California State University faces systemwide EEOC probe over antisemitism concerns

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Dive Brief: 

• The California State University is facing a probe from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over antisemitism-related allegations, according to a Friday email from Chancellor Mildred García to the system’s 23 campuses. 
• The EEOC has begun directly contacting faculty and staff members across the system “to review allegations of antisemitism and to speak with them about their experiences on campus,” García said in the email. 
• This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has opened a probe into an entire university system. The U.S. Department of Justice is also investigating the University of California system over a plan that focuses in part on hiring diverse faculty members, alleging it may have violated federal antidiscrimination law. 

Dive Insight: 

García also noted in her Friday message that the U.S. Department of Education was investigating Cal State over its ties to The PhD Project, an organization that previously focused on supporting underrepresented students pursuing doctoral degrees in business but recently broadened its mission. She said Cal State worked with The PhD Project by sharing faculty openings on their job boards until 2024. 

The chancellor said the system would comply with both the Education Department and the EEOC’s probe.

Likewise, Cal State said in an emailed statement Monday that it would cooperate fully with the EEOC on its probes, though the system did not share what specific allegations the federal agency is investigating. An EEOC spokesperson said Monday that charges filed with the agency are confidential. 

However, the Trump administration’s antisemitism-related investigations into colleges often probe their responses to pro-Palestinian protests on their campuses. 

Demonstrators erected encampments at colleges nationwide in spring 2024 to call on their institutions to divest from companies with ties to Israel. Encampments also cropped up at Cal State, including the Los Angeles campus. 

In June 2024, police cleared the encampment on Cal State LA’s campus after demonstrators occupied a campus building with the university’s president and other employees inside, The Associated Press reported. 

Last week, Cal State LA officials told employees the EEOC subpoenaed the university for their phone numbers and emails as part of an ongoing investigation and said they may be contacted by agency staff. 

Democratic lawmakers and some Jewish groups have accused the Trump administration of weaponizing antisemitism to crack down on colleges. 

And while 72% of surveyed Jewish Americans said they worry about antisemitism on campus, the same share agreed that the Trump administration “is using antisemitism as an excuse to penalize and tax college campuses,” according to a recent poll from Ipsos and researchers from the University of California and the University of Rochester. 

Additionally, 58% of the respondents said they disagreed with the Trump administration’s decision to pause or cancel vast sums of federal research funding to Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles. In UCLA’s case, the Trump administration asked the university to pay $1 billion as part of a settlement to restore access to its federal research funding. 

However, a federal judge has handed UCLA court victories over pulled research funding, ordering both the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation to restore grants, with the NIH awards worth roughly $500 million. The Trump administration pulled the grants after the Justice Department formally accused UCLA of violating civil rights law by failing to protect Jewish students from harassment.