Tessa Veksler says the university failed to protect her during months of threats and harassment.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The Jewish former student body president at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), filed a lawsuit against her alma mater last week, alleging it failed to protect her from months of antisemitic harassment following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.

According to the complaint, Tessa Veksler endured harassment “on a daily basis” for seven months after publicly condemning the massacre that sparked the war in Gaza and expressing support for Israel.

She said she was accused of supporting “genocide,” having dual loyalties and being funded by a foreign government – meaning Israel – to “line her pockets for clout.”

The suit describes a barrage of threatening messages and vandalism on campus, including graffiti sprayed on the building where she worked as student body president reading, “You can run but you can’t hide, Tessa Veksler.”

Pictures of her were slashed on campus and signs were hung in the building where her office was located calling her a “racist Zionist” and demanding her resignation.

Veksler alleges that repeated requests for protection went unanswered, even after she told administrators she felt physically unsafe.

“UCSB refused to assist Tessa in protecting herself from these ongoing attacks and harassment, choosing instead to leave her to face the antisemitic mob alone — and increasingly vulnerable — for months on end,” the court papers charged.

In a separate lawsuit filed in December 2025, Veksler alleged that the school not only “did nothing” to deal with the antisemitism targeting her on campus “despite its elaborate anti-discrimination policy,” but that a UCSB staffer even joined her attackers.

The complaint said that as she was meeting with masked anti-Israel protesters in February 2024 to try to reach some kind of understanding, “the defendant joined the meeting and began … purposefully inciting the crowd’s antisemitic animus toward Tessa.”

Veksler first initiated legal action in May 2024, when the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed a Title VI civil rights complaint on her behalf, alleging discrimination based on the university’s failure to respond adequately to the harassment.

That December, the University of California system reached an agreement with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to resolve nine Title VI investigations across multiple schools, including Veksler’s.

The agreement requires enhanced training for staff handling discrimination complaints and detailed reporting to federal authorities, including the supportive measures offered to the complainant, corrective actions taken, and steps initiated to prevent such cases from recurring.

Veksler made history as UCSB’s first Sabbath-observant student body president when she was elected in April 2023.

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Dozens of messages, written on placards, said, ‘resistance is justified,’ and ‘get these Zionists out of office.’

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB) has issued a statement condemning the antisemitic harassment of its Jewish student body president, Tessa Veksler, while reports emerged on social media that a school official who engaged in antisemitic conduct in the building where Veksler was harassed has been terminated.

“The campus was distressed to learn of incidents over the weekend that included offensive social media message and signage on one of our buildings,” a university spokesperson told The Algemeiner in a statement.

“The signage has been removed and campus is conducting a bias incident review based on potential discrimination related to protected categories that include religion, citizenship, and or ethnic origin.”

The spokesperson added, “The posting of such messages is a violation of our principles of community and inclusion.”

As The Algemeiner previously reported, UCSB Student Association president Tessa Veksler discovered in the school’s multicultural center over a dozen messages, written on placards, which said, “resistance is justified,” “you can run but you can’t hide Tessa Veksler,” and “get these Zionists out of office.”

In marker, someone else graffitied “Zionist not allowed” on the door, just inches away from a mezuzah.

Tessa Veksler is a fourth year political science major who was elected in April 2023 as president of UCSB Associated Students (AS), making history by becoming the school’s first ever Shabbat observant student body president.

At the time, she told The Algemeiner that becoming president was always a “far-distant” goal of hers.

On Wednesday, StopAntisemitism, an antisemitism watchdog, reported that Micky Brown, a multicultural center employee who once used the center’s social media account to say that Jews should “go back to Poland,” is no longer employed by the university.

Additionally, “all near feature events” the multicultural center planned to hold this semester are canceled, StopAntisemitism added.

The harassment to which Tessa Veksler was subjected prompted reactions across social media. Jewish community leaders, as well as her friends, denounced the conduct and noted that it is representative of the experiences of Jewish college students throughout the country.

“No one deserves this kind of harassment and hate. When will California leaders address the antisemitic rot sweeping their public universities?” Jacob Baime, executive director of Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) told The Algemeiner in a statement.

US colleges and universities have experienced an alarming spike in antisemitic incidents — including demonstrations calling for Israel’s destruction and the intimidation and harassment of Jewish students — since Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

Between Oct. 7 and Dec. 18, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recorded 470 antisemitic incidents on college campuses alone.

In its statement, University of California-Santa Barbara said it is “committed to thoroughly reviewing and addressing all reported bias incidents.”

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