The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced on Monday that it has resolved half a dozen...
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CUNY School of Law in New York City. Photo: Evulaj90 / Wikimedia Commons.
The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced on Monday that it has resolved half a dozen investigations of antisemitism at the City University of New York (CUNY), a consortium of undergraduate colleges located throughout New York City’s five boroughs.
The inquires, which reviewed incidents that happened as far back as 2020, were aimed at determining whether school officials neglected to prevent and respond to antisemitic discrimination, bullying, and harassment. Hunter College and CUNY Law combined for three resolutions in total, representing half of all the antisemitism cases settled by OCR. Baruch College, Brooklyn College, and CUNY’s Central Office were the subjects of three other investigations.
As part of an agreement with the federal agency, CUNY will, among other steps, “reopen” past internal investigations of antisemitic conduct, report to OCR on its progress, and train its employees to conduct “thorough and impartial investigations” of any bigoted conduct reported by them. CUNY has also agreed to issue climate surveys, a series of questions posed to students to measure their opinions on discrimination at their school and administrators’ handling of it.
“Everyone has a right to learn in an environment free from discriminatory harassment based on who they are,” Catherine Lhamon, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement. “In fully executing the important commitments announced today, the City University of New York will ensure that its students may learn in the nondiscriminatory environment federal law promises to them and that each CUNY school fulfills its Title VI obligation to evaluate the facts needed to protect all students’ nondiscrimination rights.”
One of the cases which COR resolved, involving Brooklyn College, prompted widespread concern when it was announced in 2022. According to witness testimony provided by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law — which filed the complaint prompting the investigation — Jewish students enrolled in the college’s Mental Health Counseling (MCH) program were repeatedly pressured into saying that Jews are white people who should be excluded from discussions about social justice.
“I witnessed a Jewish student get told by the professor in front of our whole class to get her whiteness in check,” a Jewish student and witness to the events described in the complaint told The Algemeiner, speaking anonymously due to fears of retaliation. “The professor basically said, you can’t be a part of this kind of conversation because you’re white and you don’t understand oppression.”
The badgering of Jewish students, the students said at the time, became so severe that one student said in a WhatsApp group chat that she wanted to “strangle” a Jewish classmate.
“We are pleased that OCR is moving forward with resolution agreements in cases involving antisemitism,” Brandeis Center president Alyza Lewin said in a statement. “The CUNY agreement is a step in the right direction as it recognizes that CUNY failed to adequately address the problem and sets up federal monitoring and oversight. It is a far cry, however, from an ‘all clear’ for CUNY.”
She added, “The devil will be in the details. We are eager to see what specific steps CUNY will take to actively address the antisemitism that has run rampant on their campuses for far too long.”
OCR continues to investigate antisemitism in higher education. This month, it was announced that the office is determining whether Chapman University — located in Orange, California — ignored antisemitic bullying and harassment perpetrated by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
Prompted by another complaint filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the inquiry will review a slew of charges, including that the school stood down when SJP, which the Brandeis Center describes as a “national anti-Jewish hate group,” refused to admit Jews into its club or allow them at their events, a privilege it has granted Jews at other universities to protect itself against accusations that anti-Zionism is antisemitic.
SJP allegedly went beyond a kind of racial discrimination not practiced openly in the US since the 1950s. According to one witness, one of its members sent a death threat to a Jewish student after Oct. 7 because she responded to a post in which he wished for “death to all Israelis who follow Zionism,” asking if he hoped that she would meet the same fate. “F—k yeah I want you and all Zionist trash bags dead the f—k kinda question is that,” the SJP member responded. Afterward, the complaint continues, he inundated the Jewish student with “messages accusing her of not being a real Jew” and claiming that “Zionism is terrorism.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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