UCLA Chancellor Gene Block testified before a congressional committee Thursday after coming under scrutiny for a delayed police response to violence between pro-Palestinian protesters and counterprotesters.
The committee’s inquiry expanded to large universities like UCLA, Rutgers and Northwestern after earlier hearings largely focused on private, Ivy League colleges.
“Each of you should be ashamed of your decisions that allowed antisemitic encampments to endanger Jewish students,” said Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, the committee chair. “Mr. Schill and Dr. Holloway, you should be doubly ashamed for capitulating to the antisemitic rule breakers.”
Each president denounced the rise of antisemitism amid the Israel-Hamas war. Northwestern President Michael Schill and Block, who are Jewish, expressed their own disgust at some of the rhetoric and imagery used by protesters.
Block said public universities are in an especially tough bind as they work to shield students from discrimination while also upholding free speech.
Unlike private universities, public universities are bound by the First Amendment. Even hateful speech must be protected, Block said, but UCLA draws the line when it crosses into threats and harassment.
He expressed remorse over the handling of a UCLA encampment that was attacked in early May. Counterprotesters threw traffic cones and released pepper spray in fighting that went on for hours before police stepped in, drawing criticism from Muslim students and political leaders.
“Tragically, it took several hours for law enforcement to quell the violence,” Block said “With the benefit of hindsight, we should have been prepared to immediately remove the encampment if and when the safety of our community was put at risk.”
According to a UCLA statement, the police chief was reassigned “pending an examination of our security processes” on Wednesday.
A new pro-Palestinian encampment emerged on UCLA’s campus, as Block testified.
“Our safety personnel are on-site and actively monitoring the situation,” Mary Osako, vice chancellor for UCLA Strategic Communications, said in a statement.
As in previous hearings, Republicans pressed the leaders on discipline. They asked how many students had been expelled and how many faculty had been fired over antisemitic incidents since Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israel.
None of the presidents said students had been expelled, though they said there are dozens of ongoing investigations. Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway said four students were suspended.
Schill said the numbers aren’t a reflection of inaction.
“The fact that we didn’t, have not yet suspended or expelled students does not mean that students have not received discipline,” he said. “There’s a wide range of discipline, and discipline has been meted out to many of those students.”
Tensions over the Israel-Hamas war have been high on campuses since the fall and spiked in recent weeks with a wave of pro-Palestinian tent encampments that led to over 3,000 arrests nationwide.
After the first congressional hearings in December, an outcry of criticism from donors, students and politicians led to the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, who gave cautious, halting answers to questions about whether calls for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools’ conduct policies.
In April, the committee turned its attention to Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who took a more conciliatory approach to Republican-led questioning. Shafik’s concessions around faculty academic freedom upset students and professors at Columbia. Her testimony and subsequent decision to call in police escalated protests on campus, inspiring students at other colleges to launch similar demonstrations.
Originally, the presidents of Yale University and the University of Michigan were called to testify on Thursday. But the committee shifted its attention to Northwestern and Rutgers after those colleges struck deals with pro-Palestinian protesters to limit or disband encampments.