“Everyone told me Berkeley had our backs”
For years, the University of California system has presented itself as a place that would protect vulnerable students from hostile government action. In September 2017, the University of California became the first university system to sue the Trump administration after it tried to end DACA, calling the attempted repeal “unconstitutional, unjust, and unlawful” and arguing that Dreamers were being targeted “based on nothing more than unreasoned executive whim.” Then–UC President Janet Napolitano said UC had to “stand up for these vital members of the UC community.”
Over the next several years, that posture hardened into policy. UC’s “Statement of Principles in Support of Undocumented Members of the UC Community” (most recently reaffirmed on January 22, 2025) makes a series of sweeping commitments, including: “The University is committed to creating an environment in which all admitted students can successfully matriculate and graduate.” It also takes specific positions on information sharing: “We will not release immigration status or related information in confidential student records, without permission from a student… to federal agencies or other parties without a judicial warrant, a subpoena, a court order or as otherwise required by law.”
UC Berkeley leadership echoed this language. Former Chancellor Carol Christ told the campus in June 2019, “We remain steadfast in welcoming, supporting, and building community with our undocumented students and staff,” and described Berkeley as “a welcoming, supportive, and inclusive space.” Berkeley also brands itself as “the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement,” a campus that defends speech and academic freedom even when politically unpopular.
Taken together, this language and litigation built an image of UC Berkeley as a sanctuary—not just for undocumented students, but for anyone who wished to exercise their right to speak and organize. The implicit message to students was: you can speak, you can organize, you can be here, and we will fight for you. That message created a baseline of trust on campus, one that students and faculty internalized.
“When I got here as a first-year, everyone told me Berkeley had our backs,” said A.M., a third-year sociology major and first-gen student whose parents are undocumented. “You don’t give names to the feds. That was the understanding. I thought, worst case, the university would stand between us and any other organization that could limit our rights rather than hand us over.”
Betrayal: the unkindest cut of all
That baseline is what makes what happened next feel, to many, like a betrayal.
In late August, UC Berkeley turned over the names of roughly 160 students, faculty, and staff to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in response to a federal investigation into alleged antisemitism and discrimination on campus. According to UC Berkeley and the UC Office of the President, this disclosure was made under direction from UC system lawyers. The Office of General Counsel instructed Berkeley to comply with OCR’s demand for unredacted documents after the Trump administration insisted that names in those documents not be redacted. UC says this was part of its “legal obligations to cooperate with the agency.”
The effect was immediate. Federal investigators now have the names of 160 Berkeley community members allegedly linked to complaints of antisemitism. Many of those people had never been formally accused of wrongdoing, and in some cases the underlying complaints were never adjudicated. On September 4, 2025, Berkeley sent notices to those whose names were included, telling them their information had already been turned over.
Backlash was swift, not only from outside organizations, but also from inside UC Berkeley. Judith Butler, a prominent Berkeley scholar, compared the handover to “a well-known practice from the McCarthy era,” and warned that the consequences could be “really terrible for a lot of people’s lives,” especially noncitizen students who could face deportation, surveillance, or loss of status.
UC is adamant that it had no real choice. The Office of the President has repeatedly said that federal law “requires UC to comply with oversight requests” from agencies like OCR and that “privacy or confidentiality cannot be used as a basis to withhold records.” UC maintains that refusing to turn over unredacted information could risk enforcement actions including loss of federal research money, student aid, and health system funding. The university says it tries to anonymize data first, but here the Trump administration explicitly demanded unredacted names and threatened consequences if UC did not comply. UC’s position is that it “will continue to meet its legal obligations while exploring all legal avenues to safeguard the privacy and trust of our community members.”
Berkeley is arguing that it didn’t “choose to comply” so much as it was compelled under threat. For many on campus, though, that distinction offers little comfort. The institution that once promised to “stand between” vulnerable students and hostile government action had, in their eyes, delivered them to federal scrutiny.
A broad chilling of speech, assembly, association, and teaching
The reaction on campus has been immediate and visceral. Undocumented and otherwise vulnerable student populations now fear deportation or attacks on their status. Even before this disclosure, immigration crackdowns in Trump’s second term had pushed international students to avoid “free speech areas,” scrub social media, halt political organizing, and stay away from protest spaces because they feared being flagged and deported.
Those fears are now translating into daily choices. “I’m from Turkey on an F-1 visa. I went to one Gaza vigil last fall,” said L.S., a second-year electrical engineering and computer science student. “I didn’t chant anything. I held a sign that just said ‘ceasefire now.’ After the emails about the 160 names, I deleted every post I ever made about Palestine. I unfollowed half my friends. I don’t go to rallies anymore because I don’t know if showing up means I get put on some watch list.”
Fear of consequences is not limited to students with vulnerable immigration status; it is reshaping the classroom, too. In October 2025 court filings, UC Berkeley law professor Christopher Kutz said he has ended class recordings and steered away from “disfavored subjects” like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to protect students from retaliation. He described “a distinct change in the atmosphere on campus,” where faculty fear that stepping out of line could trigger punishment a broad chilling effect that narrows debate and deepens mistrust.
“I’ve always been loud. I’m Palestinian-American. I lead teach-ins,” said R.K., a fourth-year ethnic studies / public policy double major born in the Bay Area. “Now? I’m telling my first-years not to put their real names on flyers. That’s the change. We used to think admin would shield us. Now we assume admin is building evidence files.”
How can UC still claim to be a Sanctuary?
Against that backdrop, students are asking whether UC can still claim to be a “sanctuary” institution if, when pressured, it hands over unredacted records identifying its own community members to a hostile federal agency. “If you tell us ‘We will not release your information without a warrant’ and then you release our names to federal investigators who are openly threatening to deport people, I don’t know what to call that except betrayal,” said J.T., a second-year transfer in Legal Studies who works with undocumented student advocacy. “I’m not even undocumented and I don’t feel safe going to the Undocumented Student Program anymore, because I don’t trust that those notes stay in Berkeley and not in D.C.”
That erosion of trust is already shaping behavior. Students describe hesitating to access campus services, skipping meetings with administrators, and moving organizing conversations off campus email and onto encrypted apps. Faculty describe toning down classroom discussion of Palestine/Israel, or adding “disclaimers” before lecture material on colonialism and occupation.
The disclosure didn’t just trigger a bad news cycle; it reset the campus’s “social contract.” Students who previously relied on university assurances now act on the assumption that their names and associations can surface in federal files. Public speech gives way to self-censorship, organizing migrates from campus channels to encrypted ones, and reliance on student services declines. In classrooms, instructors narrow discussion and reduce record-keeping to limit risk, trading openness for defensibility. If unaddressed, that shift will compound over time, leaving participation thinner and more unequal and encouraging faculty to design courses around reputational and legal risk rather than intellectual ambition. Because institutions remember precedents, a single disclosure becomes a governance template. When the next request arrives, caution will be the default on both sides. Reversing that trajectory will require visible, procedural guarantees that make future promises credible not as rhetoric, but as repeatable practice.