“Unimaginable” and “abhorrent.”
Those are the words used by federal District Court Judge Mark Scarsi Wednesday to denounce the University of California at Los Angeles for permitting a “Jew Exclusion Zone” to operate on its campus this spring.
UCLA let pro-Hamas protesters set up and enforce that zone on its property — and according to Scarsi, the same horrific behavior will happen again unless the court steps in.
Three Jewish UCLA students sued the college, claiming their right to exercise their religion — a core right guaranteed by the First Amendment — was violated in April and May.
That’s when UCLA allowed pro-Palestinian agitators to take over a portion of the campus, erecting barricades and encampments.
The three students claim they couldn’t cross major parts of the campus, or even enter the library, unless they disavowed allegiance to Israel to agitators at encampment checkpoints, something their faith would not allow them to do.
The barricades allegedly operated for a week before UCLA officials called for campus police and outside law enforcement to remove them on May 2. Later that month, the pro-Palestinian protesters returned with more barricades.
Shame on UCLA for tolerating a Jewish exclusion zone for even an hour.
The lawsuit will last months, and in the meantime, Scarsi took the unusual step of imposing a preliminary injunction against the university.
An ultimatum, in fact: Any part of the campus that is shut down for Jewish students must be shut down for everyone.
UCLA announced it will appeal, claiming the judge’s order will “hamstring our ability to handle events on the ground.”
Ridiculous. UCLA remains free to determine how it will protect full access for Jewish students.
If its administrators can’t figure it out, they don’t deserve their six- and seven-figure salaries.
Scarsi’s order will reverberate across the nation.
He’s enforcing what should be a bedrock principle: Government-run universities like UCLA are barred by the Bill of Rights from allowing attacks on the religious freedom of Jewish students, or of any student.
Private institutions — including big names like Harvard and Columbia — are not off the hook, either.
They receive billions in federal and state funding, tuition assistance for their students, and research grants for their faculty.
Federal law requires them to protect students from discrimination on the basis of race, gender or religion.
But university administrators and faculty are almost universally left-wing, so they’re reluctant to protect students who belong to disfavored groups.
If campus rioters were shouting anti-black or anti-LGBTQ+ slogans in their bullhorns and demanding a Queer Exclusion Zone, they’d be shut down immediately. And rightly so.
Six Jewish students sued Harvard in January, making claims similar to the UCLA litigants.
The university tried to get the suit dismissed, claiming that it has a First Amendment obligation to promote free speech on campus.
Federal District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns didn’t buy that phony argument: The court, he said, is “dubious Harvard can hide behind the First Amendment. “
Rampant antisemitism, not the principle of free speech, is to blame for what Jewish students have suffered.
Trustees, alumni and parents should have the backbone to withhold their support from these institutions. And politicians should have the courage to withhold public funding.
Eyes are now on presidential nominee and current Vice President Kamala Harris.
Last month she professed her sympathy for pro-Palestinian protesters: “They are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza,” Harris told The Nation.
To be fair, she added a qualification: “There are things some of the protesters are saying that I absolutely reject, so I don’t mean to wholesale endorse their points,” she said. “But we have to navigate it. I understand the emotion behind it.”
Navigating antisemitism is a nasty business. Sadly, we can’t count on our elected officials to fight it.
That’s why our Constitution is so important: It protects the rights of those out of favor, like Jewish students on college campuses.
The heroes are the judges who uphold the Constitution’s principles. Political correctness be damned.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.