By Shiri Moshe
Algemeiner

Fourteen prominent Jewish and advocacy groups urged a key Senate committee to reform the Higher Education Act (HEA), which they claim is being “misused to promote biased, one-sided, and anti-Israel programming in our nation’s Middle East studies centers.”

In a letter sent to Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and ranking member Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) on Wednesday, the coalition of signatories accused Middle East studies programs funded in dozens of universities under the law’s Title VI statute of amounting to “unbalanced and biased efforts at indoctrination.”

Title VI programs were first introduced in 1958 as a way to cultivate American expertise in foreign languages and different world regions during the Cold War era. The frequent exclusion of “scholars with diverse perspectives” harms these objectives, and violates a requirement put forth by Congress when it reauthorized an amended version of the HEA in 2008, the groups claimed.

“Biased professors have leveraged Title VI funds to cement their control over both their programs and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the principal academic organization for scholars of the region,” charged the coalition, which includes the American Jewish Committee, American Council of Trustees and Alumni, and Endowment for Middle East Truth, among others.

Rather than fostering objective scholarship, MESA “now empowers an intellectually corrupt elite and encourages polemical politicized work that has transformed Middle East studies centers into a source of anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda,” they continued.

The signatories alleged that such a disproportionate focus on Israel harms US national security interests, as it has led the centers, for instance, “to either ignore or understate the impact of the Syrian revolt against Assad and the rise of ISIS, and to ignore or understate the expansion of Iranian hegemony in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Afghanistan.”

“These analytical failures cost America both lives and billions of dollars,” and also have an impact on the wider population, the groups wrote.

Title VI requires centers to conduct “public outreach” efforts, such as K-12 teacher training programs, meaning that the public is also exposed to “politicized materials” with little or no oversight, the coalition asserted. “Consequently, students too young to recognize biases are indoctrinated and arrive at college predisposed to accept politicized interpretations of the Middle East.”

The groups emphasized that Congress should not silence the viewpoints currently being promoted in these programs, but rather ensure that others are also heard, per federal law. They encouraged the HELP Committee to adopt reforms laid out in the HEA reauthorization bill that passed the House Education and Workforce Committee in December, dubbed the PROSPER Act.

These include requiring Title VI recipients to annually report on their efforts to uphold viewpoint diversity, and barring grantees from promoting “views that are discriminatory towards any group, religion, or population of people.”

They also called for defining key terms in Title VI to improve enforcement, and requiring the Department of Education to score Title VI applications on their success in encouraging viewpoint diversity.

“Studies have repeatedly shown that Federal funds are being used by our nation’s top universities to promote one-sided, and often anti-Semitic, programming that masquerades as scholarship,” said Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, director of the campus watchdog AMCHA Initiative, which signed the letter. “It violates the law and completely distorts the scholarly and educational mission of the university.”

The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, another signatory, stressed that the reforms will help ensure “that students are exposed to the widest range of viewpoints, research, and scholarship.”

“This should be welcome news to those universities that embrace freedom of speech and academic freedom — and a wakeup call to those that do not,” said Alyza Lewin, the center’s director of policy.

MESA, which did not respond to requests for comment by press time, has previously rejected charges that federally-funded Middle East studies centers are steeped in anti-Israel bias. Amy Newhall, MESA’s executive director, dismissed a 2014 statement issued on Title VI by several of the same signatories behind Wednesday’s letter as a “politically motivated [attack] on scholars and academic institutions.”

“MSA resolutely opposes all forms of hate speech and discrimination, including anti-Semitism,” and supports action in response to such incidents on campus, she told Inside Higher Ed.

Newhall accused “partisan political groups based outside academia” of aiming “to shut down open discussion of issues of public concern by demonizing academic and other critics of Israel, Zionism, and U.S. policy in the Middle East, in many cases by tarring them with the brush of anti-Semitism.”

“They are even willing to threaten federal funding for university-based Middle East studies centers,” she said, “which have a long and distinguished history of providing the United States with thousands of people trained in the languages, politics, cultures and histories of this critical region.”

