SACRAMENTO, California — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday signed legislation that will require public universities in California to update their codes of conduct and train students on how to protest with civility, a response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations that erupted across the state last spring.
Universities will also have to add mandatory antidiscrimination training for students under the laws, which were introduced by Jewish lawmakers with the aim of counteracting antisemitic harassment that has reportedly spiked on college campuses since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel last year.
Both parties in the state Legislature broadly supported the proposals, despite opposition from pro-Palestinian activists and the ACLU. And Newsom endorsed updating university codes of conduct even before the bill was on his desk. The Democratic governor traveled to Israel soon after the attacks and released a plan targeting antisemitism in April as university protests were peaking.
“We know that tensions are high following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas,” state Sen. Steve Glazer, author of the codes of conduct bill, told reporters earlier this year. “Even in these difficult circumstances, all students should be able to freely express themselves without threat or intimidation, especially on college campuses.”
Protests have not yet exploded on California campuses the way they did last spring. And public university leaders have promised not to tolerate pro-Palestinian encampments that were raised up on several California campuses last year.
Much of the last academic year was marked by turmoil over the war. Jewish students at Berkeley had to be evacuated from an event as counter protesters forced open a door at the venue. Cal Poly Humboldt demonstrators occupied an administrative building for days. And counter protesters, some of them still unidentified, viciously beat occupants of a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California Los Angeles.
The Legislature’s Jewish Caucus members, all Democrats, were frustrated by the responses of university leaders — and responded with legislation. At first, they sought more sweeping changes, including a ban on calls for genocide, but that provision and others that tested free speech rights were removed.
The state’s public universities haven’t fought the changes, and some campuses have already begun steps such as code of conduct updates.
Yet the ACLU contested some of the proposals, arguing in one letter to lawmakers that the codes of conduct change would be duplicative and “only serves to chill the speech of students.” Also opposed were the United Auto Workers 4811, a campus workers union at the UC that went on strike last spring in protest of the system’s response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations. That work stoppage caused some Jewish lawmakers to reject legislation that would have provided unemployment benefits to striking workers.
In addition to this round of legislation, Newsom also signed a bill meant to prevent “hate littering” — the distribution of flyers and other materials on private property that threaten or harass people based on their identity.