California universities are facing intense backlash for handing over employees’ personal contact information to the Trump administration as it investigates allegations of campus antisemitism, amping up tensions over government incursions into higher education.
At Cal State, a faculty union filed suit Friday in state court after learning the personal phone numbers and email addresses of 2,600 Los Angeles campus employees were turned over to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is investigating employee complaints of campus antisemitism. In addition, the EEOC is contacting Jewish faculty across the 22-campus system, prompting campus demonstrations against cooperating with Trump.
At UC Berkeley, protesters recently converged on campus after University of California leaders said they released files from their civil rights office and UC police incident reports containing the names and contact information of 160 faculty and staff to the Education Department, which is also investigating alleged campus antisemitism.
UC-wide faculty senate leaders are demanding to know whether there have been other campus disclosures. UC has not publicly announced similar actions outside of Berkeley — but has not denied the possibility.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has intervened. The governor said he received a report last week from UC leadership on the data release that made a “compelling case” that UC was legally required to share information with the government. Newsom said he was still “reviewing” the report. The governor also said he may similarly scrutinize CSU’s actions.
Federal requests for campus data are not unusual in civil rights or employment discrimination investigations, legal experts say. But what is exceptional is the large-scale nature of the demands. CSU was ordered under subpoena to release employee information. UC says it negotiated over government asks to provide employee data — first offering redacted files — before relenting.
The orders come against the backdrop of President Trump’s aggressive campaign to force higher education institutions to align with his conservative agenda. The administration has suspended billions in research grants and has offered to absolve alleged campus violations in exchange for hefty fines and sweeping policy changes.
Broad size and scope
Legal experts said they were not surprised investigations were taking place, citing campus civil rights complaints over the years and Trump administration declarations that prioritize combating antisemitism.
Brian Soucek, UC Davis law professor, worried the antisemitism investigations — which involve nearly every California public university — are “a witch hunt.”
The EEOC has powers to subpoena relevant information needed “to advance some lawful purpose,” said Soucek, who teaches about equality and free speech law. “The question is whether these [actions] are overly broad.”
Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, said “asking for information about individuals and groups of individuals in the course of an investigation is about as unusual as traffic on the 405. But it is entirely appropriate to mistrust the Trump administration.” Mitchell, whose group represents 1,600 campuses, said schools are “between a proverbial rock and hard place.”
Spokespeople for the Education Department and EEOC did not reply to requests for comment.
UC and CSU’s views
Caught between the government and faculty are campus administrators, some who have expressed distrust of Trump’s civil rights investigations. But they fear that resisting would not only be illegal but could result in devastating funding cuts.
In recent faculty meetings, UC President James B. Milliken has declined to say whether other campuses aside from Berkeley have shared personal information of employees or students. Speaking at a UC-wide academic senate meeting Thursday, Milliken said he understood employee concerns and argued that data sharing was routine across presidential administrations.
He said the university was not handing over lists of faculty names but that broader documents shared with the government contained personnel information.
Milliken said UC is also working to fulfill data sharing requirements under a December 2024 agreement with the Biden administration that has carried over to this year.
That agreement resolved civil rights complaints — over antisemitism and bias against Muslim, Arab and pro-Palestinian students — at the Davis, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz campuses. It required UC to share “an electronic sortable spreadsheet” with details on who reported civil rights complaints and who they were lodged against for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 academic years.
“Failure to comply with government oversight could result in a very significant loss of funding, potentially jeopardizing tens of thousands of jobs, the education of our students, the research careers of thousands of faculty, and the care afforded by our health enterprise,” Milliken recently wrote to campuses.
Administrators at both systems said they tried to resist or minimize government requests and have made strides to protect privacy while complying with the law.
At CSU, officials told the EEOC that the Los Angeles campus would only turn over publicly available data — such as university email addresses. But then the campus was subpoenaed for personal data.
Over the spring, the EEOC also subpoenaed UC for information on hundreds of employees who had signed letters in 2023 and 2024 expressing concern about the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the campus climate for Jewish people, according to faculty contacted by EEOC investigators who they said informed them about the legal order.
The EEOC’s systemwide CSU investigation has not yet involved a subpoena for other Cal State campuses.
Tensions grow
Faculty, staff, students and unions have pushed back, saying university leaders should have rejected government demands, moves many say weaponize antisemitism charges for ideological goals.
“Rather than taking a stance against an authoritarian regime, CSU leadership has chosen to be complicit,” said the California Faculty Association, which represents 29,000 employees.
The union’s suit in state court asks for a judge to order CSU to avoid disclosing union members’ personal information in response to federal subpoenas without giving notice to affected employees and offering a chance for faculty to reject the request.
Peyrin Kao, a pro-Palestinian electrical engineering and computer science lecturer, was among those who UC Berkeley notified that their names were in files given to the government.
“They didn’t tell me why I was reported,” said Kao, who suspects the move was tied complaints in 2023 over an optional lecture he gave against Israel’s war in Gaza and UC’s investments in weapons companies. After the lecture, the university issued him a warning about potential violation of a policy against “political indoctrination.”
“Showing everyone that you can get reported for pro-Palestine speech does have a chilling effect,” Kao said.
Jewish voices
Ryan Witt, president of the CSU Channel Islands chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, agreed. Witt, who is Jewish and organized a recent protest against the investigation and “repressive” CSU free speech policies, felt that antisemitism was not a “major issue” on campus.
Other Jewish community members elsewhere differed.
Referring to Trump’s higher education policies and antisemitism, Cal State Long Beach Jewish Studies professor Jeff Blutinger said he “shouldn’t be required to choose which threat I ignore.”
Blutinger made a report last summer to the commission about a February 2024 an incident where police shut down a guest lecture he presented at San Jose State University after protesters demonstrated in the hallway outside the classroom. He laid blame on the university and police for not protecting his right to speak about Israelis and Palestinians.
But he said the EEOC investigator he spoke to last month told him the probe was not tied to that complaint, which was closed for being too old. Instead, it was about a May 2024 public letter to CSU leaders that Blutinger signed, expressing worry over the “well-being of Jewish and Israeli students, staff, and faculty.”
Another signatory the EEOC contacted last month is Arik Davidyan, an assistant professor of physiology at Sacramento State University. Davidyan said he told the investigator that “our administration has worked a lot with the Jewish community to address our concerns.”
Tackling discrimination
Some leaders at UC and CSU have expressed frustration, saying efforts to combat discrimination and anti-Israel sentiment have gone unnoticed by the government.
At UC, protest rules have been revamped with bans on encampments, masking to hide identity while breaking the law, and student government boycotts of Israel. New training programs on antisemitism are underway.
CSU also revamped protest policies and in the last fiscal year spent nearly $16 million to expand systemwide and campus-level civil rights programs. In the coming months, it is rolling out a new case management system to track discrimination complaints.
“We’re working as hard as we possibly can to address antisemitism and to address any of the protected characteristic discrimination issues that may arise,” said Dawn S. Theodora, the system’s interim executive vice chancellor and general counsel. “We take it very seriously.”
Staff Writer Howard Blume contributed reporting.
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