The HELP Committee will hold its fourth hearing on reauthorizing the HEA on Tuesday. Sen. Alexander has indicted that he wants to have the Senate reauthorization bill prepared “by early spring.”

By Melissa Landa
SPME

Kenneth L. Marcus has been nominated to direct the Office of Civil rights in the United States Department of Education, based on his extensive experience as a civil rights attorney and a legal scholar. Marcus has held an endowed chair in Equality and Justice in America at Baruch College, served as staff director of the United States Commission on Civil Rights and as Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights under President George W. Bush. As the current nominee of a Republican president, his positions on Affirmative Action and Title IX are simply what one would expect from any Republican nominee, creating understandable concern among Democrats. Whether one agrees with those positions or not, any nominee of the current administration would likely hold such positions. What makes Marcus unique in his work, is that he prioritizes and ensures freedom of speech on college campuses and is committed to equal rights for all students, both of which should be bipartisan priorities.

In recent years, Marcus has focused his attention on a dangerous international effort that has negatively impacted students on American college campuses. Commonly known as BDS, which stands for Boycott, Divest, and Sanction, this effort was co-founded by Omar Barghouti, a Qatar national, who was educated at Columbia University and Tel Aviv University. Although his followers claim that BDS is non-violent and, without offering any evidence, claim that they are supporting Palestinian refugees, Barghouti’s actual stated agenda calls for the destruction of Israel. According to Barghouti, Israel is an “illegitimate” state, founded by “Jewish colonizers” with no claim to the land, who “ethnically cleansed” the Palestinians who had been living there. He has gone on record saying, “Definitely, most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.” With an insidious and well-managed strategy, Barghouti and his colleagues have succeeded in penetrating American college campuses and educational associations, where they impede the free exchange of ideas among students and faculty members by shouting down and deplatforming speakers in order to control the information that is being disseminated and to promote their hostile agenda.

As a civil rights lawyer committed to ensuring free speech on campus, Marcus has confronted this daunting and growing phenomenon. He has addressed BDS tactics – not speech – which include orchestrating loud and intimidating groups to shout down speakers by chanting, “Long live the intifada” and scheduling Student Senate votes concerning Israel on Jewish holidays when Jewish students are at home celebrating. Marcus has also addressed troubling situations where BDS members have vandalized university property, harassed students on campus, disrupted classes, and threatened speakers with physical violence. In recent months, Marcus filed a lawsuit against the American Studies Association (ASA) for allowing the BDS organization to conduct a surreptitious hostile takeover of the association. Marcus showed that ASA members with allegiances to the BDS organization organized a vote to boycott Israeli scholars, and then strategized to prevent the ASA’s anti-BDS members from voting.

Given Marcus’s commitment to the first amendment, it is highly disconcerting to hear the recent misrepresentations of his positions from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has begun to attribute views to him that he has never articulated. It is also concerning to hear the ACLU, a hallmark of American freedom and democracy, which is committed “to defend and preserve the individual right and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States,” express concern about Marcus’s challenges to BDS, an international organization that regularly prevents voices it opposes from being heard. In combination, these two unusual developments warrant further exploration.

While Marcus works tirelessly to preserve students’ freedom of speech, a precious tenet of our American democratic legacy, the ACLU has chillingly suggested that he lacks allegiance to the United States and to students on Americans campuses in light of his Jewish identity. Their description of him notes “a passionate crusader against students and others who criticize the Israeli government,” and someone who “has played a central role in advocating for the suppression of student speech — particularly speech critical of Israel.”  Additionally, the ACLU seems to want to instill fear of Marcus in the minds of the American people, by making unfounded and frightening speculations. For example, they have referred to Marcus’s support of the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, stating “the bill could be interpreted to prohibit vigorous campus speech, protest, and other forms of advocacy critical of Israel, which would plainly violate the First Amendment;”  “Marcus could push the government to start taking action against students who speak out against Israel, regardless of whether the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act passes. He could, for example, threaten to cut off federal funding to schools that allow students to engage in Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns and other protests against Israel.” (Emphasis added.)

