By Daniel Libon
The Patch

Stoughton High School teacher Jaime Regan​ will have a letter of reprimand and all references to it removed from her file.

STOUGHTON, MA — An arbitrator has determined that the Stoughton Public Schools were wrong to take disciplinary measures against one of three teacher who were reprimanded following a report of anti-Semitism at the high school.

Stoughton High School teacher Jaime Regan will have a letter of reprimand and all references to it removed from her file, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law announced Friday.

The controversy began in November 2016 when a now-former student posted a swastika on the school’s “Spirit Wall.” When he was asked to remove it, he replied, “”well, just burn it like they did to the Jews.”

The student received a six-day suspension for his actions but shortly afterwards, his mother accused Regan and two other teachers of bulling her son. In regards to Regan, the mother claimed that the teacher asked to have the student removed from Regan’s Holocaust class where a survivor of the genocide was scheduled to speak. While Regan’s request to have the student removed was granted, she never spoke to the student about the issue, never asked him to leave the class, and never discussed him or the incident with her class, according to the Brandeis Center.

“The punishment against Ms. Regan arose from charges brought by the mother of a student that flaunted a swastika and engaged in hate speech. In a ham-handed attempt to appease the mother of the offending student, the school district disciplined Ms. Regan for violating a district rule that simply does not exist, and in violation of the First Amendment. Moreover, the allegations against Ms. Regan were unsupported by the record. The punishment was based on ‘factual conclusions’ made by a defense attorney hired by the school district to investigate the charges brought by the mother. Those conclusions were never supported by the record of the investigation itself. Fortunately, the arbitrator looked closely at the facts and the law and recognized that the punishment cannot stand,” Brandeis Center Senior Civil Rights Legal Fellow Jennie Gross said in a release.

The accusation led to the placement of a letter of reprimand in Regan’s file and a determination from attorney Regina Ryan that Regan should be punished for allegedly pulling a student aside to ask about another student’s discipline and unnecessary communications with colleagues. The conduct was “unprofessional,” “unbecoming a teacher,” and contrary to “providing an educational climate that is conducive to student engagement and learning.”

The arbitrator, Mary Jeanne Tafano, disagreed with that assessment, ruling that the school district never identified any rule or standard that Regan violated, apart from the general statement of commitment to an educational climate conducive to student engagement and learning.

“Teachers’ inquiring about the well-being of other students, as well as similar lunch room discussions, were common. . . . [T]he record does not support that Ms. Regan revealed any confidential information about the student to either another student or to a faculty member,” a press release from the Brandeis Center reads.

The arbitration against Hilary Moll is ongoing. She was suspended without pay after rescinding a college letter of recommendation to the student and telling the college that she withdrew the letter over the hate speech incident. In the case of Stella Martin, the arbitrator ruled that the school district was to discipline her for discussing the incident and the student.

San Diego Jewish World

LOS ANGELES (Press Release) — StandWith Us has announced its support for Senate confirmation of Kenneth Marcus, an outstanding defender of civil rights for Jews and many other communities, who was recently nominated for assistant secretary for civil rights in the U.S. Department of Education.

“Now he is under attack by anti-Israel extremists seeking to derail his nomination, and we can’t let them win,” the organization said in a memorandum to its supporters.

StandWithUs, which advocates for Israel on college campuses, described Marcus as “an incredibly qualified candidate for assistant secretary for civil rights.”

A civil rights lawyer and a former public affairs professor with a degree from University of California, Berkeley, he served in the second Bush Administration as the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s deputy assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity. He was the de facto head of the U.S. Department of Education’s civil right office and the staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Currently he serves as president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.

“The reason Marcus is being subjected to a smear campaign is his outspoken advocacy against anti-Semitism, including cases of bigotry that involve Israel,” StandWithUs said. “Anti-Israel extremists are worried that if Jewish students get all the protections that they deserve, it will be more difficult to spread hate against Jews and Israelis. They’re right, which is why we must stand up for the civil rights of Jews.”

Jackson Richman
National Discourse

A group of New York University alumni are calling on the school’s president to respond to a couple anti-Israel incidents around campus last month.

Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF), a 2500-member group which advocates for a safe pro-Israel environment on college campuses, emailed a letter to NYU president Andrew Hamilton on Monday, calling on him to investigate the incidents. The letter was also signed by students, faculty members, donors, and parents. There are 200 members of ACF’s NYU chapter, but the letter had 500 signatures.
“NYU’s inaction is allowing this situation to escalate. It is unacceptable for NYU to enable students to shun, marginalize and harass other students,” the letter states. “It is our hope, as a united voice in support of a fair and safe campus environment, that NYU acts expeditiously to restore civil behavior amongst students.”

