The Anti-Defamation League, Jewish on Campus, StandWithUs and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed complaints earlier this month with the U.S. Department of Education alleging that three California schools—Scripps College, Etiwanda Intermediate School and California State Polytechnic, Humboldt—violated the civil rights of Jews and Israelis.
Students at the schools, who are parties to the complaints, and a former student at one of the schools told JNS they felt vulnerable and neglected as Jews on campus.
“When you’re at a place like Scripps, you’re completely alone,” Dahlia Levy, a junior studying psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, told JNS. Levy, who transferred out of Scripps in December 2023, did so “because I was completely outnumbered and couldn’t make a difference,” she said.
Jew-hatred proliferated at Scripps well before Oct. 7, and Israel was such a “taboo” subject on campus that students eschewed wearing things that suggested connections with the Jewish state, according to Levy. The anti-Zionist groups Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace were active on campus, she added.
After Oct. 7, Levy told JNS that she cried for an hour in meetings with the Scripps administration during which she asked that the school’s staff “make sure Jews could be safe.” She told JNS that she was told that the private college could do nothing for fear of violating free speech. (JNS sought comment from Scripps.)
Scripps is so small that one can “walk from one end to the other in about five minutes,” Levy told JNS. That meant that when students held anti-Israel protests in the center of campus, which was between her dorm and the dining hall, “I couldn’t leave my building,” she said.
When Levy and fellow students hung some 400 posters of hostages, whom Hamas held in the Gaza Strip, on neighboring Pomona College, they met hostility from anti-Israel students, despite having run their two-hour gathering by the college for approval. (Scripps and Pomona are both part of the Claremont Colleges consortium.)
For the entire duration of the event, the pro-Israel students were followed and harassed. When the event concluded, anti-Israel protesters encircled the Jewish students and screamed at them, according to Levy. (JNS reviewed an audio recording that confirmed such harassment.)
She added that the Jewish students reported the incident to Pomona even though the harassment took place in clear view of security cameras. “No one did anything about it,” she said. (JNS sought comment from Pomona.)
“At the Claremont Colleges, the most devastating thing about being there was how completely alone we were,” Levy told JNS. “Every single branch of every single institution there didn’t care about us. We just didn’t matter.”
‘Particularly egregious’
Zachary Mink, a senior at Cal Poly, attends classes online at the public school, rather than going in person, due to what he told JNS was antisemitic cyberbullying, harassment and assault.
Antisemitic students called Mink a “baby killer,” threw red paint at him and drew a circle around a table, at which he sat, and labeled it “Zio-corner,” he told JNS. He said that Cal Poly administrators, who observed the harassment, “refused to call the police” and that he reported the harassment to the school’s administration four times.
“This complaint isn’t just about my entire experience,” he said. “This is just what fits into the statute of limitations.” (The U.S. Education Department considers complaints within 180 days of the alleged incident, though they may extend the statute further if there are continuous incidents)
Administrators and the chief of the school’s police force told him in private that they feared for their safety, Mink told JNS. (JNS sought comment from the Cal Poly police force.)
“Cal Poly Humboldt is reviewing the federal complaint and will, of course, fully cooperate with the Office of Civil Rights in any investigation,” the school told JNS.
“Hatred or discrimination in any form, including antisemitism, is contrary to our core values,” it said. “The university unequivocally condemns all acts of hatred, bigotry and violence, and we are committed to keeping safe our students, staff and faculty of all religions.”
Denise Katz-Prober, director of legal initiatives at the Brandeis Center, told JNS that Mink’s experience is “very serious” and that “the response of the school is particularly egregious.”
“Not only did they not respond to the students that they were being addressed and make the hostile climate better, they actually told the students in more than one situation to hide their Jewish identity or leave a public place where they were being harassed,” Katz-Prober said. “This is not only a dereliction of the law but also morally reprehensible.”
Yuval Loewenberg, a freshman at Cal Poly, told JNS that he experienced Jew-hatred over Sukkot—about a year after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attacks—at the school. On Oct. 9, 2023, anti-Israel protesters vandalized the school’s sukkah and wrote “free Palestine” and directed expletives at the Jewish state. In October 2024, anti-Israel protesters wrote antisemitic messages, including comparing the Israeli military to the Ku Klux Klan, on the Cal Poly sukkah.
Protesters also cornered Jewish students and yelled at them, he said. “The mindset that that feeling puts you in makes you feel surrounded,” he said. “Even though I was with other students, I felt alone.”
Members of the school administration, who were nearby, did not respond, which made Loewenberg feel that they wouldn’t protect him, he told JNS. He added that he heard a school administrator say in a meeting that Cal Poly would “wait for something to happen” before taking action.
“It shouldn’t have to turn violent for the administration to step in,” he told JNS.
Antisemitic chants at Scripps College in Claremont, Calif. Credit: Courtesy of Dahlia Levy.
‘Most heartbreaking’
A current student at Scripps College, who declined to be named, told JNS that the silence of the school’s administration, coupled with its failure to protect her from harassment and to make a direct statement denouncing Jew-hatred, “has been the most heartbreaking experience of all.”
“I’ve been told that attending Jewish cultural events is immoral and that I should not proudly wear my Star of David necklace,” the student said. “I have even been told that wearing a ‘bring them home now’ dog tag, calling on Israel’s government to bring the hostages in Gaza home, is wrong.”
“I never knew that pleading for humans to hug their families again could be twisted as controversial,” the student said.
The parents of the 12-year-old girl in the complaint about Etiwanda Intermediate School—which alleges that the student was physically assaulted, including being choked repeatedly, for being Jewish—told JNS that “being Jewish has always been a strong part of our family identity.” (The parents declined to be named.)
“We have been open and honest with our children about antisemitism, but the reality of it is shocking when it happens to your child, especially in an environment that is supposed to be safe and protective,” the parents said. “The impact and pain is intensified by the failures of the school district to be transparent, accountable and responsive.”
The parents said that they “are speaking up to help our daughter and our family heal.”
“We want true action and accountability by the school district to have these issues acknowledged and addressed,” they said. “Our daughter, and all other students, should not have to worry about enduring hate in any form.”