In reality, the ACLU offers no evidence to support its speculations. None of us can predict the future, but, as socially conscious members of American society, we are responsible for making informed choices based on honest and fair analyses, not on unsubstantiated fear mongering.

I have known Kenneth L. Marcus for four years. On several occasions, I have sought his professional advice, which he offered generously. I have facilitated a panel discussion about civil discourse on campus at Oberlin College, at which he volunteered to speak. Mr. Marcus traveled to Oberlin to address a group of seventy students, faculty members, and administrators, whom he held in raptured attention as he discussed his extensive experience as a Civil Rights lawyer. He responded to numerous questions, some of them quite hostile, in a respectful manner, demonstrating his commitment to education and his vast knowledge of the law.

As a member of the Democratic Party since I became an American citizen and as an anti-bias educator for over a decade, I have never promoted a Republican nominee or candidate, until now. I support Kenneth L. Marcus because he is a man of integrity and because I believe that he will protect the rights of all students, as he has done in the past. I also believe that he will confront the concerted attack on free speech being executed by BDS supporters on college campuses and in educational associations across the United States, an attack that should also be of grave concern to the ACLU, to all American people, and most importantly, to the lawmakers who have sworn to protect them.

Melissa Landa, Ph.D. is President of the Oberlin Chapter of Alums for Campus Fairness. She is the author of Early Childhood Literacy Teachers in High Poverty Schools (2017) and the children’s book, I is for Israel (2017). She regularly presents her research at national and international conferences, and publishes in peer-reviewed journals. Landa was an award-winning faculty member in the College of Education at the University of Maryland from 2007-2017. Shortly after becoming active in the anti-BDS movement, Landa was dismissed from her position.

By Jeff Robbins
Boston Herald

At last month’s Senate hearing on the nomination of civil rights lawyer Ken Marcus to be the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) praised Marcus for his advocacy on behalf of a Virginia Tech student threatened by a white supremacist working for the university.

Marcus and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights that he heads, Kaine said, “laudably, I think, helped the student out and weighed in with the administration of Virginia Tech and said, ‘You got to take this seriously; white supremacy is wrong; neo-Nazi ideas are wrong.’ ”

Having praised Marcus for doing the kind of work he has done for years, ­Kaine then proceeded to join all of the Democrats on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in opposing Marcus’ nomination, which only cleared the committee by a 12-11 vote because of Republicans’ unanimous support. For Democrats who find Donald Trump loathsome but worry that their party has lost its bearings, the Democrats’ vote against Marcus is more reason to worry.

Marcus’ “problem” is that he has devoted the last several years of his life to defending the rights of Jewish college kids who, caught in a vise between white supremacism on the far right and ugly, beyond-the-pale anti-Israelism on the far left, have been subjected to increasingly widespread, increasingly repugnant anti-Semitism on American campuses.

Jewish students face this challenge: Hostile conduct aimed at intimidating them — which would be readily understood to have the effect if not the purpose of delegitimizing students of color or women or members of the LGBT community — is regarded as acceptable in some quarters when directed at Jewish kids, particularly but not exclusively those who care about Israel.

The problem is both significant and growing. Robert Trestan, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League in New England, says simply: “Campuses have become the incubator for anti-Semitism.”

This conduct strikes Marcus as deeply wrong, and he has challenged the right of certain groups, pro-Palestinian groups prominently among them, to engage in it. These groups, in turn, want to operate free from any scrutiny, and they have made the predictable accusations against Marcus and mobilized others to oppose his nomination.

That’s their prerogative. The question Democrats will have to answer is whether it is right or wise to be roped or cowed into doing the bidding of bullies simply because their goal is to have their bullying left unchallenged.

Boston attorney Jeff Robbins was a U.S. delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in the Clinton administration.

By Shiri Moshe
Algemeiner

A key Senate committee advanced the nomination of Kenneth Marcus to a top civil rights post in the Department of Education on Thursday, clearing him for a final confirmation round.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee endorsed Marcus — a leading proponent of efforts to counter campus antisemitism — with a 12-11 vote to serve as assistant secretary at the Office of Civil Rights (OCR).

