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Outrage flared last week about the University of California’s capitulation to this era’s resurgent McCarthyism, as news spread that the university has provided the names of at least 160 students, faculty members, and staff at the University of California, Berkeley, to federal officials who — under the guise of investigating “alleged antisemitic incidents” — are scrutinizing people who have expressed opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Judith Butler, a UC Berkeley philosophy professor and Jewish critic of the Israeli government, said in a recent interview with Democracy Now!, “There is no good evidence that antisemitism is rampant on campus,” adding, “To take a position against genocide is certainly not an antisemitic thing to do. Most Jews are against genocide, and we were taught to be against genocide, and we were taught, as well, that ‘never again’ is a slogan that should apply to all people.” Butler noted that most of those whose names were reported to the administration had not been apprised of the allegations against them.

A Truthout analysis of a voluntary agreement signed by the University of California and the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights nine months ago reveals that more such disclosures from other schools may be yet to come. In December 2024, after the election of Donald Trump but under the auspices of the outgoing Biden administration, the University of California promised to also hand over names of people who either reported or were the subject of allegations of discrimination at five other University of California campuses — UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, UC Davis, and UC Santa Cruz.

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The 12-page agreement says that by September 30, 2025, the University of California will give the Office for Civil Rights a spreadsheet or other file of “responses by the University or the individual University campuses to all complaints and reports alleging discrimination, including harassment and disparate treatment, on the basis of actual or perceived national origin, including shared Jewish, Palestinian, Muslim, and/or Arab ancestry, or association with these national origins/ancestries, during the preceding academic year.” Although the agreement covers alleged discrimination against non-Jewish individuals as well, repression on campuses across the country has focused primarily on allegations of “antisemitism.”

The agreement requires the spreadsheet to include a broad range of information, including the names and positions of both the people who made the complaint and........

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