Last week, UC Berkeley extended a job offer per a legal settlement to Israeli dance scholar Yael Nativ nine months after campus acknowledged she was discriminated against for her national origin in 2023. The offer, which Nativ has yet to decide whether or not to accept, brings years of conflict between her and campus to a potential end.
Nativ was a visiting professor at UC Berkeley in spring 2022 through the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies, teaching a class on intersectionality in contemporary Israeli dance. Nativ claimed that although she was initially invited to return to UC Berkeley in 2024, she was denied that opportunity after Oct. 7, 2023.
She wrote about the experience in a 2023 op-ed for Israeli newspaper Haaretz. In September 2024, campus’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination substantiated an anonymous report claiming that campus had violated a UC anti-discrimination policy, allowing Nativ to propose remedies. After campus did not respond to repeated proposals from Nativ, she sued in August 2025 on multiple counts of discrimination based on national origin.
The UC Board of Regents settled Nativ’s lawsuit in December for $116,000 split between Nativ and her attorneys, while also promising an apology from Chancellor Rich Lyons and an offer to return to UC Berkeley.
Lyons apologized to Nativ in a Feb. 3 phone call.
Although the settlement said UC Berkeley would offer Nativ a position during a semester of her choice in 2026 or 2027, the job offer did not arrive until last week, according to Nativ — five weeks into the fall 2026 semester.
That offer came soon after UC Berkeley Law professor emeritus Malcolm Feeley published an article about Nativ’s case in the Jewish Review of Books Sept. 16 criticizing long delays throughout the entire process.
“It’s just more of the same history of not doing anything until somebody lights a fire under the administration,” Feeley said in an interview. “This is the third or fourth fire that was lit to get them to do something.”
Campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof said the nine-month delay was the result of a “regrettable internal miscommunication,” and that Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Ben Hermalin had sent an apology to Nativ.
“We deeply regret this unfortunate delay and look forward to welcoming Dr. Nativ back to our campus,” Mogulof said in an email.
For her part, Nativ would like to leave the conflict of the past few years behind.
“At the moment I’m taking the time to think about it with positive intention to come in the next two years,” Nativ wrote in an email. “I’m glad this is over and I thank all the people who supported me, fought for me and acted on my behalf. They were many, people I have never met and who gave me hope and strength.”