Marcus was supported by all 12 Republicans on the committee, led by chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), and opposed by its eleven Democrats, including ranking member Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA). His nomination now faces a full Senate vote.

The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law — founded by Marcus to combat anti-Jewish and anti-Israel discrimination in higher education — applauded his approval, calling him “a dedicated and highly experienced expert on civil rights.”

She expressed hope “that the Senate will rise above politics when it votes on his nomination,” and rather “consider Ken’s record and the voices of people who actually know him and have worked with him.”

Marcus, who formerly served at the US Commission on Civil Rights and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, previously led the OCR under President George W. Bush from 2003-2004.

Under his guidance, the OCR — which does not have jurisdiction over cases of religious discrimination — clarified that protections afforded under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 nonetheless extend to members of groups that “exhibit both ethnic and religious characteristics, such as Arab Muslims, Jewish Americans and Sikhs.”

His nomination has not been without controversy, with some backers of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel — which Marcus has previously associated with a rise in anti-Jewish hostility on campus — urging their supporters to petition senators to oppose Marcus’ confirmation.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCHR), a coalition of over 200 national groups, also described Marcus as “unsuited” to lead the OCR in a letter sent to HELP committee members last week.

Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of LCCHR, called on the Senate on Thursday to reject Marcus, accusing him of adopting “anti-civil rights positions” and failing “to articulate clear support for robust civil rights enforcement during his confirmation hearing.”

“Students and families deserve an Assistant Secretary who will represent their interests, enforce the law, and stand up to the Trump-DeVos discriminatory agenda,” Gupta said.

These concerns were rejected last week by the American Jewish Committee — a founding member of the LCCHR — and, separately, in a joint statement by 60 Jewish, Christian, and advocacy groups.

During his public service career, “Ken championed the civil rights of all Americans in a wide range of areas, including strengthening Title IX enforcement, fighting against racial segregation, increasing fair housing rights for the disabled, and ensuring that Jewish, Sikh and Muslim students were protected under Title VI,” the joint statement read.

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, head of the campus antisemitism watchdog group AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Thursday that Marcus’ “vast and exceptional work against racial, gender, and religious discrimination and discrimination affecting the disabled community” was a testament to his civil rights credentials.

“Ken brings a unique understanding of how civil liberties protections and free speech rights can work together under the law,” Rossman-Benjamin said. “He believes both are paramount responsibilities of our government and of a public university, and he understands how schools can and must do both.”

David Krone, who served as chief of staff to former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, told The Algemeiner last year that Marcus was “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.”

By Shiri Moshe

Algemeiner

Dozens of advocacy groups on Monday called for the confirmation of Kenneth Marcus — a leading figure in efforts to combat campus antisemitism — to a prominent civil rights post at the US Department of Education.

The founding president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law — which aims to fight anti-Jewish and anti-Israel discrimination in universities and colleges — Marcus was nominated to serve as assistant secretary at the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) under Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. He previously held the same position under President George W. Bush from 2003-2004.

Marcus’ record was strongly endorsed by 60 “Jewish, Christian, education and civil rights” organizations in a letter sent to members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, which is expected to consider his nomination this week.

The groups — representing “millions of your constituents” — praised Marcus’ protection of both civil liberties and free speech rights during a career that has included posts at the US Commission on Civil Rights and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

During his service, “Ken championed the civil rights of all Americans in a wide range of areas, including strengthening Title IX enforcement, fighting against racial segregation, increasing fair housing rights for the disabled, and ensuring that Jewish, Sikh and Muslim students were protected under Title VI,” the letter said.

The groups emphasized Marcus’ commitment to the First Amendment, a point of contention among critics who believe his advocacy on behalf of Jewish students sought to infringe on the free speech rights of anti-Israel activists.

Marcus “has consistently counseled university presidents that censorship is never the proper remedy for addressing anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist expression,” the letter noted.

