Trump Administration Subpoenas UC Faculty Information in Antisemitism Investigation

Updated 9:15 a.m. Thursday

Hundreds of University of California employees could have their personal information turned over to the federal government as part of the Trump administration’s investigation into allegations of antisemitism on college campuses.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces workplace anti-discrimination laws, last week subpoenaed the university system for information about some employees as part of the probe, according to a letter from the UC’s general counsel to affected faculty and staff members.

Severin Borenstein, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, is among those whose information the EEOC is seeking because he signed an open letter to the campus’s administration decrying Hamas’s attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“I was certainly unsettled by the fact that the EEOC was asking for my personal email and personal phone number due to my signing a letter that in no way could be interpreted as supporting violence or undermining the federal government,” Borenstein told KQED.

He said he received a message from the UC president’s office last Thursday informing him that the EEOC had subpoenaed his name, position, personal email and phone number, along with other employment information.

The request applies to all signatories of two open letters. The one Borenstein signed, along with more than 360 professors and lecturers in October 2023, calls for support for Jewish staff and students and also wishes safety for students and faculty with Palestinian family and ties in Gaza. The other, signed by about 500 faculty members, was addressed to the UC regents in May 2024 and alleges that campus antisemitism had put Jewish students and faculty in danger after pro-Palestinian protests spread over Israel’s war on Gaza.

“This notice is to inform you that, because your signature appears on one of these letters, your information on file with the University is being produced to the EEOC in response to this subpoena,” read the message from UC general counsel Charles Robinson to those who signed the letters.

It also said that a member of the EEOC staff could reach out to UC employees “regarding [their] own experiences at the university” as part of its investigation.

Borenstein, who is Jewish, said he was initially puzzled by his inclusion in the subpoena because the letters were “not the sort of thing that so far the Trump administration has been targeting.”

“One possibility is they are actually looking for allies within the academic community, and the people who signed this letter might be allies to whatever policies they expect to put into place in punishing the University of California,” he told KQED. “The other possibility was that even expressing any sympathy towards the people of Gaza would potentially bring down the wrath of the Trump administration.”

The UC Office of the President said in a statement that it “remains committed to protecting the privacy of its community members, while complying with its legal obligation in responding to the agency requests.” The EEOC did not respond to requests for comment.

The subpoena follows investigations that the Trump administration has launched into alleged antisemitism at Columbia and Harvard universities, both of which have affected federal funding at the schools.

In a letter to its members this week, a UC faculty association said those cases have set a clear precedent “that the Trump administration is using these investigations as pretext to make multimillion dollar cuts to research funding in higher education.”

Even after complying with the administration’s demands, neither Columbia nor Harvard has had its funding restored, UC-AFT Local 1474 President Katie Rodger wrote in the message, which demanded that the UC system protect employees’ privacy and decline to respond to the subpoena.

A federal antisemitism task force this week launched a review of more than $255 million in contracts and grants between Harvard, its partners and the government.

The same task force in March canceled $400 million in research funding from federal sources to Columbia. In response, the university agreed to make changes to its student disciplinary process, put limitations on protests and stepped up oversight of its Middle Eastern studies program, among other changes.

“I think it’s pretty clear that the Trump administration is using antisemitism as a smoke screen to go after academic institutions for what they think is a liberal bias and possibly just to suppress intellectual learning,” Borenstein said. “I believe that the general antagonism towards universities and the cutting off of grants on completely non-political subjects and research that very much benefits people of all political persuasion has nothing to do with antisemitism.”

Borenstein said that although the war in the Middle East has spurred heated and contentious debate on college campuses, “the role of a university is to allow open debate,” even when it’s uncomfortable.

“This has very little, if anything, to do with the Trump administration’s focus on universities,” he said of the investigations. “I think that’s made clear by the broad brush punishment that they are suggesting towards entire universities and organizations that have no political implication whatsoever.”