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LOS ANGELES (CN) — The University of California in Los Angeles was sued by 35 students, faculty members and community members who accuse the university of standing by for hours last year while a mob of counter-demonstrators attacked their encampment on campus in the middle of the night.
The civil rights lawsuit was announced at a press conference on the UCLA campus Thursday morning. The complaint, filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, wasn’t immediately available.
The protesters say the university, three police departments and counter-demonstrators deprived them of their rights to assemble, speak, learn, and organize freely and safely and left many of them with life-altering injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.
On April 28, they claim, UCLA permitted a large counterprotest, purportedly funded by wealthy Angelenos, to take place 30 feet from the encampment. Attacks on the encampment escalated, lasting all night.
“UCLA failed to stop or even condemn the violence, emboldening the perpetrators,” the protesters said in a statement. “UCLA’s message laid blame in large part on protesters, who were in fact victims, and highlighted what it labeled antisemitism against other Jewish students on campus when it was the Palestine activists —including Jews — being harmed.”
The encampment at UCLA was one of many across the U.S., and the world, organized by students who oppose Israel’s ongoing bombing of Gaza. The war was prompted by the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israel that left more than 1,100 people dead.
The protesters argue that the ensuing Israeli invasion of Gaza — in which more than 48,000 Palestinians, including tens of thousands of women and children, have been killed — amounts to genocide, and they seek the University of California to divest from investments they say support Israel and its military.
During the attack on their encampment, the protesters say they were shot at with live fireworks and assaulted with chemical munitions, metal rods, poles and boards. They claim they suffered shattered bones, severed nerves, sexual assaults, large bruises and chemical burns to the face and eyes.
As they were under attack for five hours, the protesters contend that UCLA officials, private security contractors hired by them, campus police, Los Angeles Police Department officers and California Highway Patrol officers all stood by and didn’t interfere to stop the violence.
Representatives of the university didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
UCLA is already facing a lawsuit by Jewish students who say were excluded from parts of the campus by the pro-Palestinian encampment.
Jewish students and faculty elsewhere have said that they are being exposed to a wave of antisemitism as a result of the campus protests and that they are facing harassment and physical violence.
Their grievances have found a sympathetic ear with the new Trump administration, which has set up a task force to combat antisemitism. The Justice Department earlier this week filed a statement of interest in the pending lawsuit by the Jewish students against UCLA.
The federal task force also has announced that the administration would cancel $400 million in federal contracts and grants to Columbia University due to the school’s inaction in response to persistent harassment of Jewish students.
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