The letter also cited Marcus’ success in representing three residents of Berkeley, California who were investigated by federal officials for publically criticizing a housing project in their neighborhood. The Center for Individual Rights (CIR) said the case — which was ruled on by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2000 — made clear “that anti-discrimination laws cannot be used to chill the constitutionally protected expression of unpopular views.”

Marcus’ record has nonetheless drawn the ire of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCHR) — a coalition of over 200 national advocacy groups — which called Marcus’ “unsuited” to lead the OCR in a letter sent to HELP committee members last week.

The letter argued that Marcus failed “to demonstrate a commitment” to protecting “students of color” and “LGBTQ students” from discrimination, “immigrant and language minority children” from constitutional and civil rights violations, and all students “from sex discrimination.”

It also accused Marcus of trying “to use the OCR complaint process to chill a particular political point of view, rather than address unlawful discrimination.”

This same criticism was leveled by groups supportive of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, which Marcus has identified as one of the leading factors driving anti-Jewish hostility on campus. These include the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, which said Marcus sought “to suppress Palestine activism on campus,” and called on supporters to urge their senators to oppose his confirmation.

The American Jewish Committee — a founding member of the LCCHR — rejected these concerns in a letter to Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), respectively chairperson and ranking member of the HELP committee.

Calling Marcus “well fit” to lead the OCR, the AJC emphasized that Marcus has repeatedly “made clear that he did not believe that, as the LCCHR letter implies, mere criticism of Israel was actionable under Title VI.”

“On the contrary, Mr. Marcus has repeatedly stated that most such criticism is protected speech,” the group wrote. Rather, he only supported “the proposition that some extreme criticism of Israel constitutes anti-Semitism — a position AJC shares — and that in the appropriate circumstances expressions and actions related to that criticism can create a hostile environment actionable under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the same way as with racist, homophobic or misogynistic expression and activities.”

“Unfortunately,” the AJC noted, “the LCCHR letter obscures that crucial proposition.”

By Sarah Stern
JNS.org

When I was a child, having been born in the 1950s under the shadow of the Holocaust, I had naively thought anti-Semitism was mostly a thing of the past that vanished in the gas chambers and ovens of Auschwitz. Yet within the past few decades, I have witnessed anti-Semitism blossom into a socially acceptable hatred that has managed to make its way into the corridors of polite society in a fashion that is as overt, obvious and unconcealed as it is alarming.

It has migrated not only into college classrooms and campuses, but actually into the most respectable chambers of the U.S. Senate, in the very committees whose mandate is to authorize and appropriate taxpayer-funded programs to eliminate racism and anti-Semitism as well as other hatreds, and to appoint professionals within those agencies.

Recently, much of this anti-Semitic invective has been directed against a colleague of mine, Ken Marcus, who has been nominated to serve as assistant secretary of education for civil rights within the Department of Education. For reasons I will explain, Marcus has been the victim of an ugly and disgusting smear campaign.

Marcus served in a similar capacity from 2004-2008 under President George W. Bush, as assistant secretary of education for civil rights and later as staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He monitored and investigated complaints against minority groups such as African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, LGBTQ individuals and people with disabilities. A firm believer in free speech rights under the First Amendment, Marcus has always expressed the view that hate speech is protected speech under the Constitution, and that the best antidote for hate speech is more speech.

The standard for protected speech within an educational setting, however, is a bit more complex. When a student is subjected to physical/verbal harassment, vandalism or intimidation to the degree that it interferes with that student’s ability to learn—creating “hostile environment harassment”—it might very well cross the line.

During the past few years, when it comes to Jewish students, it seems that the line has been constantly crossed. A recent report from the Anti-Defamation League indicates that there was an alarming 67-percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents from 2016 to 2017. Most alarmingly, the greatest increase were in our nation’s schools, which saw an increase of 107 percent in anti-Semitic incidents experienced by Jewish students from kindergarten through 12th grade. Anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses, meanwhile, rose 63 percent during that period.

