By JTA

Kenneth L. Marcus, an attorney who has championed the use of the 1964 federal civil rights act to investigate allegations of antisemitism on campus, has been appointed assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education.

President Donald J. Trump announced the nomination Wednesday.

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As president and general counsel of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Marcus has deployed Title VI of the civil rights act in urging the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to open investigations over harassment of Jewish students at various universities.

The Brandeis Center, unaffiliated with the university near Boston, has also urged state legislatures and government agencies to adopt the US State Department’s definition of antisemitism, which considers demonizing, delegitimizing or applying a double standard to Israel to be forms of antisemitism.

In 2011 the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the umbrella group of Jewish community relations agencies, endorsed the selective use of civil rights legislation to combat anti-Jewish and anti-Israel activity on college campuses. But reflecting the discomfort of some of its member bodies, it also warned that over-use of Title VI could undermine academic freedom and pit outside Jewish groups against both Jewish and non-Jewish students on campus.

Marcus, a former staff director at the US Commission on Civil Rights, has been critical of the Office for Civil Rights for what he called its failure to address “antisemitic incidents that masquerade as anti-Israelism.”

“On college campuses — and especially in protests brought by the anti-Israel boycotts, divestment and sanctions movement — it is now widely understood that attacking ‘Jews’ by name is impolitic, but one can smear ‘Zionists’ with impunity,” he wrote in 2010.

Marcus previously served as assistant secretary of education for civil rights under President George W. Bush. He also served as the Lillie and Nathan Ackerman Chair in Equality and Justice in America at the City University of New York’s Baruch College School of Public Affairs.

He is the author, in 2015, of The Definition of Anti-Semitism.

Original Article

By Valerie Strauss, Washington Post

The man President Trump has tapped for the critical job of chief of civil rights in the Education Department is the president of a Jewish center for human rights who has been critical of campus supporters of a Palestinian-led campaign to divest from Israel and who previously served in the George W. Bush administration.

Kenneth L. Marcus of Virginia is being nominated as assistant secretary for civil rights at the education agency, taking over the same responsibilities that he filled under Bush and that have been carried out for months in an acting capacity by the controversial Candice Jackson. Jackson was criticized after saying this past summer that most sexual assault accusations on college campuses are primarily the result of students being drunk or having a bad breakup. She later apologized.

In an email, Marcus said he would refer queries about his nomination to the Education Department.

The nomination received a better response from Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, than have other Trump nominations:

“I am very glad that Secretary DeVos listened to the parents and students across the country who rejected Candice Jackson’s callousness toward survivors of sexual assault and deeply misguided approach to protecting the civil rights and safety of students in our nation’s schools. I look forward to hearing more from Mr. Marcus and determining whether he will commit to protecting the civil rights and safety of all students and maintaining the mission of the Office for Civil Rights to ‘ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence throughout the nation through vigorous enforcement of civil rights.’”

Trump’s nomination of Marcus comes not long after the president was criticized for blaming “both sides” for the violence that erupted in Charlottesville in August between a group of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members who marched with Confederate and Nazi flags and chanted, “Jews will not replace us,” and people who were protesting their presence.

Marcus, who once served as staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and taught at the City University of New York’s Baruch College School of Public Affairs,  is president and general counsel of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law in Washington. The center, according to its website, is an independent, nonpartisan institution for public interest advocacy, research and education whose mission “is to advance the civil and human rights of the Jewish people and to promote justice for all.”

He is the author of a 2015 book titled “The Definition of Anti-Semitism” and a 2010 book titled “Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America.”

Marcus has been vocal in criticizing supporters of what is known as the Palestinian-led BDS — or Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions — movement, which works to diminish international support for Israel economically, politically and academically. In 2016, he wrote a piece published by Newsweek calling BDS’s academic boycott “arguably anti-Semitic” and criticized academic organizations that supported it.

In 2013,  the Brandeis Center urged “the Obama administration to use the Department of Education’s mandatory data-gathering program to protect religious minorities, including Jewish, Muslim and Sikh children, from harassment and bullying — just as it does for racial and ethnic minorities,” the center’s website says. It also says:

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) had previously floated a proposal to do just that, following the Brandeis Center’s prior recommendations. But the Center also argues that more must be done to combat harassment and bullying than what OCR now proposes.

