The University of California, Berkeley and Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law said on Thursday that they settled a lawsuit alleging that the public school failed to address rising Jew-hatred adequately.
Under the settlement terms, Berkely will stop student groups from banning speakers and limiting “officers, board members or speakers based on a category that is protected under federal or state law.”
Berkeley also commits to consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred when probing complaints of antisemitism and to update its website to state that while Zionism isn’t a protected category in its anti-bias policies, “for many Jewish people, Zionism is an integral part of their identity and their ethnic and ancestral heritage.”
Discriminating against and harassing Jews under the pretext of decrying Zionism would violate school policies, Berkeley will also note.
The Brandeis Center filed the suit against the school in November 2023. The suit alleges that Berkeley failed to respond to nine student groups at its law school which passed bylaws stating that they would never invite Zionist speakers to campus.
Under the settlement, Berkeley must provide annual, mandatory training on discrimination, including antisemitism, for all incoming students, student leaders, faculty and staff and reimburse the Brandeis Center in attorney fees and litigation-related costs.
KennethMarcus, chairman and CEO of the center, stated that “what happened at Berkeley is a cautionary tale.”
“Universities, unions, corporations and political parties cannot create an anti-Zionist exception to their conduct codes,” he said. “They cannot silence Jewish Americans on the pretext of advancing their own political agendas.”
“As we have now seen time and again, if left unaddressed antisemitic bigotry, whether or not masked as anti-Zionism, only continues to expand,” Marcus stated. “We will fight this bigotry wherever and whenever we find it, and we will win.”