It was precisely because of this trend that in 2012, Marcus founded the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, whose mission is “to advance the civil and human rights of the Jewish people and promote justice for all.” Marcus simply wants Jewish students to enjoy the same civil rights and protections that the law provides to other minorities.

Since Marcus’s institution serves to advance the civil rights of Jewish students, the flood of complaints against his nomination have come in at a frenetic velocity from some predictable sources.

On Jan. 10, Dima Khalidi published a scurrilous piece in The Nation entitled “Students Beware: This Trump Nominee Doesn’t believe in Your Civil Rights.” Notably, Khalidi fails to mention the fact that she heads Palestine Legal, a group that routinely works to undermine efforts to combat anti-Semitism on college and university campuses. She argues that Marcus, as the leader of LDB, “has made a practice through his work at the center of targeting the First Amendment rights of students who are critical of Israeli policies and advocate for Palestinian rights.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. Throughout Marcus’s extensive career, he has consistently demonstrated uncompromising and objective support for the civil rights of all minority groups, and unflinching appreciation of everyone’s First Amendment rights.

As Jennifer Braceras—a former head of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, whose service overlapped with Marcus’s time at the agency, wrote in a recent article, “Marcus has never argued that speaking out against Israel is, in and of itself, sufficient to trigger federal civil rights law. To the contrary, he has expressly stated that skepticism of Israel’s ‘status quo’ is often wrongly characterized as anti-Semitic, when it ‘may well reflect only the concern, shared by some in the liberal Jewish American community, that Israel’s current policy toward Palestinian Arabs is unsustainable in light of gathering international pressure.’”

Perhaps Khalidi is unaware that Marcus, on behalf of LDB, has sent several letters to university officials decrying racism against Muslims and African-Americans on their campuses. In November 2015, Marcus penned a letter to Dr. Elliot Hirshman, president of San Diego State University (SDSU), expressing concern regarding an attack on a Muslim student. He wrote, “While our organization primarily addresses the rights of Jewish college students, we support the right of all students to be free from invidious discrimination.”

Does this sound like the sentiment of a racist or an Islamophobe?

Yet while I was recently talking about Marcus with a senior policy adviser to the Democratic ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, the adviser interrupted me with the response, “We do not care about anti-Semitism in this office.”

If I were an African-American speaking about a black civil rights organization, would the adviser have ever thought to utter similar words?

Perhaps Marcus’s crime is how he has recognized that, along with other minority groups, Jewish students in America need protection. If that is the case, then we have gone a long way from the halcyon days of my youth.

Sarah N. Stern is founder and president of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), which describes itself as an unabashedly pro-Israel and pro-American think tank and policy institute in Washington, D.C.

Jennifer Braceras
The Hill

Confirmation battles that pit one party’s nominee for federal office against senators from the opposition party long have been spectator sport in Washington. But when extremists from the nominee’s own party attack, well now, there’s a “man bites dog” story.

The most recent example is the curious case of Kenneth L. Marcus, President Trump’s nominee to be assistant secretary of education for civil rights. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is charged with ensuring equal access to education through enforcement of the nation’s civil rights laws.

Marcus is well-suited to the task. He ran the same office under a grant of delegated authority in the administration President George W. Bush, while simultaneously serving as deputy assistant secretary of education for civil rights enforcement. Marcus later served as the staff director to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (a bipartisan federal civil rights agency), where we overlapped for several years when I was one of USCCR’s eight commissioners. Currently, Marcus is president and general counsel of the Louis D. Brandeis Center, a civil rights organization dedicated to combating anti-Semitism on college campuses.

Although his civil rights credentials are impeccable, as a former Bush appointee Marcus no doubt anticipated some opposition from the far-left. And, indeed, he has faced some criticism from those who refuse to believe that anyone who worked for Bush, was nominated by Donald Trump and is supported by Betsy DeVos could possibly be pro-civil rights. But that type of opposition is simple-minded and silly.

