This post was updated March 10 at 6:51 p.m.

UCLA will implement a new Initiative to Combat Antisemitism, Chancellor Julio Frenk announced in a Monday email to UCLA community members and parents.

As part of the initiative, the university will improve the complaint system and increase training and education about antisemitism, per recommendations from the UCLA Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias, Frenk said in the email. The initiative’s action group will be led by Stuart Gabriel, a distinguished professor of finance at the Anderson School of Management and the task force’s chair.

The initiative will incorporate on-campus perspectives, as well as those from external leaders, Frenk said in the email. Jeffrey Abrams, the Anti-Defamation League’s Los Angeles regional director, said the ADL – which, according to its website, supports a “secure, Jewish and democratic State of Israel” – has expressed its desire to offer assistance for the initiative.

“Building on past efforts and lessons, we must now push ourselves to extinguish antisemitism, completely and definitively,” Frenk said in the email. “The principles on which UCLA was founded — and which we continue to advance — point us toward a clear course of action: We must persevere in our fight to end hate, however it manifests itself.”

Multiple students and employees previously alleged that UC schools, including UCLA, violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – which prevents institutions that receive federal funding from discriminating on the basis of race, color, national origin or perceived national origin – during protests over the Israel-Hamas war. Complainants claimed that the universities failed to act on reported discrimination against students of Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian, Muslim and Arab ancestry.

[Related: UC reaches agreement with Education Department over Title VI investigations]

The announcement also comes after the Trump administration announced earlier this month it would revoke federal funding from universities that permit “illegal” protests, and that the United States Department of Justice would be sending a task force to investigate antisemitism claims at UCLA. The administration has already canceled $400 million in funding for Columbia University “due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”

Columbia, like UCLA and several other university campuses across the country, was the site of a pro-Palestine encampment in the spring. 

Abrams added that the ADL is in support of action being taken both by the federal government and Frenk.

“Dr. Frenk, since he’s become chancellor at UCLA, has on several occasions made it very clear that antisemitism not only needs to be eradicated to protect the Jewish students on campus – but it needs to be eradicated to create the appropriate learning environment for all communities on campus,” he said. “We’re very pleased to see (him) sending a very clear message that once again, UCLA must become safe for the entire Bruin community.”

[Related: UCLA community organizes encampment in response to national call for escalation]

Dan Gold, the executive director of Hillel at UCLA – which hosts groups including Bruins for Israel – said in a written statement that the organization looks forward to working with the UCLA administration and Gabriel on the initiative, as he believes it constitutes a positive step in Hillel’s advocacy for Jewish Bruins. 

“Everyone deserves the right to learn, teach, work and live in a community that is free from discrimination and bigotry,” Frenk said in the email. “With honest reflection, it is clear that while we have made progress in addressing antisemitism, we have more to do in our shared goal of eradicating it in its entirety.”