Seattle Mayor-elect Katie Wilson has tapped former University of Washington (UW) President Ana Mari Cauce for her transition team, raising alarms among Jewish students and pro-Israel advocates who say Cauce presided over years of antisemitic harassment and campus chaos.
In a press release announcing a 60-member transition team, Wilson named Cauce, “President Emeritus, University of Washington,” as a member of her Civic Narrative & Major Initiatives working group, a body meant to define the city’s overarching story and flagship projects.
NEW: Socialist Seattle Mayor-elect Katie Wilson has appointed former @UW president Ana Marie Cauce to her transition team
Cauce allowed rampant antisemitism and a violent Hamas encampment on campus & caved to the demands of the activists
She is going to be a policy advisor https://t.co/DBZswZkY2N pic.twitter.com/NPaCveU9iL
— Ari Hoffman 🎗 (@thehoffather) November 27, 2025
To critics, the appointment looks less like civic storytelling and more like doubling down on the same campus culture that allowed violent antisemitic protests and Gaza encampments to thrive, with little consequence.
Wilson, a self-described “democratic socialist,” ran a campaign that echoed high-profile progressive messaging seen nationally, including themes championed by figures such as Zohran Mamdani. Like him, Wilson has also adopted sharp criticism of Israel. In the weeks after her election win, the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that federal prosecutors once named as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the largest terror-financing case in US history, endorsed Wilson and publicly congratulated her.
In their statement, CAIR praised what it called a “historic win” and highlighted Wilson’s grassroots, equity-focused campaign as evidence of a growing shift toward “community-driven, progressive leadership.”
Though Wilson’s campaign did not list CAIR among her official endorsers, the public nature of CAIR’s endorsement, and the history of allegations tying it to extremist financing, has already sparked concern among watchdogs and community leaders who warn that the endorsement may indicate sympathies with CAIR’s agenda.
Cauce led UW from 2015 until stepping down in 2025, a tenure bookended by growing complaints that the school had become a safe space for pro-Hamas and anti-Israel activists, and a hostile environment for Jewish students.
Days after the Oct 7, 2023, massacre of over 1,200 people in Israel and the kidnapping of over 250 more, pro-Hamas activists at a UW rally openly declared that they “don’t want Israel to exist” and chanted to “globalize the Intifada,” a call for an armed uprising against Jews. The event was led by Samidoun Seattle, a designated terrorist organization, yet the university’s response stressed the speech was “protected,” allowing that rally and many more, including vigils for terrorists on campus, to proceed.
In 2024, a violent Gaza encampment occupied the UW Quad. Jewish students and faculty were threatened, assaulted, and the campus was repeatedly vandalized, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.
"NO JEWS ALLOWED"
Last night, Antifa & Hamas supporters were given complete control of the center of the @UW campus by the administration & barricades to enforce it
Students were not allowed to walk freely on campus
This group of students was told "No Jews Allowed"
This is… pic.twitter.com/H2EWuXETPu
— Ari Hoffman 🎗 (@thehoffather) May 8, 2024
A UWPD officer reportedly noted that police were told not to enter the encampment “due to officer safety concerns,” prompting criticism that the administration allowed an area too dangerous for police to regularize.
UW ultimately negotiated with encampment leaders and gave in to their demands, a move widely viewed as rewarding extremist tactics rather than protecting Jewish students.
The fallout triggered several US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) investigation. UW acknowledged receiving roughly 140 reports of harassment or discrimination based on shared ancestry (i.e. Jewish identity) between August 2022 and December 2023, plus additional reports in 2024.
Despite the campus administration conceding to many demands from protesters, in late 2024, anti-Israel radicals vandalized Cauce’s UW residence, spray-painting pro-Hamas symbols and “Free Palestine” slogans, and slashed the tires of her car. The perpetrators posted a video threatening that she “would not know peace until you meet the demands of our movement.”
Even after the encampment ended, campus safety remained unstable. In May 2025, pro-Hamas activists and militants aligned with Antifa occupied a newly opened engineering building, set fires, and clashed with police, resulting in roughly 30 arrests. Over $1 million in damage was caused to the facility. To this date, no arrests have been made.
Beyond campus unrest and ideological controversies, Cauce’s critics also point to her role in the collapse of the Pac-12 Conference, widely regarded as a catastrophic shake-up for West Coast college athletics. Leaked internal emails reported by local outlets and 247Sports described what some characterized as a “duplicity,” privately coordinating a Big Ten exit with rival institutions while publicly expressing reservations about the Pac-12’s media rights deal. One headline from a WSU-aligned outlet declared the leaks “unmasked [her] as a charlatan.”
According to that reporting, Cauce was “coordinating with Oregon to destroy the 108-year-old Pac-12.” WSU President Kirk Schulz warned at the time that “remaining institutions are fighting for our athletic lives right now,” and WSU Athletic Director Pat Chun called the collapse a result of “failed leadership, failed vision, failed implementation,” with the league “mismanaged on a bunch of different levels.”
All of that is the backdrop against which Mayor-elect Katie Wilson has now chosen Cauce as part of her core transition team. Wilson presents her new administration’s direction as a progressive coalition meant to deliver affordability, equity, and community-driven policy — but Cauce’s record complicates that vision significantly.
As Cauce stepped down in 2025, the UW faced serious financial challenges: she warned of looming budget cuts, potential layoffs, and reductions in staff and support services, as state and federal funding dropped.
For opponents, these warnings were interpreted not as an unavoidable reality but as a consequence of a decade of mismanagement.
By placing her on a high-profile transition team, Katie Wilson is effectively owning Cauce’s record as part of her own administration’s story.
