SAN JOSE, Calif. — The Trump administration has subpoenaed personal information of hundreds of University of California, Berkeley professors who signed petitions during escalating Israel-Hamas campus protests to bolster its case that college campuses are hotbeds of antisemitism and not worthy of federal funding.

But at least some of them, who said Thursday they were concerned about hatred shown to both Jews and Palestinians during the protests that roiled campuses beginning in October 2023, are reluctant to be used as fall guys to cut federal funding.

“It sends a chill down my spine,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus of infectious diseases who was one of more than 500 University of California professors who signed a petition sent last May to the UC Board of Regents. “I don’t believe that the Trump administration cares that much about antisemitism. They’re just using it as a vehicle to cudgel universities.”

The subpoena, filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, follows similar antisemitism investigations at Stanford, Harvard, the University of Michigan and other colleges. At Columbia University, after the Trump administration canceled $400 million in federal funding and demanded the school be placed under academic receivership, the school agreed to overhaul its protest policies, hire a special security force, redefine antisemitism and appoint a provost over the Middle Eastern studies department. Faculty there called the remarkable concessions “shameful.”

Andrea Lucas, acting chair of the EEOC, which enforces federal civil rights law in workplaces, announced on March 5 an effort “to hold accountable universities and colleges which have created a hostile-work environment for their Jewish employees.”

UC Berkeley is also fighting a lawsuit by two Jewish groups claiming “longstanding, unchecked spread of antisemitism” that escalated during the protests and disrupted a backyard dinner party last April for graduate students thrown by law school Dean Erwin Chemerinsky when a pro-Palestinian protester with a microphone came into the backyard and started making a speech until Chemerinsky stopped her. A caricature of him holding a bloody knife and fork with blood around his lips with the words “No dinner with Zionist Chem while Gaza starves” written on it had already circulated on campus, according to an account posted online by Chemerinsky. An email sent to Chemerinsky wasn’t immediately returned Thursday afternoon.

The same day the EEOC said it was looking into antisemitism at universities, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it was investigating the University of California for a “pattern or practice of discrimination.”

“This Department of Justice will always defend Jewish Americans, protect civil rights, and leverage our resources to eradicate institutional Antisemitism in our nation’s universities,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi.

The question remains how the UC system, or Stanford, will react — with deference to preserve millions in federal funding and grants, or with defiance and likely risk a major blow to their bottom line?

The subpoena came the same week the U.S. Department Department of Justice separately announced it was investigating UC Berkeley and Stanford, along with the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, Irvine, over whether they are violating a Supreme Court decision outlawing race-based affirmative action in college admissions.

“Trump is using his financial leverage as president to try to get people to capitulate to his way of thinking, and I think that would be a disaster,” said Severin Borenstein, professor emeritus at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, one of more than 360 Berkeley professors who signed an open letter condemning the violence in the Middle East and expressing concern for campus safety.

Last week, Borenstein received a letter from the UC Office of the President explaining that the EEOC was investigating the university over possible violations of harassment and discrimination laws and that the university would be turning over the names, personal phone numbers, emails and dates of hire of everyone who signed one of the two letters regarding the Israelis-Hamas protests.

In a statement Thursday, the UC Office of the President said that “the University of California remains committed to protecting the privacy of its community members while complying with its legal obligation in responding to the agency requests.”

Those two letters include the one that Borenstein signed in October 2023 that called for “deep sympathy” for Israelis and Jews and also concern for Gaza. The second, in May 2024, included signatures from 52 Berkeley professors. It called out antisemitism on campuses more acutely, outlining examples of a “hostile and physically threatening climate” for the Jewish community on campuses.

“The primary motivation of the Trump administration is to use antisemitism as a smoke screen to attack universities and to undermine higher education in the United States,” Borenstein said, “because to some extent they think it has a liberal bias, and to some extent they are simply opposed to the creation of new knowledge that they may not agree with. Squelching academic research and discrediting it seems to be one of their goals.”

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