California Gov. Gavin Newsom continued to engage in denialism Wednesday over antisemitism at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), which saw anti-Israel “encampments” harass Jewish students on campus.
Newsom has persistently refused to acknowledge the problem, as the Trump administration has pushed UCLA to pay a $1 billion fine for violating the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students, and to make reforms.
(This reporter documented the antisemitic rhetoric of the encampments, as well as the activists’ attacks on the civil rights of others, including journalists, whom they assaulted, as UCLA administrators indulged them.)
A federal judge was incredulous at UCLA’s behavior, noting in an August 2014 decision (original emphasis):
In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. UCLA does not dispute this. Instead, UCLA claims that it has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters. But under constitutional principles, UCLA may not allow services to some students when UCLA knows that other students are excluded on religious grounds, regardless of who engineered the exclusion.
But Newsom, who convened a committee to study the payment of reparations for slavery even though California state entered the Union in 1850 as a “free” state, refuses to consider a fine for UCLA’s conduct.
Instead, he has pushed back against even acknowledging the problem, saying that he would resign before paying a fine to settle allegations at one of the nation’s worst offenders during the tumultuous spring of 2024.
He doubled down this week, as Politico reported:
“How could you possibly accept the fine?” an exasperated governor said, referring to the billion-dollar demand or some smaller amount the regents could negotiate. “Fine for what?”
With Trump alleging UCLA has fostered a campus atmosphere hostile to Jewish students and faculty, Newsom hailed efforts by state institutions to combat antisemitism. He expressed dismay that the state could pay to settle with “the guy who had dinner with Nick Fuentes telling us about antisemitism” — a reference to a far-right activist who Trump hosted at Mar-a-Lago in 2022. “Are you kidding me?”
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