A large swath of UCLA’s Jewish faculty — some of whom are fervently divided over Israel’s war in Gaza — united to sign a letter denouncing the Trump administration’s “misguided and punitive” demand for a $1-billion fine to settle claims over alleged campus antisemitism.
The letter, crafted by a handful of professors and signed by more than 360 people, was expected to be sent by organizers as early as Monday afternoon to the University of California’s Board of Regents. It also decries the government’s freezing of $584 million in research grant funding.
“Cutting off hundreds of millions of research funds will do nothing to make UCLA safer for Jews nor diminish antisemitism in the world,” the letter said. “It will not benefit Jewish Bruins nor Jews beyond campus who make extensive use of its first-rate medical facilities, ground-breaking scientific innovations, and cutting-edge cultural institutions.”
The letter has had a special resonance, bonding people with a diversity of views on the war in the Gaza Strip, the nature of antisemitism and its prevalence at UCLA, which was roiled by violent protests in spring 2024. The signatories — who ranged from a self-described “anti-Zionist Jew” to ardent supporters of Israel — described their growing anger over what they saw as the weaponization of antisemitism since Hamas’ attack on Israel two years ago.
The signatories include prominent professors with expertise on Israel, the Jewish people and Nazism. Titled “Jews in Defense of UC,” the letter doesn’t mention the community’s political differences, instead emphasizing its shared goal.
“We urge the Trump administration to cease its attempts to deprive institutions such as ours of vital research funds intended to save and improve lives,” the letter said. “And we ask that it cease its misplaced efforts to withhold funds in the name of combating antisemitism.”
Read more: Trump seeks $1-billion fine against UCLA. Newsom says ‘we’ll sue,’ calling it extortion
In interviews, six of the signatories — whose views on Israel span the political spectrum — described their feelings in more urgent terms. They called the government’s actions exploitative and manipulative, arguing that the Trump administration had cynically used the scourge of antisemitism as a cudgel to attempt a remaking of higher education that adheres to the president’s political stances.
UCLA law school professor Ariela Gross, one of the organizers of the letter, said that it aims to stress to the Board of Regents — who will ultimately decide the UC response to the Trump demands — that Jewish voices at the university “really want to fight.”
“We do not want to back down,” she said. “And we don’t think that you can negotiate with an extortionist. It seems particularly important for Jewish community members to [express this], given that this is being so cynically done in our name — antisemitism is being used as the fig leaf excuse for all of these actions.”
The U.S. Department of Justice, which is seeking the fine, declined to comment.
Ariela Gross, a professor at the UCLA School of Law. (Jonathan Alcorn/For The Times)
In addition to the $1-billion penalty, the Justice Department also is seeking an additional $172 million for a claims fund for those affected by alleged civil rights violations and UCLA’s submission to an outside monitor over the agreement. Negotiations between the Trump administration and University of California attorneys, President James B. Milliken and regents are continuing.
Still, UC officials have called the current proposal “unacceptable,” but say they are willing to negotiate. Gov. Gavin Newsom has said — without offering details — that he wants to sue and that UC should not “bend the knee” to Trump.
Read more: ‘A continual assault.’ How UCLA’s research faculty is grappling with Trump funding freeze
UCLA professor David N. Myers, another letter organizer, said the prospect of both UC and Harvard University cutting deals with Trump could set a “dangerous” precedent.
“It’s hard not to see some method in the madness to try and bring down these two institutions,” said Myers, a professor of Jewish history. “If they agree to a settlement, then probably every subsequent institution will do the same. What I find dangerous is not just the bankrupting of these extraordinary institutions … but also the attempt to impose supervision and restraints on scholarship and intellectual discourse.”
How the letter got done
The letter came together quickly over the Aug. 8 weekend — via separate conversations that Myers had with Gross and Maia Ferdman, the deputy director of UCLA’s Bedari Kindness Institute.
Myers said that during Shabbat — the Jewish Sabbath, a time he does not use electronics — he had been pondering the issue. He wondered, “How can we mount a voice of protest to this proposed shakedown of the university in the name of protecting Jews?”
After Shabbat ended at sundown Saturday, Myers turned on his cellphone, where he found messages from Ferdman and Gross. They’d been contemplating the same thing.
Read more: ‘Uncharted territory’: Newsom and UC go to battle against Trump’s UCLA sanctions
“I said that it would be great if Jews from a bunch of different political backgrounds from different corners of the university ecosystem came together and said something about this proposed fine,” said Ferdman, whose institute aims to elevate the research and practice of kindness.
