A federal court has agreed to dismiss a lawsuit by a right-wing Israel lobby organization against the University of California, Berkeley, as part of an anti-Palestinian deal that will infringe on the free speech and academic freedom rights of members of the campus community, blocking efforts by students to have a say in the decision.
On April 30, Judge James Donato said he would approve dismissal of the case, over the objections of attorneys from the United for Equality & Affirmative Action Legal Defense Fund, which had intervened in the case on behalf of Berkeley students. The dismissal paves the way for implementation of a settlement the University of California Regents announced on March 19, in which they agreed to pay $1 million in legal fees and to fundamentally restructure UC Berkeley’s disciplinary and curricular processes to settle a lawsuit brought by a right-wing Israel lobby organization—not because a court ordered them to, but because they chose to do so.
This is a choice that will have devastating consequences for Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students, faculty, and workers, and everyone else on campus who dares to raise their voice about Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians.
Palestine Legal condemns the UC Regents for their shameful and cowardly settlement with the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, an organization that has spent years abusing civil rights law as part of a coordinated campaign to silence students and faculty who speak out for Palestinian freedom. We demand that the UC Regents rescind this settlement. Let’s be clear about what the UC Regents have agreed to do: They have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism —a deeply contested , politically motivated definition that conflates criticism of the Israeli state with hatred of Jewish people—into Berkeley’s disciplinary machinery. Under this settlement, IHRA’s “contemporary examples,” most of which target political speech about Israel, will now shape how harassment complaints are investigated and resolved. IHRA will be injected into mandatory trainings for every incoming student, every faculty member, every graduate student instructor, every lecturer, and every student organization leader on campus. A Palestinian student speaking about their family origins, a professor teaching the history of Zionism, a student group hosting a speaker on the Palestinian right of return: All of them are now in the crosshairs.
Courts across the country have repeatedly rejected the Brandeis Center’s legal theory. At least nine similar Title VI cases have been dismissed in recent months. A federal court in Massachusetts dismissed a case nearly identical to the one brought against UC Berkeley, writing that plaintiffs cannot “insist that others must be bound by plaintiffs’ view” equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. A federal court in Texas found that enforcing the IHRA definition likely violates the First Amendment. The UC Regents knew this. They settled anyway, not because the law required it, but because they chose not to fight for their students.
UC Berkeley’s own Academic Senate voted by a 94.6% supermajority in April 2025 to reject the IHRA definition, finding that adopting it would require “an abandonment of academic freedom and violation of its members’ legal rights.” The UC Regents overrode that democratic expression of faculty will. They did not consult the Palestinian and Arab students and faculty who are most directly affected. They simply agreed to $1 million in fees, to surveillance of classrooms, to handing a Zionist lawfare organization a formal role in reviewing curriculum and recommending changes to “leadership.” This is the Palestine exception in action. UC Berkeley is an institution that freely permits critical discussion of the policies of every nation on earth—except one. A student from the occupied West Bank describing their own life under military rule can now face discipline. A faculty member assigning readings on Palestinian history may think twice. That is not an accident. That is the point.
The UC Regents’ capitulation does not exist in a vacuum. It follows Columbia University’s similar surrender to the Trump administration, after which the renowned historian of Palestine Rashid Khalidi withdrew from teaching his course on Modern Middle East history in protest, and Holocaust scholar Marianne Hirsch did the same. The UC Regents are following the same path, trading their institution’s academic integrity for the approval of a biased advocacy group, and doing so without consulting the community members who will bear the cost.
We demand that the UC Regents rescind this settlement. We call on faculty, students, and campus workers across the UC system to refuse to be silenced by it. Palestine Legal stands ready to defend the rights of students and faculty at UC Berkeley who face retaliation for protected speech about Palestine.