UCLA banned campus organisations involved in the demonstrations this week when pro-Palestinian students protested UC’s financial ties with Israel seven weeks after destroying the Brentwood home at the University of California Regent.
Palestine Judicial Students were notified on Thursday of the “indefinite revocation” of their status as a registered student group, and another chapter, Palestinian Justice graduate students were banned for four years.
“UCLA is committed to promoting an environment where all students can live and learn freely and peacefully,” said UCLA’s statement on behaviour towards the club. “…We continue to support our policy to ensure that UCLA remains a safe and respectful learning environment for all members of the Bruin community.”
Representatives from the organization did not respond to requests for comment Friday. For years, the group was the centre of student activity and student activism that reached height in the camp last spring.
The decision does not prevent them from protesting on campus. As a public institution, a limited portion of UCLA’s basis is mostly open to anyone to demonstrate most of the time. However, the move prevents organizations from registering in campus event spaces, applying for funding for student activities, and representing themselves as a UCLA organization.
The ban also represents the distance from the local chapters of pro-Palestinian organizations that grew beyond universities and fired from Jewish civil rights groups, including the Trump administration, the Republicans and the Prevention Prevention Federation.
UCLA has conducted multiple investigations from the Trump administration into its handling of pro-Palestinian protests and anti-Semitism allegations.
The Trump administration threatened to revoke federal funds from universities that govern in protests and fail to comply with largely vague demands to combat anti-Semitism.
On Friday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee said it was launching an investigation into Palestinian American Muslims in “a report that the group organized, supported and promoted violent anti-Semitic demonstrations disrupting university campuses across the country.” The group was founded over 30 years ago by Hatem Bazian UC, who founded students in Palestine while studying in Berkeley.
Both organizations have been crucial to the surge in pro-Palestinian activities across the United States since Hamas’ attacks on Israel, the war in Gaza on October 7, 2023. Trump and the GOP have accused group members of anti-Semitism supporters of Hamas, a designated US terrorist group. This month, immigration officials have detained foreign student activists at several East Coast universities, accusing them of illegally promoting terrorism.
UCLA is participating in other UC campuses and several other campuses, including UC Irvine, UC San Diego and UC Santa Cruz, which have banned or suspended students due to Palestinian judiciary.
On Tuesday, UC Davis also dissolved the Law School Students’ Association, which passed the Israeli financial and academic boycott. As a result, the university managed the group’s $40,000 funds. A spokesman for UC Davis said the boycott violated UC policy requiring student government groups to become “point neutral.”
Graduate students at UC Santa Cruz and other academic workers at the UAW 4811 union were struck last year as part of the pro-Palestinian protests on campus.
(Shmuel Thaler/AP)
The UCLA group had had a temporary suspension since February 12th when Prime Minister Julio Frenk announced the restrictions in a campus-wide message and cited “violence” during the February 5th action at the UC Regent Jaceles home.
“No one should fear their safety. Without a basic sense of safety, humans cannot learn, teach, work, and live. This is true no matter which group you are in or in any group.
At the time, a group of students responded via an Instagram statement, denying “Frenk’s accusations that student protesters had committed violence against the UCLA community.”
Sures, vice president of United Talent Agency, said he was targeted because he is Jewish. In addition to photos showing his property had been destroyed with red bloody bills, there was also a video of protesters easily surrounded Suless’s wife in her car as she tried to drive to work. A February 5 Instagram post by UCLA students for Justice in Palestinian Groups presented Sues’ diagnosis of publicly speaking about Israeli support.
UC has not stopped students for meetings at Regent’s home.
Students continue to protest at UCLA, including an event held last week at UCLA. These demonstrations opposed billions of investments that UC has been linked to arms companies, Israel, and other targets of student activists. Last year, UC said it had around $32 billion in assets invested in areas where activists oppose it.
Palestinian students have also begun to attack other UC leaders with social media posts and events. On March 14th, the group protested early in the morning outside the Regent Elaine Batchler home in Los Angeles.
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