UCLA Slapped by Federal Judge for Violating Human Rights ... Again

They denied us employees the right to our God-given bodily autonomy; Now a judge reprimands them for using third parties to ban Jews from areas of campus. When will their civil rights abuses end?

For those of you who have been following our case, you know that we sued UCLA and the whole UC system for violation and deprivation of our rights. In my most recent post, I go into a more thorough discussion of our case (Rake et al v Regents of the University of California). However, here is a brief summary: we allege that—during the Covid-19 response of 2021—UCLA (and the University of California, writ large) violated 1) our right to be free from forced medical experimentation, 2) our privacy rights, 3) our bodily autonomy, 4) our right to be free from intimidation and threats in the workplace, 5) our right to be free from improper medical inquiries by our employer, and 6) our right to exercise First-Amendment-protected speech without retaliation by our employer.

It is now 2024 and they have done it again. In the Spring/Summer of this year, UCLA allowed the violation of human rights again when they did nothing to stop violent, anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas protestors from setting up encampments on their campus and seizing control of access to the UCLA grounds. Many of the protestors were not even students at UCLA. The racism of these pro-terrorist protestors was on full display when they physically obstructed tuition-paying Jewish students from accessing various parts of their own campus unless they renounced their Jewish faith. It is hard to overstate what a dystopian and bizarro world we live in, such that—in the United States of America!—this type of blatant anti-Semitism is allowed by the adults in the room. And all this, by a public university … at taxpayer expense.

Violence erupts, pro-terrorist protests get out of hand, as UCLA looks on:

Jewish student denied access by pro-Palestinian thugs:

My friend and colleague, Nir Hoftman, MD, a fellow UCLA anesthesiologist who happens to be Jewish, was also attacked by the protestors. He was assaulted for simply describing what he was seeing to a news anchor. Here is Dr. Nir Hoftman speaking to Laura Ingraham of Fox News about how he was knocked to the ground (3:46)

One wonders how the people who occupy the offices of administration at UCLA could have possibly grown up among us. Are they not human? Surely, they had the same education we had regarding the horrific treatment that the Jews have suffered throughout the centuries. Surely they know that it is wrong to rape, torture and kill innocent civilians (Israelis) and burn their babies alive.¹ Certainly, they have to be aware of the Nuremberg Code and the principles of medical ethics. Right? Are they really on the side of defending those who defend the acts of October 7th? Are they really oblivious to the demands of human decency and the Nuremberg Code? Are they really unaware of how barbaric it is to force fellow human beings to undergo medical experimentation or pass religious tests to participate in society?

Am I asking too much here? If we assume that the administrators are able to discern right from wrong, the question becomes, “Then, why don’t they?” Why didn’t the administration recognize pro-terrorist protestors for who they were and the sorts of anti-Semitic policies (eg, blocking Jewish students and professors from campus) they would implement? Why did they give them power to control access to campus? Is it cowardice? Is it a belief in moral relativism? (“There is no Truth. You have your truth, I have my truth.”)

Maybe it’s an inability to actually discern right from wrong. Was I giving them too much credit above when I assumed that they could?

Either way (whether by cowardice or an inability to discern good from evil), such people should never be around the levers of power.

If their argument is that they were afraid to violate the “rights” of the pro-Hamas protestors (ie, too cowardly to enforce the campus rules (and state laws) against violence and use of incendiary/explosive devices on campus)², why were they so fearless and fascistic in demanding that we employees take their unproven and unsafe Covid shots? They had no fear then. And we provided them with the data showing how unsafe those shots were … way back in 2021.

It’s evident to me that UCLA is interested in defending only the rights of those who are on their end of the political spectrum. I can’t say that I’m entirely surprised by their indulgence of the anti-Israel protests. This type of anti-Semitic behavior is a corollary of UCLA’s tolerance to certain racist ideals (BDS, CRT, etc). As an anesthesiologist working at Ronald Reagan Hospital on the UCLA campus since 2006, I noticed this anti-Semitic sentiment arising in the mid-2010’s. There was growing support for the BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanction) movement against Israel. At the time, I could not believe how silent the faculty were; it seemed that nobody stood up against this blatantly racist movement. In fact, in November 2014, the Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC) passed a resolution in favor of divesting from Israel. I was shocked. It felt to me as if we had learned nothing from the Holocaust. This was a watershed moment for UCLA (the USAC had always rejected such resolutions in the past) and gave rise to the boldness of the racism we are seeing on UCLA’s campus today. Indeed, this racism was encouraged by the tepid pushback by Chancellor Block and the rest of the faculty. They did issue a statement against it, as I recall, but the denouncements should have been loud, widely broadcast, and oft-repeated. There should have been candlelight vigils and conferences held on how to fight anti-Semitism.

Back to today: As a result of UCLA’s refusal to protect its Jewish students against anti-Semitic attacks, three Jewish students, Yitzchok Frankel, Joshua Ghayoum, and Eden Shemuelian, sued UCLA for denying them equal access to the campus. The students sought injunctive relief against UCLA.

In response, just a few days ago, federal judge Mark Scarsi, issued UCLA a blistering rebuke. The full order can be read here, but here is a snippet of what he said:

In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. UCLA does not dispute this. Instead, UCLA claims that it has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters. But under constitutional principles, UCLA may not allow services to some students when UCLA knows that other students are excluded on religious grounds, regardless of who engineered the exclusion.

Chancellor Gene Block and the rest of the UCLA administrative staff have a duty to use their armed police force to uphold and protect the civil rights of any person on campus. The fact that they refused to fulfill this duty for their own students, who were paying their salaries, makes it all the more reprehensible.

This story demonstrates a disturbing proclivity by UCLA to not only look the other way when human rights abuses are occurring but—as in our case—actively participate in the conspiracy to deprive said rights.

It appears that legal complaints, lawsuits, and legal injunctions have not been (nor will they be) enough to deter UCLA from its human rights abuses. I posit that the only thing that will actually change their behavior is a large monetary award in a court-of-law. Unfortunately, because they are either inept, cowardly, or lacking in common human morals (or all three), they will only change course when they are forced to open up their big wallet and pay those whom they’ve harmed. Indeed, they need to pay massive damages. And we intend to do that with our lawsuit.

If you’d like to help us with our legal fight against UCLA (and against the whole UC system) that is allowing these abuses to occur, please consider giving a generous donation at www.GiveSendGo.com/NurembergNow.

And, we could use your help in getting the word out about medical freedom, our case, and this new Substack. Send your freedom-loving friends and family here:

1. I’m not arguing that UCLA should have stopped the pro-Hamas protestors. They too have First-Amendment protected rights. But First-Amendment-protected speech is one thing; setting up encampments and racist checkpoints reminiscent of Nazi Germany is another. The UC police should have been there as umpires, making sure each side acted within the bounds of the law. They did not do that.

2. Note that the fireworks are reported to have been used by the pro-Israeli side, but the fact is that UCLA sat on their hands and let things get too far out of hand. There was plenty of evidence of human rights abuses that occurred before the fireworks were used. In my opinion, the persistence of the pro-Hamas protestors and the power that UCLA gave them to control the campus (a power which belonged to—not just all the students but—all Californians) created a perfect stew of hostility and sense of injustice that made the violence inevitable.