UCLA is staying silent regarding a lawsuit filed against it by a conservative student group accusing it blocking a pro-Israel speaker’s speech through an administrative heckler’s veto.
Its media relations department has not responded to numerous requests over the last month from The College Fix seeking comment on the lawsuit, filed in October by Young America’s Foundation.
The lawsuit argues campus brass allowed a pro-Hamas encampment in the spring and gave “anti-Israel agitators … such free reign by UCLA that they began to physically exclude Jewish students from parts of campus.”
In contrast, officials quashed YAF’s speech seeking to offer an alternative perspective titled “Everything You Know About Palestine is Wrong” by Robert Spencer.
“UCLA repeatedly ignored requests for information, withheld paperwork approvals, prevented Plaintiffs from effectively advertising in advance of the event, and engaged in other bureaucratic delay tactics,” the lawsuit alleges. “When that did not work, UCLA resorted to less subtle forms of censorship.”
“At the very last minute, just before the lecture was scheduled to take place, UCLA pulled a fast one: locking the doors to the event space, and claiming that the talk needed to be moved to an out-of-the way location because of purported security concerns arising from threatened counter-protest activity.”
YAF spokesman Spencer Brown told The Fix these actions occurred “despite following UCLA’s protocol” for guest speakers.
The foundation’s complaint was filed just two months after a federal judge ordered UCLA to protect Jewish students who are returning to campus for the fall semester.
Among other things, the order states UCLA may not allow or facilitate “the exclusion of Jewish students” from campus programs and activities, even “as a result of a de-escalation strategy,” The Fix previously reported.
Additionally, a report published on Oct. 16 noted the rise of antisemitism at UCLA.
The report by the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and anti-Israeli Bias found that 67 percent of those surveyed cited antisemitism as a problem on campus, about 75 percent finding anti Israeli-bias as a problem, and 74 percent of respondents see antisemitism as being taken less seriously than other forms of hate.
Another report, this one released this month by the 21st Century Policing Solutions, found that UCLA must make make “long-term,” “fundamental, structural changes” to better protect Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus.
Jewish conservative commentator Ben Shapiro gave a speech at UCLA on Oct. 21. The event, hosted by YAF, was a success. But the organization is demanding accountability for the incident in May.
The lawsuit “seeks a preliminary and permanent injunction prohibiting UCLA from engaging in this kind of viewpoint discrimination or bowing to a heckler’s veto as well as providing security equally without concern for the content of speech and events being protected,” a foundation news release states.
“In addition, YAF seeks a declaratory judgment that UCLA violated the First Amendment with its actions surrounding YAF’s planned lecture with Robert Spencer. The lawsuit also seeks compensatory and nominal damages along with punitive damages and attorney fees.”
Asked to weigh in on the controversy, Jessie Appleby, program officer for the Foundational for Individual Rights and Expression, told The Fix that by “restricting the speaker rather than those threatening unlawful disruption, UCLA is unlawfully restraining free expression.
“And by repeatedly giving in to protesters’ threats, UCLA is only inviting more threats to speakers’ and students’ safety and expressive rights in the future,” she said.
“Going forward, UCLA must ensure its administrators understand the university’s constitutional obligations to provide sufficient security to ensure invited speakers are able to speak without sustained disruption, whether that means revising university policy or providing First Amendment training to its staff,” said Appleby.
MORE: Will UCLA protect Jewish students this fall? Still a ‘question,’ lawyer says
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