Myers, who is director of the Kindness Institute, told his colleagues he would write a draft — and after Ferdman and Gross offered feedback, the letter began circulating for signatures on Aug. 11. Days later, the organizers decided to expand its scope so that Jewish voices from across the UC system could add their names.
Zev Yaroslavsky, a former member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, in his then-office in 2014. (Los Angeles Times)
Zev Yaroslavsky, a former L.A. County supervisor, was an early signatory. He said that the federal actions are “not going to address the issue of antisemitism on campus,” but that they will “blow a hole through” the school’s finances.
“It’s the existence of the institution — that’s what’s at stake here,” said Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.
A diversity of views
The discord at UCLA climaxed at a large encampment set up on Royce Quad in April 2024: Pro-Israel activists instigated a melee, and law enforcement’s inability to stop it sparked intense criticism. The violence drew global headlines as campus protests raged throughout the nation.
Among the encampment’s demonstrators were Jews who protested against the actions of the Israeli government, which launched a punishing war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack. But the voices of Jews upset over what they have described as UCLA’s permissive approach to campus antisemitism also rose in protest.
Several people who signed the letter bristled as they discussed how the issue of antisemitism was being used by the Trump administration.
Dov Waxman, a professor of Israel studies, said that while antisemitism on campus is an issue, it has been “grossly overstated and exaggerated to serve other political purposes and ideological agendas.”
Read more: ‘Bring it on, Gavin,’ White House says to Newsom on threat to sue over UCLA cuts
“Not only is that kind of exploitation manipulative, but it can also foster a cynicism about the issue of campus antisemitism,” he said. “Because people will say, ‘Well, this is just basically a cudgel, there’s not an issue at all, and it’s just being exploited.'”
Beth Ribet, a lecturer at UCLA who teaches about Nazism and white nationalism in the U.S., approaches these issues from a different perspective than many of the other signatories.
Ribet, who called herself an “anti-Zionist Jew,” said there is antisemitism at UCLA — the most violent of which she said was the spring 2024 attack on pro-Palestinian protesters who were Jewish.
“The discussions that the Trump administration and the UCLA administration have propounded about antisemitism represent a profound distortion of its actual meaning,” she said. “The problem of antisemitism that they are describing does not match what we are experiencing.”
As for the letter, Ribet said it captures the “bare bones that most of the Jews at UCLA would agree with.”
David Bocarsly, a former student body president at UCLA and Jewish advocate. (Jonathan Alcorn/For The Times)
Not all the signatories are current or former UCLA faculty, including David Bocarsly. He served as student body president during the 2012-13 academic year.
Bocarsly, who is executive director of the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California, which advocates for the Jewish community with state lawmakers, said the withholding of research funds could make it less safe for Jews on campus.
“Now you’re pitting the Jewish community against other vulnerable communities,” he said. “Immigrant, first-generation, low-income college students will be directly harmed by this … people who need vital medical care from the university system, people who benefit from the research that the university puts out.”
Those who declined
Though the letter has been endorsed by hundreds of academics with varying views on Israel’s war in Gaza, there were still some notable holdouts. Some members of the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group and the recently disbanded UCLA Taskforce on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias did not sign. It’s a reflection, in part, of how fraught the issue has been on campus.
UCLA professor Judea Pearl at the Southern California Journalism Awards at the Biltmore Los Angeles hotel in 2024. (Amanda Edwards/Getty Images)
Also among the prominent UCLA Jews who decided to not sign: Judea Pearl, a computer science professor.
An outspoken supporter of Israel who has decried a “demonization of Zionism” at the university, Pearl was the co-recipient of a $1.2-million National Science Foundation grant suspended in late July. On Aug. 12, under a federal judge’s court order, the NSF reinstated the grant, which studies how genetics data in mass medical records can be used to identify potential risk factors for disease.
Pearl said he was approached to sign the “Jews in Defense of UC” letter but declined.
“Signing it would undercut the complaints the Jewish community has raised because this particular letter does not propose any constructive step toward addressing antisemitism and the anti-Zionist culture nourished at UCLA in some departments,” Pearl said.
Myers disagreed. He said that he does not “believe that the [Trump] administration’s financial threats have anything to do with fighting antisemitism. That is not the turf on which this battle should be waged.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
