UCLA Student Court Says No Conflict in Israel Trips
A student-run judicial body at UCLA found that two former student government representatives did not violate conflict-of-interest rules in accepting sponsored trips to Israel.
The Judicial Board for the Undergraduate Students Association ruled Thursday in favor of Sunny Singh and Lauren Rogers, who had taken trips to Israel sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, respectively. The trips came prior to a February vote on a resolution urging the university to divest from corporations that do business in the West Bank.
Pro-Palestinian groups had charged that Singh and Rogers should have abstained from voting on the resolution because their Israel trips constituted a conflict of interest. The divestment resolution failed, 7-5.
The ruling is the latest incident in a series of debates on Israel that have roiled the UCLA campus. Pro-Palestinian groups had urged candidates in the recent student government elections to sign a pledge promising not to take trips to Israel sponsored by the ADL, AIPAC or Hasbara Fellowships.
Singh, who refused to sign the pledge, narrowly lost his bid for student body president to a candidate, Devin Murphy, who did sign the pledge. However, a slate of candidates who refused to sign won a plurality of the council seats.
Noting the sensitivities concerning divestment, the Judicial Board said in its statement announcing the ruling that it was “not to be construed as a position on the issue of divestment.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward A Chicagoan wanted to protest Elon Musk — and put a swastika sticker on a Jewish man’s Tesla
-
Fast Forward NY attorney general orders car wash to stop ripping off Jews with antisemitic ‘Passover special’
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.