Posted on 02/14/24
| News Source: FOX45
The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) opened a probe into Johns Hopkins University Monday over its response to campus antisemitism.
The department will explore whether the school failed to respond to allegations that students suffered harassment based on their Jewish ancestry. The allegations were first reported by higher education news website Campus Reform.
Campus Reform accused Johns Hopkins of discriminating against Jewish students by inadequately addressing antisemitism on school grounds in the wake of the Oct. 7 invasion of Israel, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by The National Desk (TND).
"Jews at JHU are in a campus environment where people all around them take up Hamas propaganda and celebrate the rape and murder of innocent Jewish civilians as justified resistance,” Campus Reform Editor-in-Chief Zachary Marschall wrote to DOE.
Marschall says Jewish students at Johns Hopkins fear expressing their religious or ethnic identity due to a threatening campus atmosphere.
“They were scared to speak up. They are still scared to be known as either Jewish or pro-Israel because of the retribution they can face from classmates or professors,” Marschall told TND Tuesday.
Regardless of the federal investigation's outcome, Marschall believes DOE’s action will have little immediate effect on Johns Hopkins’ alleged spike in Jewish prejudice.
“Antisemitism is a millennia-old hatred, so I’m not expecting attitudes to change overnight because of this,” Marschall stated. “The ugly truth is that a lot of people just don’t care about Jews or don’t like Jews to begin with.”
He instead predicts the probe will communicate that federal officials will address discrimination if university administrators refuse to.
“The investigation should be sending a signal to them that if your university’s not going to stand up and hold antisemites accountable, the federal government will step in and investigate what’s going wrong in your school,” Marschall said. “There is a bigger fish here in the pond.”
DOE’s Office for Civil Rights will probe alleged violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s Title VI, which prohibits discrimination based on shared ancestry. Johns Hopkins says it will cooperate with the office.
“As an academic community, we are guided by the principles of academic freedom and the right to free expression for every member of our community, including their right to protest, demonstrate and share their views,” the school told TND. “At the same time, threats, acts of hate or discrimination, including religious discrimination, violate university policy and our student code of conduct and are antithetical to the values of the university.”
Antisemitism has risen on Johns Hopkins’ grounds since Hamas' attack, according to the school.
“Our campuses have not been immune to the rise in religious hate that has occurred around the nation and the world in recent months,” Johns Hopkins said. “We too have seen an increase in reports of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia since last October, including incidents of anti-Semitic graffiti on our campuses.”
The investigation is one of 45 Title VI probes the DOE has opened into universities since Oct. 7.