- Chrissa Olson | Senior Staff
- Aug 27, 2025 (DailyCal.org)
The largest Muslim civil rights organization in the United States has declared UC Berkeley a “hostile campus” to pro-Palestine advocacy and Muslim students.
Representatives from the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR-SFBA, alleged in a press conference Tuesday that campus suppressed Palestinian, Muslim, Arab and Jewish students who speak out in support of Palestine and call for the end of the war on Gaza.
“This designation is long overdue, as the UC Berkeley campus has ostracized and demonized Palestinian, Muslim, Jewish, and pro-Palestine students and faculty on the very campus they call the home of the Free Speech Movement,” said Habiba Geweifal, a recent campus graduate, during the press conference.
Students recounted incidents such as campus administration tearing down a sukkah erected by Jewish Voice for Peace and a law school professor confronting former Muslim Student Association president Zaid Yousef for wearing a crewneck bearing the British Mandate for Palestine.
According to CAIR, the goal of the “hostile campus” designation is to drive UC Berkeley to take steps to support free speech, protect protesters, address discrimination, respect religious practices and foster dialogue.
As part of a larger campaign dubbed the “UnHostile Campus Campaign,” CAIR aims to create campus environments where Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Jewish and other students and faculty can oppose Israel without experiencing retaliation or disciplinary action, according to CAIR-SFBA Civil Rights Managing Attorney Jeffrey Wang.
The designation would make UC Berkeley the third UC declared a “hostile campus,” after UC Irvine and UCLA. In California, CAIR has also designated Stanford University and Pomona College as “hostile” campuses.
In response to the designation, campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof said in a statement, “UC Berkeley has an unwavering commitment to free speech, and to effectively confronting harassment and discrimination of every sort.” He also stated that campus leadership works “closely” with the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Muslim and Palestinian Student Life.
However, student speakers felt that campus’ statements and actions were not enough. As an assistant director of the Muslim Student Association, Geweifal said students who wore hijabs confided in her that they were being followed home, and recalled an incident where someone tried to record and dox her for wearing a keffiyeh.
“These attacks have been met with superficial statements of understanding and assurance of our safety from the administration,” Geweifal said.
According to CAIR’s 2024 Campus Climate Report, which collected 31 responses from Muslim UC Berkeley students, 85% experienced harassment and/or discrimination, and 71% felt targeted by professors or instructors due to their religious identity.
Discrimination and harassment reports “related to the Middle East conflict, including at protests or speaker events on campus” comprised 69% of the 1,081 reports unrelated to sexual violence and harassment in the fiscal year 2024, according to the UC Berkeley Office for the Prevention of Discrimination and Harassment’s 2024 Civil Rights Report.
The report does not clarify how many of these reports were related to Islamophobia, antisemitism, or other forms of discrimination.
The report attributes the increase in discrimination instance reports to “the conflict in the Middle East” and an awareness of a new 2023 anti-discrimination policy.
“There’s a reason this campus has been so hostile,” Yousef said. “When the university sets the stage that says ‘it is okay to be complicit in genocide’ and amplifies the talking points of Zionist professors and faculty members, they’re also green-lighting, implicitly, the kind of harassment that Muslims and Palestinians have been facing.”
