AMCHA INITIATIVE REPORT: UC FACULTY POLITICIZE CAMPUSES, ANTISEMITISM SURGES

New report documents hundreds of examples of faculty embedding anti-Israel activism into curricula, classrooms, departments and official programming – including a UC Santa Cruz graduation ceremony where graduates were presented with Palestinian flag/keffiyeh stoles - fueling UC’s unprecedented antisemitism crisis

 

Contact:
amcha@berlinrosen.com

Santa Cruz, CA, February 11, 2026 – A sweeping new report released today by AMCHA Initiative finds that UC-branded faculty activism, not merely student protest, has been a primary institutional driver of the explosion of antisemitism across the University of California system. Drawing on hundreds of documented incidents, the report shows how faculty and academic departments have used their positions of authority and University platforms to advance a coordinated anti-Israel agenda that has fueled harassment, exclusion and intimidation of Jewish and pro-Israel students.

One striking example occurred in June 2025 at UC Santa Cruz, when an official Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) departmental graduation ceremony was transformed into a political spectacle.  Photos shared publicly for the first time show graduates presented with stoles emblazoned with the Palestinian flag and keffiyeh imagery, beneath a projected image from the campus’s 2024 anti-Israel encampment – blurring the line between academic celebration and ideological indoctrination.

At UC Berkeley, an anti-Israel faculty group released toolkits urging instructors to embed anti-Israel narratives directly into course syllabi, circumvent university policies prohibiting classroom advocacy, and stage instructional walkouts to pressure the university to boycott Israel.

At UCLA, 36 academic departments issued statements endorsing the anti-Israel encampment, where Jewish students were harassed and protesters espoused antisemitic rhetoric – including the glorification of violence against Israelis and Jews and calls for Israel’s elimination.

These incidents are not isolated. They are among hundreds of examples of politicized anti-Israel conduct by faculty and academic departments documented in When Faculty Take Sides: How Academic Infrastructure Drives Antisemitism at the University of California, which examines UCLA, UC Berkeley, and UC Santa Cruz.

The report links this faculty conduct directly to a dramatic surge in antisemitic incidents since October 7, 2023. Comparing July 2021-June 2023 with July 2023-June 2025:

• Incidents targeting Jewish campus members for harassment, intimidation, threats, exclusion, vandalism, and assault rose 3,150% at UCLA, 531% at UC Berkeley, and 1,150% at UC Santa Cruz.
• Incidents involving rhetoric glorifying violence or calling for Israel’s elimination increased 1,175% at UCLA, 2,125% at UC Berkeley, and 7,000% at UC Santa Cruz.

Notably, this activity persisted even after UC entered a systemwide antisemitism agreement with the U.S. Department of Education in December 2024, underscoring the depth of the institutional problem.

Much of the public conversation has framed the antisemitism crisis as student-driven and episodic, focused on protests and encampments. This report reaches a different and more troubling conclusion: while students are the most visible actors, faculty and academic departments are key institutional drivers of the hostile environment. Across the three campuses, many faculty who promoted anti-Israel activism through university channels had previously endorsed an academic boycott of Israel (academic BDS). The boycott’s guidelines explicitly call on supporters to implement “anti-normalization” in their professional roles. These include excluding Zionist perspectives, speakers and programs from academic life.

As the report documents, academic BDS commitments routinely shape curricula, pedagogy, speaker selection, departmental communications and governance, particularly when boycott supporters hold departmental or other leadership positions. The report identified:

• 115 academic boycott endorsers at UCLA, including 20 chairs, directors or associate deans;
• 171 endorsers at UC Berkeley, including 19 academic heads; and
• 55 endorsers at UC Santa Cruz, including an Associate Campus Provost, four residential college provosts, and multiple department heads.

Faculty networks such as Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) and Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) emerged on all three campuses after October 2023 with the explicit goal of promoting academic BDS. The groups coordinated anti-Israel faculty statements, organized department-sponsored programming and mobilized faculty participation in protests, often in partnership with academic units.

On each campus, numerous departments sponsored dozens of one-sided, anti-Israel events – 23 events at UCLA (18 departments), 27 at UCSC (19 departments), and 40 at UC Berkeley (34 departments) – without sponsoring a single Israel-related event lacking anti-Israel bias.  Rhetoric at the events repeatedly condoned terrorism, denied antisemitism and delegitimized Israel and Zionism. For example:

• At UCLA, speakers dismissed reports of Hamas atrocities as “lies” and “propaganda.”
• At UCSC, an Education Department colloquium urged early-childhood educators to adopt “an anti-Zionist commitment” in their teaching.
• At UC Berkeley, speakers repeatedly cast Israel as illegitimate and dismissed antisemitism concerns as bad-faith “smear” claims.

Faculty groups also escalated hostility toward Jewish and pro-Israel students:

• At UCSC, FJP declared “Zionism is not welcome on our campus,” collaborated on efforts to eliminate Hillel and urged instructors to withhold grades until the university adopted BDS.
• At UCLA, FJP pledged to fight for Palestine “by any means necessary," supported work stoppages, promoted academic BDS, and defended the exclusion of “Zionist” students from campus spaces in federal court.
• At UC Berkeley, FSJP helped de-platform a “Zionist” speaker, co-sponsored a “Week of Rage,” and called for severing ties with the Center for Jewish Studies and other bridge-building, coexistence initiatives.

The report concludes that UC’s antisemitism crisis cannot be solved through student discipline or protest management alone. Instead, it urges the UC Regents to rein in faculty misuse of academic authority by enforcing existing rules and closing policy gaps.

AMCHA’s Recommendations to the UC Regents:

• Prohibiting institutional academic boycott and “anti-normalization” implementation;
• Prohibiting faculty use of instructional authority for political and anti-Israel mobilization;
• Barring academic units from issuing official political positions through official school and unit platforms and actions;
• Preventing faculty advocacy groups from leveraging UC branding or resources;
• Establishing transparent Regents-level oversight with consequences; and
• Requiring the Academic Senate to address misuse of faculty and academic unit authority.

“This is far bigger than a student discipline issue -- it’s a faculty governance failure,” said Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, Director of AMCHA Initiative and co-author of the report. “Until UC enforces clear boundaries on faculty and academic-unit conduct, Jewish students will continue to face intimidation, exclusion and harassment sanctioned by the institution itself.”

 

AMCHA Initiative is a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to combating antisemitism at colleges and universities in the United States. The organization monitors more than 750 campuses for antisemitic activity, as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and the U.S. government. AMCHA is not a pro-Israel advocacy organization, nor does it take a position on current or past Israeli government policies; criticism of Israel that does not meet the IHRA and U.S. government criteria is not considered antisemitic by the organization. AMCHA has recorded more than 10,000 antisemitic incidents on college campuses since 2015, which can be accessed through its Antisemitism Tracker