperson Rachel Zaentz said UC "unequivocally condemns antisemitism and has taken numerous steps to address it and other expressions of hate and intolerance on our campuses. The university takes the findings in the AMCHA Initiative report seriously and is reviewing the incidents cited within it."

'Unprecedented harassment,' report says

AMCHA Initiative, a nonprofit founded by two former UC employees to investigate, document and diminish anti-Jewish bias at the nation's higher education institutions, sent a letter to regents with 4,000 student, faculty, alumni and parent signatures saying that Jewish students have faced "unprecedented harassment, intimidation, and exclusion" since fall of 2023.

The letter cited a recent AMCHA Initiative report — which used publicly available Israel boycott petitions, departmental websites, social media postings and campus event records — to show a surge in incidents between July 2023 and June 2025 at UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz.

The AMCHA Initiative report said that it found 115 UCLA faculty members who endorsed an academic boycott of Israel, 117 at UC Berkeley and 55 at UC Santa Cruz. The group is similar to other major Jewish organizations that consider Israel boycotts to be antisemitic. It also cited dozens of department-sponsored programs at the three campuses that it said were "one-sided, anti-Israel events."

"When university authority is used to promote political agendas, the line between individual expression and institutional endorsement disappears," Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director and co-founder of AMCHA Initiative, said in a statement. "The result is a breakdown of academic standards and an environment where Jewish students face intimidation and exclusion."

The AMCHA Initiative asked UC leaders to "stop faculty and academic units from using UC authority, resources, classrooms, and UC-branded platforms to advance political advocacy" and to strengthen and strictly enforce UC's existing rules against "political indoctrination" in teachings.

UCLA faculty 'vehemently oppose' Trump suit

At UCLA, faculty members from multiple departments wrote their letter response to the Trump administration's Feb. 24 federal lawsuit alleging that UCLA administrators routinely ignored and failed to report employee complaints of "severe" antisemitism since the fall of 2023.

The suit largely focused on the spring 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA, the site of a violent attack, contending that it was anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli. It cited photographs of antisemitic graffiti on campus, including swastikas. The suit narrated the cases of two Jewish professors — in the nursing school and medical school — where it alleged UCLA mishandled antisemitic discrimination complaints.

In response, UC President James B. Milliken said the university has an "unwavering" commitment to fostering a safe environment for Jewish people and called the suit "unnecessary."

The letter, whose signatories include at least a dozen law school faculty members, contends that the government's suit uses "spurious claims" and "exceptionally thin" legal reasoning to argue that UCLA violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

"A hostile work environment under Title VII is one where we are being harassed so severely or pervasively as to alter our conditions of employment," the letter said. "It would be legally unprecedented for a court to rule that any category of faculty and staff faces such a hostile work environment primarily on the basis of student speech."

"The complaint paints a picture of our campus that we do not recognize," the letter said.

Faculty also addressed their message to UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk, Milliken and the UC Board of Regents. "We urge the university to defend itself, and defend our community, by challenging the factual and legal bases" of the suit, the professors said.

There are only a few signatories from the David Geffen School of Medicine, where several Jewish faculty have complained of antisemitic incidents. Members of UCLA's Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias, which in a 2024 report found "broad-based perceptions of antisemitic and anti-Israeli bias on campus," did not sign.

Another viewpoint

Another nonpartisan UCLA Jewish organization, the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group, is not protesting the government's suit. "The DOJ lawsuit reflects the experiences reported by Jewish faculty who described serious harassment, exclusion, and retaliation based on their Jewish identities," the group said.

It's unclear what percentage of Jewish faculty and staff either of the letters represent. At UCLA, there are about 5,460 total faculty members and 42,000 staff and other employees.

Joey Fishkin, a UCLA law school professor who co-authored the faculty letter, said he disagreed with AMCHA Initiative's findings.

AMCHA Initiative "aims to challenge the principles of academic freedom central to the university by falsely labeling vast swaths of speech critical of Israeli govt actions as antisemitic and somehow 'political,' but the letter itself is the effort to inject 'politics' from outside the university into our academic life," Fishkin said.

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