The settlement alters how UC Berkeley responds to discrimination complaints. What does it mean for free speech? And how much will Cal change course?
by Felicia Mello March 26, 2026 (Berkeleyside.org)
When a Jewish legal advocacy group announced last week that it had inked a $1 million settlement with UC Berkeley over allegations of antisemitic discrimination on campus, its leadership called it a “landmark” deal.
“We think it’s a major achievement in terms of trying to impact the lives and experience of Jewish students on the UC Berkeley campus,” said Paul Eckles, senior litigator at the Washington D.C.-based Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
UC Berkeley, on the other hand, framed the agreement as largely an endorsement of the status quo.
“Are there some actions we’ve agreed to take that are new? Yes. But we believe that when you step back and look at the agreement as a whole, it’s an affirmation that the campus should continue to maintain its current policies and practices,” university spokesperson Dan Mogulof said.
The dueling narratives illustrate the complexity and political combustibility of a lawsuit that began in 2023 over complaints that law student organizations were excluding Zionist speakers, and resulted in a sweeping 19-page agreement covering everything from how UC Berkeley shares information about discrimination cases to how many security cameras there are on campus.
A Brandeis Center representative has already publicly accused the dean of UC Berkeley Law School of violating the agreement. Advocates for academic freedom said they worry the deal could squelch political speech in an era when the Trump administration has used charges of antisemitism to pressure elite U.S. universities to adopt its conservative vision. A group of pro-Palestinian students plans to challenge the deal in court, painting it as part of a pattern of capitulation to outside forces by Chancellor Rich Lyons’ administration. Multiple campus Jewish organizations and leaders either did not respond to Berkeleyside’s inquiries about the settlement or declined to comment on the record, with some citing the sensitivity of the issue.
The agreement makes changes to how UC Berkeley responds to discrimination complaints, including putting more emphasis on an often-disputed definition of antisemitism put forward by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The university also agreed to bar student organizations from having bylaws that ban Zionist speakers, and bolster mandatory antisemitism training for students, faculty and staff.
The settlement Cal will pay to the Brandeis Center will help cover its legal fees.
Defining antisemitism
The IHRA definition describes antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
More controversial than the definition itself are the contemporary examples the organization cites, which include “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” Critics say that framing can be used to suppress legitimate criticism of far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his administration’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and within Israel, while supporters argue it recognizes that attacking the state of Israel can be a smokescreen for antisemitism.
UC Berkeley says it already takes that definition into consideration — among other factors — when reviewing complaints of antisemitic discrimination, following guidance from the U.S. Department of Education. But university investigators will now be required to explain in their case reports how the IHRA definition applies, and the campus office responsible for handling complaints will refer to the definition on its website. Harvard University and Pomona College made similar commitments in agreements signed with the Brandeis Center over the past year.
“Berkeley can say ‘We won because we didn’t adopt [the definition],’ but the Brandeis Center can say they won because the view of what is antisemitism will now be titrated through that document,” said Chris Hoofnagle, secretary of the Berkeley Initiative for Freedom of Inquiry, a faculty group.
While the lawsuit reflects genuine concerns about the freedom of Jewish students, Hoofnagle said, he worries about the “weaponization” of discrimination claims. “Faculty who have performed good faith research that is critical or that focuses on Israel could end up in a kind of laundry machine of complaints from people who merely disagree,” he said.
Last fall, administrators at George Mason University cited the IHRA definition of antisemitism when demanding that a student organization take down a social media post that referred to Israel as a “genocidal Zionist state.”
The American Association of University Professors has also opposed the use of the definition to restrict speech on university campuses.
“There is enormous pressure on colleges and universities from external stakeholders to adopt the IHRA definition, and that pressure is in itself highly problematic because it represents the views and the interests of external stakeholders that might be incompatible with robust cultures of academic freedom,” said Mia McIvers, the organization’s executive director.
Eckles, the Brandeis Center attorney, defended the definition, pointing out that it also explicitly says that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”
Because the agreement doesn’t force Berkeley to rely only on the IHRA definition of antisemitism, some scholars noted, it leaves room for the university to incorporate other definitions into its policies, such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. Some scholars see that version as more nuanced because it explicitly seeks to balance combating antisemitism with academic freedom.
Banning anti-Zionist bylaws
UC Berkeley admitted no wrongdoing in settling the suit, which stemmed from a 2023 case alleging that some law student organizations at the university had discriminated against Jews when they passed bylaws barring Zionist speakers from their events.
After the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza led to encampments at colleges nationwide protesting the killings of tens of thousands of Palestinians, the Brandeis Center and a second organization, Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education, amended their complaint to describe a rising tide of antisemitism at Berkeley that they said the university had failed to stem. Jewish students had been targeted with antisemitic graffiti, spat at and in at least one case physically attacked, they said, and cited a raucous protest of a February 2024 talk sponsored by pro-Israel student groups that led to the event’s cancellation.
The university says it has since taken a number of steps to improve the climate for Jewish students on campus, including instituting mandatory antidiscrimination training for all incoming students. The Anti-Defamation League earlier this month rated UC Berkeley a B – “Better Than Most” – on its campus antisemitism report card.
At the same time, Lyons has tried to reassure the campus community that he will defend their ability to speak freely about the Middle East, saying in congressional testimony last year that “if somebody is expressing pro-Palestinian beliefs, that’s not necessarily antisemitism.”
