BERKELEY \u2014 Concerned that the rights of students and faculty have been violated, a national Muslim civil liberties organization has requested UC Berkeley turn over any information it has on its cooperation with a Trump administration investigation into antisemitism on campus.<\/p>\n
A California Public Records Act request was filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations\u2019 San Francisco Bay Area office on Nov. 21 in response to the university\u2019s sharing of 160 students, staff and faculty names as part of the federal probe.<\/p>\n
\u201cUC Berkeley\u2019s decision to hand personal information about its own community members to the federal government is a grave breach of trust, particularly in this political climate,\u201d said Jeffrey Wang, the nonprofit\u2019s civil rights managing attorney in a statement.<\/p>\n
UC Berkeley Assistant Vice Chancellor Dan Mogulof declined to comment on the records request.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Department of Education and Department of Justice have been investigating the University of California since early 2025 to determine whether the university system was discriminating against students, staff and faculty by permitting antisemitism on campuses, according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release.<\/p>\n
Universities across the nation have been targeted with similar investigations following large student protests demanding institutions cut academic and financial ties to Israel. The demonstrations, including student occupations of campus buildings and encampments, were prompted by the Israel-Hamas war, which has resulted in the deaths of nearly 70,000 Palestinians and 1,200 Israelis, according to the Associated Press.<\/p>\n
University spokesperson Janet Gilmore previously said the decision to comply with the federal investigation was made by the University of California\u2019s systemwide Office of the General Counsel \u201cin compliance with its legal obligations to cooperate with the agency.\u201d<\/p>\n
The university shared numerous documents with the Office of the General Counsel which then shared those documents with the federal government in August, Gilmore said.<\/p>\n
Students and faculty were then informed that their information had been shared in a September email.<\/p>\n
The decision to cooperate with the investigation was met with strong rebuke from the academic community, including UC Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine, a student-led advocacy group, and hundreds of academics from around the world who have worked with Cal faculty and signed a letter of concern addressed to University of California President\u00a0 James Milliken and UC Berkeley Chancellor Richard Lyons.<\/p>\n
Under the documents request, the Council on American-Islamic Relations aims to learn exactly what types of documents were shared with the federal government, what legal guidance was used to justify the document sharing and whose call it was to cooperate.<\/p>\n
\u201cStudents and faculty should not have to wonder whether their university is quietly feeding their names into federal investigations because of what they believe, what they teach, or what protests they attended,\u201d Wang said. \u201cPublic institutions in California owe their communities transparency, accountability, and respect for their rights \u2014 not secret dossiers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERKELEY \u2014 Concerned that the rights of students and faculty have been violated, a national Muslim civil liberties…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,184,764,7,332,15,842,181,23,205,100,143,145,144,13,7361,385,1695,149],"class_list":{"0":"post-74538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-alameda-county","9":"tag-bay-area","10":"tag-berkeley","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-east-bay","13":"tag-education","14":"tag-israel-hamas-war","15":"tag-latest-headlines","16":"tag-local-news","17":"tag-local-politics","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-oakland","20":"tag-oakland-headlines","21":"tag-oakland-news","22":"tag-politics","23":"tag-protests","24":"tag-regional","25":"tag-trump-administration","26":"tag-uc-berkeley"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}