More troubling is the opposition of some of Marcus’s fellow conservatives. To be sure, Republicans and conservatives, for the most part, have been enthusiastic and supportive of the nomination — as evidenced by the wide range of groups that sent letters of support in advance of Marcus’s Senate committee hearing. But late last year, writing in the Washington Times, conservative columnist Bruce Fein attacked Marcus as unqualified, and Peter Van Buren claimed in the American Conservative that, if confirmed, Marcus will “drive his agenda against the rights of Americans using the full power of the federal government.”

What, exactly, is this so-called agenda? According to Van Buren, “Marcus believes any campus that allows its students to voice opposition to the Israeli occupation should lose its federal funding.” For his part, Fein claims that Marcus would squelch anti-Israel debate and calls him “clueless about freedom of speech or association protected by the First Amendment.”

Such hyperbolic nonsense is a reaction to Marcus’s efforts to expose the anti-Semitism that today runs rampant on many college campuses. In fact, there is no evidence whatsoever that Marcus has ever sought to suppress the free-speech rights or particular viewpoints of college students, and neither Fein nor Van Buren cite any such examples. Indeed, Marcus’s organization has focused almost exclusively on ensuring equal free-speech rights and access for all students, including Jewish students, so that they can invite speakers and fully participate in student activities, like every other demographic group on campus.

Marcus has never argued that speaking out against Israel is, in and of itself, sufficient to trigger federal civil rights law. To the contrary, he has expressly stated that skepticism of Israel’s “status quo” is often wrongly characterized as anti-Semitic, when it “may well reflect only the concern, shared by some in the liberal Jewish American community, that Israel’s current policy toward Palestinian Arabs is unsustainable in light of gathering international pressure.”

Nevertheless, Marcus has rightly argued that anti-Israel protests that devolve into intimidation and harassment, vandalism, and actual or threatened physical violence may, depending on the specific circumstances, constitute “hostile environment harassment.” Marcus maintains that federal law should be implicated only when the conduct is so extreme and/or pervasive that it negatively impacts the victim’s (or victims’) educational or employment circumstances.

Rather than circumscribe First Amendment protections, Marcus argues simply that federal law should protect Jews in the same manner that it protects racial groups. Seems like a no-brainer to anyone who opposes violence against Jews. But perhaps I assume too much.

The trope that Marcus wants to ban certain forms of protected speech is, in fact, demonstrably false. Throughout his career, Marcus has publicly championed strong protections for expressive rights. In 2000, he argued and won the landmark case of the “Berkeley Three,” in which a federal appeals court found that anti-discrimination laws cannot be used to suppress legitimate political speech. More recently, in 2015 Marcus penned a letter to the editor of the Washington Post, endorsing the University of Chicago’s statement on free speech, which urges the “completely free and open discussion of ideas” on campus.

Having taught, written about and litigated cases under the First Amendment for many years, Marcus understands well that the remedy for offensive speech is not censorship, but more speech. He has consistently urged university leaders not to censor anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric, but to stand up and denounce it. And he has argued that college administrators should respond to hate speech in ways that do not infringe on the First Amendment, including: issuing statements to rebut anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda; punishing non-speech forms of anti-Semitism, such as assault, battery and vandalism; and ensuring effective security at particularly volatile university lectures.

Given Marcus’s strong and positive record on First Amendment issues, it seems that the only real objection to Marcus is that he is an unabashed advocate for the civil rights of American Jews. Typically, such activism is viewed as an asset, not a disqualifying characteristic. After all, past nominees for the post have come from the ranks of civil rights organizations or affinity groups focused primarily on issues related to their own race, gender or ethnic identity. But, unlike activists who focus almost exclusively on issues that impact their own communities, Marcus has spent a distinguished career fighting for the rights of all Americans, including women, racial and ethnic minorities, Sikh, Arab, and Muslim Americans, and Americans with special needs.

The truth is, there’s no surer sign of a nominee’s reasonableness and fitness for office than opposition from both the far-right and the far-left. If all of President Trump’s nominees are as reasonable and well-credentialed as Kenneth L. Marcus, America will be in great shape.

Jennifer C. Braceras is a former commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and a writer in Boston. Follow her on Twitter @MAHockeyMom