JTA — The University of California, Berkeley said bans on Zionists “can violate university rules” and the bylaws of any student groups barring their inclusion must be rescinded, as part of a new settlement agreement in an antisemitism lawsuit.

The university further agreed to pay $1 million to the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a legal group that sued the school on behalf of Jewish students. The Brandeis Center shared the agreement on Thursday.

The university’s official new policy, the agreement reads, would be that “bans on Zionists have historically been used by some individuals and institutions as a pretext for excluding Jews and that such pretextual, exclusionary bans can violate university rules.” It was similar to a policy enacted at New York University in 2024 that also said “Zionist” could function as a “code word” that could lead to violations of the school’s harassment policies.

“This is, I think, a major milestone,” Paul Eckles, senior litigation counsel at the Brandeis Center, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Eckles said a major goal of the group was “a recognition that anti-Zionism can, and really was, being used as a pretext for discrimination against Jews.”

The Berkeley case concerns incidents that date back to 2022: of law school student groups........

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