The University of California, Berkeley, provided personal information to the Trump administration about roughly 160 students and professors as part of a federal investigation into campus antisemitism, outraging critics and faculty who compared the move to the anti-communist purges of the McCarthy era.
Judith Butler, a prominent Jewish feminist and queer scholar at Berkeley with numerous family members who died in the Holocaust, was among those whose information had been shared. Butler has been a critic of Israel and has said its invasion of Gaza amounts to genocide.
“We have a right to know the charges against us, to know who has made the charges and to review them and defend ourselves,” Butler told The Guardian. “But none of that has happened, which is why we’re in Kafka-land … It is an enormous breach of trust.”
Members of the campus community were notified about the disclosure in a series of emails on September 4 from the Berkeley Office of Legal Affairs, The Daily Californian student newspaper reported.
The messages told recipients that the university, at the direction of the University of California Office of the President, had shared information in mid-August with the federal Department of Education regarding their “potential connection” to allegations of antisemitism.
One graduate student who received the message accused the university of targeting Muslim and Arab individuals over their support for Palestine.
“I think (the message was sent) to anybody who has ever been accused of antisemitism, which of course, includes a lot of Palestinians,” the student told the paper. “Whenever we teach about Palestine, it usually leads to an investigation. I think they flagged and sent all of that information to the federal government.”
The Independent has contacted UC Berkeley and the Department of Education for comment.
“Like all public universities, the University of California is subject to oversight by state and federal agencies,” a spokesperson for the UC president’s office told The Independent. “Our campuses routinely receive document requests in connection with government audits, compliance reviews, or investigations. UC is committed to protecting the privacy of our students, faculty, and staff to the greatest extent possible, while fulfilling its legal obligations.”
Critics of the investigation alleged Berkeley, famed for its history as a center of the 1960s campus Free Speech movement, was giving in to a Red Scare-style ideological witch hunt.
Steven Katz, a dean at the Berkeley journalism school, called the compliance “shameful” on social media.
“McCarthy-ism is back!” actor and liberal activist Mia Farrow wrote on Bluesky. “Shame on UC Berkeley!”
The Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights has been investigating Berkeley, along with scores of other top universities, over their handling of campus antisemitism allegations since February.
During testimony before Congress in July, UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons said the university had “more work to do” to stop antisemitism, while defending free speech and insisting pro-Palestinian views are “not necessarily antisemitism.”
The investigation into the premier California university comes as the Trump administration has sought over $1 billion in frozen funding and settlement funds from the University of California, Los Angeles, over its response to antisemitism.
The Trump administration has cracked down on universities across the country over their response to widespread pro-Palestine protests throughout 2023 and 2024, alarming civil rights advocates by seeking to deport immigrant student activists who were not charged with crimes and whose apparent ties to the movement included op-ed articles and leading peaceful protests.
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