University of California President Michael Drake said the 10-campus system will consistently enforce bans on activist encampments, barriers and masking, moving to head off protest mayhem before the 2024-25 academic year.

The move was made under pressure from the California State Legislature and a federal judge’s order that said the public university system had discriminated against Jewish students and denied them equal educational opportunities.

Mr. Drake defended the university’s history as a free-speech pioneer, saying that the “vast majority” of the protests on the flagship state system’s campuses were peaceful but “some of the activities we saw this past year were not.”

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“Clear communication and consistent application of policies and laws are key to achieving the delicate but essential balance between free speech rights and the need to protect the safety of our community and maintain critical University operations,” Mr. Drake said in a Monday open letter.

He laid out four priorities, starting with enforcing policies “camping or encampments, unauthorized structures, restrictions on free movement, masking to conceal identity, and refusing to reveal one’s identity when asked to do so by University personnel.”

The universities will also develop a framework for consistently enforcing its policies and responding to policy violations; issue a guidance about “campus climate resources and policies,” and launch a UC Campus Climate initiative to assist campuses in improving the school atmosphere.

Mr. Drake did not specifically mention the pro-Palestinian activists who roiled the universities after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, intimidating Jewish students by, for example, blocking off access to sections of the campus with pro-Gaza encampments and calling for an “intifada,” or an uprising against Israel.

“We make every effort to nurture free expression, and we provide countless opportunities and venues for our students, faculty, other academic appointees, and staff to safely and lawfully share their diverse viewpoints and beliefs,” Mr. Drake said in his letter.

The announcement comes with the state legislature withholding $25 million from the UC budget pending a report due Oct. 1 explaining how the system plans to “protect safety and access to educational opportunities and campus spaces and buildings.”

The system is also grappling with a federal judge’s order last week banning students and faculty from accessing any program, facility or area of campus blocked off to Jewish students at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The order could bring campus life at UCLA to a virtual standstill if the pro-Palestinian encampments and barricades that emerged in the spring make a return in the fall quarter.

UCLA spokesperson Mary Osako said the ruling would “hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and meet the needs of the Bruin community,” but the order was cheered by anti-discrimination groups as a precedent for antisemitism lawsuits filed by Jewish students.

“While this decision might only affect UCLA, it should reverberate across the country,” James Pasch, senior director of national litigation at the Anti-Defamation League, told Jewish Insider.

Graeme Blair, a member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UCLA, condemned the president’s policies, blaming the university for its response to an April skirmish between anti-Israel encampment activists and pro-Israel “outside agitators.”

“These policies have one simple goal: stop dissent on campus about UC’s complicity in the war on Gaza,” said Mr. Blair in the Daily Bruin, the UCLA student newspaper.

The UC system’s recommitment to enforcing its protest policies comes with universities nationwide wrestling with how to maintain campus order — and protect Jewish students — without squelching the free-speech rights of pro-Palestinian students and faculty.

Some universities found themselves stuck in the middle last year between congressional Republicans and alumni who blasted them for allowing the protest camps to flourish, and pro-Palestinian groups that condemned them for bringing in police to disband the illegal encampments.

“Our ultimate goal is for all of our community members to feel supported in their ability to express themselves, and to pursue their studies, research, patient care, and other work on our campuses,” Mr. Drake said. “We also want our community members to understand what’s expected of them, including a clear understanding of the principles, policies, and laws that govern our behavior on campus.”