The Trump administration has launched an investigation into allegations of antisemitism across the California State University system, prompting concerns about the chilling of free speech on campus and the violation of staff members’ privacy.
In an email to the CSU community Friday, Chancellor Mildred Garcia wrote that the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had initiated a system-wide antisemitism complaint and was reaching out to faculty and staff directly to discuss their experiences on campus.
The administration at Cal State L.A. said Friday that the EEOC has subpoenaed the university to turn over the personal phone numbers and email addresses of all employees. The university is one of 22 in the system and was home to a Gaza Solidarity Encampment during the May 2024 wave of campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.
The EEOC is also working with the Department of Justice to investigate allegations of antisemitism on all 10 University of California campuses, where many employees’ contact information has already been shared with the federal government.
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“I know this news may be unsettling — and that is understandable,” Garcia wrote in an email about the investigation, a copy of which was obtained by The Times. “Please be assured that we are responding appropriately. And — perhaps most importantly — please know with absolute certainty that we will continue to advance the CSU’s mission through these and any challenges we face.”
Garcia said the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has also notified CSU that it is investigating allegations of racial discrimination due to the system’s interaction with the PhD Project, a non-profit that helps students from underrepresented groups earn doctoral degrees in business.
The Office for Civil Rights is already investigating at least 45 universities across the nation for allegedly violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by working with the PhD Project. Garcia said that CSU used the PhD Project to spread awareness of job postings until 2024, but that “no student or applicant for CSU employment was given any preferential treatment based on race, national origin or any other protected characteristic.”
Garcia said that the system intends to fully comply with both federal actions — the EEOC antisemitism probe and the Education Department’s allegations of racial discrimination.
The California Faculty Assn., which represents around 29,000 employees at CSU’s 22 campuses, released a statement Friday urging employees to reach out to the union or seek legal counsel before responding to requests from either federal agency.
The association also said that the subpoena of staff contact information at Cal State L.A. raises “serious concerns about our members’ privacy.”
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“Our members are demanding a copy of the subpoena and asking that CSULA not comply with the subpoena until we have had a chance to review it and formulate a response,” the association said.
Luke Wukmer, a lecturer at Cal State Long Beach who is a part of the California Faculty Assn., said he was disappointed by Garcia’s response and wishes she had pushed back harder on the government’s demands instead of issuing a promise to fully comply.
“Academic institutions are an absolute pillar of speaking to truth, to fact and to reason,” he said, “and if we are going to be bullied by a branch of the federal government to comply with what seems to be new puritanical or overly draconian rulings, we are going to be in a lot of trouble.”
In particular, he is concerned about efforts to classify all academic discussion around the Palestinian fight for statehood as antisemitic, noting that the loss of academic freedom is hard for a society to come back from.
“I don’t want to see my friends fired,” he said. “The fact that certain people don’t like history doesn’t mean that they [the federal government] should get to punish those who accurately study it.”
Jeffrey Santner, a Jewish faculty member at Cal State L.A., said he is not worried about antisemitism on campus and did not feel like it was a problem during the 2024 protests.
He said he assumes the probe is related to the Gaza solidarity encampment at the campus, and feels the investigation is another example of the government equating anti-Israel sentiment with antisemitism.
“I think most of us probably disagree with [that] and don’t think that the government is the same as a religion,” he said.
The EEOC did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday regarding what alleged incidents of antisemitism at CSU schools sparked the investigation.
Santner said he wasn’t surprised by the chancellor’s conciliatory response to the probe, given the Trump administration’s ongoing threats to universities that don’t comply with its demands.
“It would be nice if we fought back … if our leader tried to take some leadership, since we have so many universities,” he said. “But the government is the government; it’s big and powerful.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
