In a landmark ruling last Friday, a federal judge indefinitely barred the Trump administration from fining or cutting funds to the University of California system over the government’s bogus claims of antisemitism and discrimination.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin was unequivocal that the Trump administration, which has demanded over a $1.2 billion settlement from the UC system and already cut over $600 million in federal funding, was “engaged in a concerted campaign to purge ‘woke,’ ‘left,’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities.”

The “playbook,” she said, had been repeated by Trump nationwide, “with the goal of bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune.”

The decision, a preliminary injunction, is a win for speech on campus and academic freedom — and a rebuke to the vile weaponization of antisemitism claims to silence dissent.

There are lessons to be learned from this victory — and from the absence of UC leadership in it.

The case was brought not by administrators, but by workers and students in the UC system, one of the most prestigious public university networks in the country. A coalition of faculty, staff, and student groups and unions from UC schools sued the administration for violating their First Amendment rights to free speech and Fifth Amendment rights to due process.

Not only did the University of California leadership have nothing to do with the case, but the school system leaders remain so cravenly wedded to capitulation that they’re still in settlement discussions with the administration.

There are lessons to be learned from this victory — and from the absence of UC leadership in it.

We know who we need to support: Over the last two years, the struggle to keep universities and colleges alive as sites of intellectual interrogation and learning have been fought by faculty,

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