The University of California, Los Angeles, is temporarily suspending its Students for Justice in Palestine and Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine chapters after members harassed Hollywood talent agent and regent Jay Sures and his family while vandalizing his home.
Some 50 masked protesters pounded drums and blocked Sures’s street and driveway in the early morning of Feb. 5, with police responding at 6:15 a.m., according to the SJP groups’ social media posts and police reports. The protesters imprinted red handprints on the outside walls of Sures’s house and plastered fliers on his garage door, Deadline Hollywood reported.
While announcing the chapters’ suspension, UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk said the protesters even surrounded the vehicle of one family member. They also held a sign that read, "Jonathan Sures you will pay, until you see your final day."
L.A. happening now - the "Free Palestine" mob is targeting Jewish UC Regent and UTA Talent Exec Jay Sures at his home, openly threatening him.
This is NOT a protest but rather clear and targeted modern day Nazi intimidation of Jews.
Where are you, @MayorOfLA? pic.twitter.com/jRIQKNpT5r
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) February 5, 2025
Sures is one of the University of California's 18 regents who make up the system’s governing board and has spoken out in defense of Israel. He is also vice president of United Talent Agency of Beverly Hills, a powerful Hollywood broker.
"Rigorous, healthy dialogue is central to everything we do to advance knowledge. What there should never be room for is violence," Frenk wrote in a statement Wednesday. "No one should ever fear for their safety."
The university is "conducting an administrative review, and this suspension will remain in effect during the review," he added. "If these reports prove true as part of this review, disciplinary action may be taken."
UCLA’s SJP chapter posted imagery of the protest to its Instagram story with the caption "fuck jay sures," and "20 likes and we’ll drop [the address]," according to a screenshot captured by Sia Kordestani, the West Coast director of the European Leadership Network.
🚨 Right now, Students for Justice in Palestine UCLA and their off-campus goons are doxxing the home address of Jonathan "Jay" Sures, a UC Regent and United Talent Agency exec.
Why? Because HE'S JEWISH.
They're showing up to his Los Angeles home with death threats. pic.twitter.com/baqNmImDMw
— Sia Kordestani (@SiaKordestani) February 5, 2025
The graduate student group, meanwhile, wrote that on its own Instagram account that Sures "has attempted to intimidate faculty and students who spoke out against the genocide in Gaza, but we refuse to stay silent."
Sures told Deadline that he believes the students targeted him and his family for being Jewish and outspoken about anti-Israel sentiment on campus.
In the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council accused university administrators of stoking "anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian sentiments" by calling the attack "terrorism" and suggested that the assault was justified because of "Zionist militarism."
In response, Sures said the council’s letter was "rife with falsehoods about Israel and seeks to legitimize and defend the horrific savagery of the Hamas massacre of October 7."
"The UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council letter does not come in a vacuum, but at a time when Jewish students across the country, including on all our UC campuses, are experiencing increasing antisemitic threats and intimidation," Sures wrote at the time. "Your blatant and baseless rhetoric feeds into this hostile environment."
Frenk’s suspension order comes less than a month after President Donald Trump was sworn in. His administration has launched several investigations and a task force targeting campus anti-Semitism, and colleges have begun taking a more aggressive stance to combat harassment. The day after Trump’s inauguration, for example, Harvard University resolved a lawsuit with Jewish students by adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism and agreeing to discipline students who target "Zionists."
Before Trump was sworn in, however, UCLA faced accusations that it was allowing anti-Semitism to run rampant. In August, a federal judge slammed the university for standing by as anti-Israel activists prevented Jewish students from accessing portions of campus.
The University of California was also among the universities that was granted toothless settlements by the Biden administration. In December, the Department of Education agreed to settle civil rights complaints that alleged widespread discrimination against Jewish students if the University of California agreed to develop voluntary campus "climate surveys" and take other underwhelming measures.