How UCLA Enables Antisemitism

In what has become a perennial occurrence, UCLA has made headlines for antisemitism. Predictably, the University has declined to take serious action, beyond issuing platitudes condemning hatred as a symbolic gesture when donor money and public image are at risk.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, UCLA’s student government issued a disgraceful statement condemning an event hosting Omer Shem Tov. Shem Tov was kidnapped on October 7 by Hamas terrorists who subjected him to physical beatings, psychological torture, starvation, and slavery. Now, he travels as a speaker who shares a hope for peace and champions a simple message of opposing barbarism like torture and slavery.

USAC, UCLA’s student government, decried Shem Tov’s presence on campus as “elevating a single narrative, absent of critical political and humanitarian framing, serves to legitimize and normalize these ongoing atrocities.” They continued: “[u]niversities must not be complicit in the production or amplification of one-sided narratives that erase systems of oppression and occupation.”

USAC’s criticism of the event for representing a “single narrative” would be comedic if it were not so shameful. The same student leaders who condemn the factual retelling of a hostage’s story have spent years promoting deeply ideological programming with glee. Other student government offices have hosted events like “ICE Murderers Walk Out,” commemorated “Nakba Day” through university-affiliated channels, and used university-affiliated accounts and school-funded materials, such as tents, to endorse and facilitate the encampment that openly excluded Jewish students from parts of campus.

Clearly, USAC has not developed any principled commitment to institutional neutrality. They take issue with speech that threatens their preferred politics. If the mere possibility of an October 7 survivor on campus threatens their worldview, it must truly be made out of eggshells. USAC claims that campus events require “critical framing,” but cannot recognize that suppressing speech because it conflicts with dogma bears a far closer resemblance to authoritarianism than Shem Tov’s speech possibly could.

UCLA’s Record

As abhorrent as USAC’s condemnation of Shem Tov may be, it is far from their first tango with antisemitism. During past controversies, the University issued milquetoast statements until everything blew over. The University’s passivity has allowed students to grow louder in their Jew-hatred, and will only continue to metastasize.

A glance at UCLA’s record demonstrates that the brazen antisemitism expressed in the student government’s condemnation of Shem Tov is not an anomaly.

In November 2023, a student government member sought signatories from cultural organizations for a resolution advocating the creation of a Latino Student Center. When Jewish groups like Hillel offered their support, rather than seizing an opportunity for coalition-building, he explicitly rejected their participation. The student government member stated that Latino student groups “had already sided with Palestinians.” When Jewish students objected to this obvious double standard, their concerns were dismissed as “blatant racism and xenophobia.” Jewish students who had experienced discrimination reminiscent of the Dreyfus Affair were somehow recast as the true purveyors of discrimination.

How did UCLA respond to this outrageous incident? Empty gestures; business as usual.

Discriminating Against Jewish Students

During my tenure at UCLA, I was Editor-in-Chief of UCLA’s Jewish Publication. We discovered that Alicia Verdugo, then UCLA’s Cultural Affairs Commissioner, had systematically refused to hire Jewish students for paid student government positions. Long before this revelation became public, her record of antisemitism was already well-established. Verdugo had denied Jewish students from RSVPing to a poetry event, including turning away at the door a student wearing a Magen David despite her confirmed reservation. She also told a Jewish student government member, “You simply don’t have the will or empathy to look inside yourself and understand that your parents are liars. They are white, and benefit from white supremacy regardless of religious affiliation.”

Verdugo’s actions made national headlines and violated not only UCLA’s own student code of conduct, but also federal law. A single student official inflicted enough reputational damage that alumni withdrew donations, and national media outlets reported on the scandal. Yet despite the national scrutiny and institutional embarrassment, UCLA imposed no meaningful reprimand. Verdugo instead resigned voluntarily the day before proceedings led by students (not the University) were set to determine whether she should be suspended from office.

Upon resigning, she issued a statement defending her conduct in which she misspelled “antisemitism” in five different ways, including “anti-semtitism.” Verdugo, who made a career out of Jew-hatred disguised as Palestinian activism, also mistook the Sudanese flag for the Palestinian flag in her Instagram bio.

Verdugo now holds a degree bearing UCLA’s name. Despite her violation of federal law and, UCLA decided that this student should represent the institution to the world. Today, she is pursuing a graduate degree at Columbia University, another institution now synonymous with campus antisemitism.

UCLA not only allows the proliferation of Jew hatred in its passivity, but also through its conscious choices in hiring activist professors who teach students to be extremists. Consider Beth Ribet, who, during a lecture I attended for UCLA’s Palestine Consortium, recounted that her anti-Zionism was shaped in part by a dream in which she wore Mary Jane slippers emblazoned with the phrase “end the occupation,” leading her to conclude that her “subconscious” rejected Zionism. Ribet then continued that as a young adult, she was plagued by “Israel headaches,” triggered by news of turmoil in the Middle East. When she finally renounced Zionism, the headaches vanished because her “neurology [was] no longer struggling to hold incompatible ideas and values.”

This is not satire. These are the people whom UCLA thinks should be trusted with budding minds.

What I have outlined is just the tip of the iceberg at UCLA. Beyond these knee-jerk instances are professors who publicly jeer at Jewish students, a student body in which being proudly Jewish

means being excluded from student groups, and graffitied antisemitic phrases that can be found across the campus area. This is what Jewish students face every day, and at this point, the University’s activity cannot be interpreted in any way other than endorsement.

After heavy media criticism, UCLA introduced an Initiative to Combat Antisemitism in 2025. However, the Omer Shem Tov incident revealed yet again that the Initiative aims not at institutional reform, but appeasement politics. A university serious about protecting Jewish students would not reward those who perpetuate antisemitism with leadership or prestige.

The more that the university tolerates this behavior, the more that it signals that it is welcome. With UCLA facing multiple lawsuits for allowing antisemitism to proliferate on campus, it is no longer able to claim ignorance as an excuse.

Jewish students may be welcomed in UCLA’s rhetoric so far as reputation and donors are concerned, but this rhetoric rings hollow when the university elevates professors who dismiss Jewish rights on grounds untethered from serious scholarship and refuses to act when Jew hatred proliferates on campus.

When a child throws a temper tantrum, responsible adults do not reward the behavior, but this is exactly what UCLA has done. UCLA has allowed antisemites to represent what should be the best of its student body by holding student government positions, without so much as a slap on

the wrist. In effect, UCLA has provided antisemites a seat at the adult table, while treating them with the immunity of a group of children. By refusing to hold its students accountable, even in the face of Federal lawsuits, UCLA has gone beyond tolerating antisemitism. Now, it is institutionalized at UCLA.