While the encampments are gone from campus, UC Berkeley students continue to protest Israel’s actions in Gaza, which a United Nations commission has defined as genocide. In April, students will vote on a campus referendum, put forward by the student government, that would urge the university to divest from companies involved in military weapons and surveillance technology. Pro-Palestinian student groups are backing the measure, but it does not single out Israel.
The Brandeis Center settlement says law student organization bylaws – which must be approved by the university – cannot bar Zionist speakers, but that groups remain free to choose who they will invite.
“Simply put, student organizations may continue to have the same policies that they have adopted restricting who they will invite to speak, but these policies cannot be contained within their Bylaws,” law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky wrote in an email to students last week.
“My position since this issue emerged has not wavered. I believe that student organizations have the First Amendment right to choose speakers based on their views, but I believe that these Bylaws are inconsistent with the Law School’s commitment to be a place where all ideas and views can be expressed,” Chemerinsky wrote.
In a sign of how contested the settlement language is, however, his comments drew a swift condemnation from the Brandeis Center, with Eckles telling the conservative Washington Free Beacon that they violated the “tenor and intent of the agreement … to make clear that anti-Zionism can be and is often used as a pretext for discrimination.”
The settlement comes as UCLA faces a lawsuit from the Trump administration claiming it has not done enough to protect its Jewish employees from harassment. That suit also demands increased antidiscrimination training and monitoring of how the university resolves complaints. UC Berkeley previously settled a separate suit with the Brandeis Center over an Israeli researcher who an internal investigation found had been denied an opportunity to teach on campus because of her nationality. The Brandeis Center is also suing the Berkeley school district over its “biased anti-Semitic learning environments.”
Shining a light on complaints
Many of the actions outlined in the recent settlement are things UC Berkeley is already doing, including running an antisemitism education initiative and a committee advising the chancellor on Jewish life, supporting Jewish and Israel studies programs, monitoring campus protests for possible discrimination, and preventing protesters from blocking entrances to campus.
The campus’s current training materials for incoming students already include the kind of contemporary examples of discrimination at universities that the agreement calls for. Freshmen at last fall’s new student orientation, for example, learned that UC policy would prohibit “posters on campus that include a cartoon image that is similar to images historically used to malign Jewish people.” If “several Jewish students are prevented from attending class because protesters block the pathway to the building and state that no Zionists can pass,” that would also be a policy violation, the training materials said.
But the Brandeis Center agreement also delves deep into the minutiae of campus security and disciplinary cases. The university promises to “add additional security cameras in prominent places around campus” and pledges not to allow exceptions to its campus protest rules because an event involves expression of views protected by the First Amendment.
Information about discrimination complaints will also be shared more widely under the agreement. The campus pledged to compile an annual tally of complaints regarding discrimination against Jewish or Israeli students, and compare the outcomes of those cases with those affecting other groups. The university will report to the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Jewish Life and Campus Climate whenever it receives a complaint about antisemitic discrimination related to an academic course.
Some faculty and students said they were concerned about special reporting requirements that only apply to anti-Jewish discrimination. But the new policies could also provide ammunition for people seeking transparency about other kinds of discrimination at Cal.
Another advisory committee reporting to the chancellor, on Muslim and Palestinian student life, has previously tried to obtain data on reports of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism on campus, said committee member Zaid Yousef, a law student. But the campus office in charge of handling discrimination complaints told the committee there was no such data breakdown available, Yousef said.
A legal challenge
Yousef is one of two pro-Palestinian students who are co-defendants in the Brandeis Center suit. Though not initially named in the complaint, they asked to join the case because they thought the outcome could affect their ability to express opposition to Israeli government policies and did not trust the university to defend their interests, said their attorney, Shanta Driver.
Driver said her clients planned to petition the federal judge in charge of the case to reject the settlement, which she said threatened their free speech rights. As an example, she pointed to the Brown historian Omer Bartov, an Israeli-born Holocaust scholar who has compared the dehumanization of Jews by Nazi soldiers to the lack of empathy some Israelis express for the suffering in Gaza.
“If we invited him to campus, the students who invited him could be disciplined, which is really insane,” she said.
The student group Bears for Palestine in a statement said the university would use the settlement to “silence the lived experiences of Palestinians and to criminalize student organizing” and accused administrators of “fostering a campus climate of anti-Palestinian racism,” citing the recent removal of “Free Palestine” artwork from the campus’s Multicultural Community Center.
If the settlement stands, its biggest impact may be symbolic.
“Other schools are going to follow Berkeley’s lead,” said Muki Barkan, a dual Israeli-U.S. citizen who was a co-defendant in the suit before graduating from UC Berkeley’s law school in 2024 and is critical of the settlement.
“The fact that the university is committing to do something about antisemitism and they are doing it in a very public way is no doubt important,” said Leonard Saxe, a professor of contemporary Jewish studies at Brandeis University, which is not affiliated with the Brandeis Center.
But Saxe said there’s limited evidence that some of the efforts the university is promising, such as beefing up training for students and faculty, actually work to reduce discrimination.
“One of the things that bothers me is that the university isn’t moving to study what is effective,” he said.
Berkeleyside partners with the nonprofit newsroom Open Campus on higher education coverage.
Felicia Mello covers UC Berkeley and other East Bay colleges as Berkeleyside’s senior reporter for higher education. She works in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on strengthening… More by Felicia Mello