“It is imperative that OCR expand this program to include religious harassment,” the Brandeis Center told the Department in its formal comments last night.  “Indeed, it is unjustifiable that the federal government fails to collect this data when it collects data regarding other, similar forms of discrimination targeted at similar groups.”  The Center insisted however that OCR must do more than just collect data; it must also combat this harassment through its enforcement program, just as it does with other forms of discrimination.

Original Article

The head of a prominent Jewish human rights group has been chosen for the top civil rights post at the US Department of Education, the White House announced on Thursday.

Kenneth L. Marcus — the founding president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law — is being nominated to serve as assistant secretary at the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) under Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

Marcus previously took up the same role under President George W. Bush in 2003, before serving as staff director of the US Commission on Civil Rights between 2004 and 2008.

He continued his advocacy after leaving government and founding the Brandeis Center in 2012, whose mission “is to advance the civil and human rights of the Jewish people and to promote justice for all.”

Marcus — who authored the books Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America in 2010 and The Definition of Anti-Semitism in 2015 — has frequently raised the alarm on what he described as rising antisemitism on American college campuses, which he said the OCR was failing to properly handle.

“[When] it comes to anti-Semitism on campus, the agency has been paralyzed,” Marcus wrote in January. “The reason for OCR’s powerlessness is that it is ill-equipped to recognize anti-Semitism when it sees it,” he argued, before recommending that the agency adopt the State Department’s definition of antisemitism.

Marcus had also identified the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel as one of the leading factors driving anti-Jewish attitudes on campus, arguing in September 2013 that some tactics used by BDS supporters — including harassment, vandalism, and even assault — represent “a violation of the civil rights of Jewish students.”

Marcus emphasized that the issues at hand “are legal — not political” — despite the dismissal a month earlier of three complaints filed with the OCR over alleged antisemitic harassment at several University of California campuses.

If confirmed, Marcus will replace Candice Jackson, who drew criticism in July for suggesting that the majority of sexual assault cases on university campuses stem from either mutual drunkenness or breakups. Democratic lawmakers accused Jackson in August of displaying “hostility towards the very mission and functions of the office she is charged to lead.”

David Krone, who served as chief of staff to former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, told The Algemeiner on Friday that “while some Democrats have had serious concerns about the Office during the first ten months of this administration, I think with Ken they will find an individual who not only understands the mission of the agency, but also its importance combating discrimination and antisemitism.”

“He is an outstanding individual who I believe will work with both Republicans and Democrats on their common goal to stand up to hatred, which sadly seems to have spread throughout America,” Krone added.

This sentiment was shared by Clifford May, founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who noted that during his time at the Brandeis Center, “Mr. Marcus worked with legislators and stakeholders from both sides of the aisle.”

May observed that Marcus is a “brilliant lawyer” with “particular expertise in combating anti-Semitism — a form of discrimination that has been too often ignored in recent years both on campuses and by the Department of Education.” He pointed out that the department “has never found a single incident of actionable anti-Semitism on college campuses,” despite multiple reports of bias from Jewish students.

Mark G. Yudof — who chairs the advisory board of the anti-BDS group Academic Engagement Network, similarly called Marcus “an extremely smart, articulate, and fair-minded individual,” indicating that he “will move forcefully to protect Jewish students and faculty from antisemitism, whether overt or embedded in narratives on BDS.”

Yudof dismissed criticism from the pro-BDS group Palestine Legal, which claimed on Thursday that Marcus “has spent years pressuring universities to punish students who advocate for Palestinian rights” and placed “him squarely in the company of white supremacist, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian ideologues.”

“Ken has not campaigned against free speech for pro-Palestinian groups,” said Yudof, who also served as president of the University of California between 2008 and 2013. “It is absurd to describe him as a white supremacist, anti-Muslim or anti-Palestinian ideologue. He seeks to provide the same legal protections to Jewish students that are afforded to other minorities on the campuses.”

May likewise characterized the allegations as “utter nonsense,” remarking that “no one should be so naïve as to believe that BDS proponents seek peaceful coexistence. Their goal – as their spokesmen have clearly articulated – is the destruction of the Jewish state.”

Original Article