Posted on 02/03/25
| News Source: Washington Times
Washington, D.C. - Feb. 3, 2025 - The Department of Education announced Monday an investigation into five universities over reports of “widespread antisemitic harassment” in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israelis.
The five universities are Columbia, Northwestern, Portland State, the University of California Berkeley, and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
“Too many universities have tolerated widespread antisemitic harassment and the illegal encampments that paralyzed campus life last year, driving Jewish life and religious expression underground,” said Craig Trainor, the department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights.
Today, the Department is putting universities, colleges, and K-12 schools on notice: this administration will not tolerate continued institutional indifference to the wellbeing of Jewish students on American campuses, nor will it stand by idly if universities fail to combat Jew hatred and the unlawful harassment and violence it animates,” he said in a statement.
He said the investigation would build on the work of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, which concluded in an Oct. 31 report that university administrators “overwhelmingly failed” to protect Jewish students as pro-Palestinian protests engulfed U.S. campuses.
Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, praised the department for opening the proactive investigations, saying that the “cavalry has arrived.”
“This is exactly the right step to be taking and the right time to be taking it,” said Mr. Marcus, who ran the department’s Office for Civil Rights under Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump in his first administration.
“The administration is sending a clear message to the higher education community that the U.S. Department of Education is prioritizing the current anti-Semitism crisis,” he said. “Rather than sitting back and waiting for complaints to pile up, federal investigators are finally doing their jobs: identifying colleges that need to be investigated, and taking firm, public measures where needed.”
Multiple complaints and lawsuits have been filed against universities over campus antisemitism since the 2023 attack, which prompted Israel to declare war and protesters to swamp colleges with rallies and encampments accusing Israel of “genocide.”
Mr. Marcus said his organization urged the Biden administration to launch its own investigation, but “we were repeatedly disappointed that the prior administration failed to accept our recommendation.”
The Biden administration expedited action on campus antisemitism complaints shortly after the 2023 attack, but Mr. Trainor said that prior administration’s “toothless resolution agreements did shamefully little to hold those institutions accountable.”