Berkley, CA. — The U.S. Department of Education has opened a focused review of the University of California, Berkeley after a Turning Point USA event on November 10, 2025, erupted into a violent protest on campus. The review, led by the Department’s Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA), will determine whether the university violated the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act, a federal law that requires colleges receiving federal student aid to maintain and disclose accurate campus crime information and ensure appropriate safety procedures.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said the Department is concerned that UC Berkeley failed to prevent the event from becoming unsafe. “Just two months after Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was brutally assassinated on a college campus, UC Berkeley allowed a protest of a Turning Point USA event on its grounds to turn unruly and violent, jeopardizing the safety of its students and staff,” McMahon said. She emphasized that the review is focused on compliance with campus safety and crime-reporting requirements, not on restricting peaceful protest.
The Department noted Berkeley’s prior history of Clery Act violations. In 2020, the university paid a $2.4 million fine under a settlement for misclassifying more than 1,100 crimes and failing to maintain adequate public crime logs. As part of that agreement, UC Berkeley committed to retraining staff, revising safety policies, and submitting updated crime statistics; the Department continues to monitor its compliance through periodic site visits.
The new review will examine the November 10 incident as well as ongoing compliance issues. FSA has given UC Berkeley 30 days to provide extensive documentation, including its 2025 Annual Security Report, crime and arrest “audit trails” from 2022–2024, daily crime logs, police dispatch records, emergency notification procedures, post-event assessments, agreements with local law enforcement, and information on contracted security.
Under the Clery Act, institutions must publish an Annual Security Report each year and promptly issue timely warnings or emergency notifications when safety threats arise. FSA enforces the law and may conduct targeted investigations or broad program reviews; violations can result in financial penalties and mandated policy changes.
The Department stated that the ongoing review aims to determine whether federal student aid recipients are meeting their legal responsibilities to protect campus communities.
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