The House Education and the Workforce Committee announced Tuesday it is opening an investigation into the University of California, Berkeley’s handling of rising antisemitism on campus since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.
Representative Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), who serves as the committee’s chairwoman, chided top UC Berkeley leaders for failing to protect Jewish students and requested a wide range of documents related to their antisemitism response. The public university joins a growing list of campuses in the congressional probe.
“We have grave concerns about the inadequacy of UC Berkeley’s response to antisemitism on its campus,” Foxx wrote in a 15-page letter, citing numerous antisemitic incidents that have occurred in the past several months.
“On February 26, 2024, an anti-Israel protest organized by the student group Bears for Palestine erupted into a violent riot in which anti-Israel activists assaulted Jewish students and shattered glass windows, forcing the cancellation of an Israeli speaker’s lecture,” Foxx said.
“In recent weeks, anti-Israel students have occupied and blocked UC Berkeley’s landmark Sather Gate, a key entrance to the center of campus, and harassed Jewish passersby,” she added. “UC Berkeley’s failure to address this activity breaches a specific and longstanding university commitment to keep the gate unobstructed as part of a legal settlement and constitutes a selective dereliction of duty to enforce university rules against harassment.”
In October, Jewish UC Berkeley professor Steven Davidoff Solomon was targeted in an antisemitic email with the subject line “You are a dirty Jew.” The message read: “If the Holocaust were happening right now, you’d be the first one to be gassed.” As another example, at least two UC Berkeley students who waved Israeli flags were assaulted at anti-Israel rallies shortly after the Hamas attacks.
The letter was addressed to Chancellor Carol Christ, President Michael Drake, and Board of Regents chairman Richard Leib.
In the correspondence, Foxx included an October 2023 survey, which found that an overwhelming majority of 132 Jewish UC Berkeley students felt the school administration had not adequately addressed antisemitic incidents in the aftermath of October 7. Additionally, most respondents did not feel safe expressing their Jewish identity on campus and said they were warned by family or friends about the school’s “‘antisemitic’ reputation.”
UC Berkeley has until April 2 to hand over a list of documents, including reports on antisemitic incidents since January 2021, university policies and procedures, and disciplinary processes.
UC Berkeley did not respond to National Review’s request for comment.
The House Education Committee previously requested documents and information from Harvard University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Earlier this month, Foxx said Harvard had “absolutely failed to comply” with the committee’s subpoena that ordered the university to hand over antisemitism-related documents.
The probe was launched after three university presidents — Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magill of UPenn, and Sally Kornbluth of MIT — testified before the same committee on campus antisemitism in December. Their divisive testimony sparked public backlash, leading to the resignations of Gay and Magill shortly thereafter. With the MIT board’s support, Kornbluth retained her position.