The University of California’s proposed ethnic studies admissions requirement—known as the Area H proposal—has sparked widespread concern, and rightly so. At the center of the controversy is a faculty-driven effort to use the requirement as a backdoor for introducing into every California high school an ethnic studies curriculum likely to incite virulent antisemitism. This effort reflects a serious breakdown in faculty governance and raises urgent questions about the university’s ability to uphold educational standards and protect students. This week, the UC Faculty Assembly will vote on whether to adopt the proposal—a decision that will either further erode the integrity of shared governance or take a necessary step toward restoring it.
For nearly a century, UC’s admissions framework has remained remarkably stable, focused on core academic subjects: English, math, science, history, foreign language, and college-preparatory electives. If adopted, Area H would mark only the second addition to the A–G requirements since the 1930s, following the inclusion of Visual and Performing Arts in 1994.
But the version of ethnic studies being advanced by the UC faculty responsible for drafting Area H is not broad or inclusive. It promotes a narrow ideological framework that casts Jews as “privileged” oppressors and portrays Zionism—a movement central to the identity of most Jews—as inherently evil. Leading proponents of Area H have declared anti-Zionism a foundational principle of ethnic studies, condemned UC administrators for labeling Hamas’s October 7 massacre as terrorism, and demanded the retraction of statements mourning Israeli victims.
These same faculty leaders—who co-chaired the UC working group that drafted the Area H course criteria and co-founded the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council—have long championed academic boycotts of Israel and worked to normalize anti-Zionist rhetoric in classrooms and curriculum frameworks across the state. Their efforts echo previous attempts to insert similar ideology into California’s high school ethnic studies curriculum—proposals that were widely condemned by Jewish organizations, civil rights advocates, and elected officials as discriminatory, dangerous, and exclusionary.
That same agenda has now found a new pathway through UC’s internal decision-making process. The Area H proposal is the Trojan horse, and shared governance is the gate it’s passed through.
Shared governance is a defining feature of the UC system, granting faculty significant authority over core academic matters, including admissions criteria. It is built on the premise that decisions about curriculum and standards should be shaped by academic expertise and insulated from political pressure. But shared governance also relies on trust—on the assumption that faculty will wield their authority responsibly, and in service of students and scholarship.
The Area H proposal has tested that trust.
When the proposal was first introduced—via a UC Berkeley student petition to the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) in October 2020—it lacked academic justification and offered no clear educational rationale. Given BOARS’s charge to uphold academic standards and ensure students are prepared for UC admission, the proposal should have been summarily rejected. Instead, BOARS voted unanimously to approve it. That vote launched a years-long campaign by activist faculty to institutionalize their vision of “liberated” ethnic studies—an extreme version of the discipline that elevates anti-Zionism and BDS promotion as central tenets—using the language and mechanisms of shared governance to shield the process from scrutiny.
Since then, the proposal has faced mounting criticism from faculty, Academic Senate committees, and even from within BOARS itself. In November 2023, BOARS reversed course and voted to reject the Area H proposal—an outcome that should have closed the door on the proposal for good. Instead, the Academic Senate Chair overrode BOARS’s decision and pushed the proposal forward, triggering a systemwide review.
That review generated 79 pages of feedback from dozens of Senate committees—most of it critical—highlighting the proposal’s fatal flaws, including its lack of academic rigor, its ideological bias, and the unfair burden it would impose on school districts across the state.
Yet rather than abandon the proposal, Senate leaders continued to press ahead. When it became clear during the December 2024 UC Assembly meeting that the proposal lacked the support to pass, activist faculty moved to table the vote until April 2025.
Meanwhile, the rationale behind Area H has continued to unravel. Supporters initially claimed it would align with AB 101, the 2021 state law mandating high school ethnic studies. But that law has not taken effect. According to UC’s State Governmental Relations and the State Board of Education, it remains unfunded and inoperative—no implementation funding has been appropriated. Even the UC Faculty Assembly’s own April 2025 agenda acknowledges this.
In other words, Area H is no longer supporting a mandate; it is attempting to create one—through UC’s internal governance process.
This week, the UC Faculty Assembly still has the chance to reject the Area H proposal and reaffirm its commitment to academic integrity, fairness, and inclusion. But if it passes, the consequences won’t stop at UC. Every high school classroom forced to adopt this requirement will carry the weight of a decision driven not by academic merit, but by a politicized ideology—one that has already shown hostility toward Jewish students and disregard for the values a university should uphold. And if that happens, we’ll be left asking: Who is shared governance really serving?
Rossman-Benjamin serves as executive director of AMCHA Initiative, a non-profit antisemitism watchdog, and was a University of California faculty member for twenty years.
