UCLA law professor Joey Fishkin, an advocate for the 2024 "antizionist" encampment at his university, has a lengthy blog post defending the university from Title VI and constitutional religious discrimination allegations that were the subject of a Becket Fund lawsuit (since settled), and now a federal civil rights action. The heart of the claims is that UCLA violated the religious freedom of, and discriminated against, Jewish students, by allowing the encampment to exclude Jewish students from the encampment, which in turn at times blocked access to campus building. Fishkin responded:
I can say unequivocally based on direct observation that the language quoted above—the central allegation in the Becket Fund complaint—was false. There was no Jew Exclusion Zone. The claim that the encampment was "segregating Jewish students and preventing them from accessing the heart of campus, including classroom buildings [which must mean Royce] and the main undergraduate library [Powell]," as the Becket Fund complaint put it, is false.
I see Fishkin's post as a defense of conduct by the people who ran the encampment. But taken in its best light, it doesn't do much to exonerate UCLA.