One of the incidents last month consisted of a joint letter created by the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) chapters, signed by 53 student groups, calling on NYU to stop co-sponsoring events by pro-Israel campus groups like Realize Israel and TorchPAC. The letter also calls on NYU to “divest its holdings from companies and funds that are complicit in the Israeli occupation of Palestine,” a goal of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS.

“This action directly goes against the institution’s assertion of the importance of academic freedom,”  ACF stated in a press release. “ACF thanked President Hamilton for personally declaring his opposition to the BDS campaign, but he has yet to take action to ensure that NYU students will not be bullied and blacklisted by their peers.”

The other incident was SJP and JVP igniting an altercation at a rave in Washington Square Park, organized by TorchPAC and Realize Israel, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Israel’s independence.

“The anti-Zionist groups burned an Israeli flag, during which one member of JVP was arrested. Another member was arrested later on in the protest,” the Washington Square News reported. “As music from the rave blared on less than 50 feet away, they waved the Palestinian flag, chanting, ‘Displacing lives is ’48, there’s nothing here to celebrate,’” referring to the immigration of Jews who left Europe after the Holocaust where 6 million Jews were killed.

A student from SJP and another one from JVP were arrested; one was apprehended for petty theft of an Israeli flag, while the other faced charges of disorderly conduct, second-degree robbery, third-degree assault, and third-degree criminal mischief.

In an interview with The National Discourse, ACF executive director Avi Gordon said that BDS isn’t the only kind of anti-Israel activity on campus. “The environment on campus has turned quite negative for Jews and those who support Israel. Denouncing BDS is important but it’s not the only issue,” he said. “Campuses are supposed to be a place where you can exchange ideas and by SJP and JVP blocking this, it creates an asymmetrical attack on the [pro-Israel] community.”

“I think the overall goal of SJP is anti-normalization, refusing to work with anyone who recognizes Israel to exist as a Jewish State,” Gordon added. “This is their way of pressing the issue even more by falsely convincing other organizations that Israel commits human rights violations, oppressing the LGBTQ community and other minority communities, etc. This is SJP’s next tactic after BDS.”

The letter cals on Hamilton to do the following:

1. Issue a formal statement denouncing the student boycott and the disruption of Realize Israel’s event;

2. State unequivocally that Jewish and pro-Israel students, for whom Zionism and the right of Jewish self-determination are core values, are welcome at NYU;

3. Investigate SJP and JVP and sanction their leadership for violating NYU’s Rules and Policies, and Code of Ethical Conduct;

4. Commit to a program which provides for free and fair discourse around the topic of Israel/Palestine; an opportunity for dialogue that befits a world-class institution such as NYU.

ACF isn’t the only group to call on Hamilton to speak out and take action against the anti-Israel activity. StandWithUs, an Israel education group, and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law co-signed a similar letter to Hamilton late last month.

Algemeiner

The director of legal initiatives at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law testifies before the US Commission on Civil Rights, May 11, 2018. Photo: C-SPAN.

A leading Jewish human rights group called on the federal government on Friday to take action against religiously-motivated bullying in American schools.

Aviva Vogelstein, director of legal initiatives at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, told the US Commission on Civil Rights that Congress and the Department of Education have thus far failed to adequately address “the longstanding problem” of hate directed at Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, and other students.

Citing data from the 2015-16 Civil Rights Data Collection survey, Vogelstein noted in her written testimony that “an alarming 10,848 incidents, 8% of the total incidents … were harassment or bullying based on religion.”

She pointed out that existing federal laws — including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which covers “race, color, or national origin” — do not protect students from religious discrimination, at a time when such attacks are on the rise.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish civil rights group, reported “that antisemitic incidents in K-12 schools and on college campuses in 2017 nearly doubled over 2016,” Vogelstein observed. “College campuses saw a total of 204 antisemitic incidents in 2017 as reported to the ADL, compared to 108 in 2016 — an 89% increase.”

Likewise, a report issued by the South Asian Americans Leading Together advocacy group “found a total of 302 incidents of hate violence and xenophobic political rhetoric against those who identify or are perceived as South Asian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Middle Eastern, and Arab between [2016 and 2017], a 45% increase from their data the previous year.” The majority of incidents were anti-Muslim, with over one in four involving students and youth.

Vogelstein illustrated her point by recounting several recent occasions when students were targeted based on their religious identity.

These include a March 2017 incident, during which a student in Florida drew “a swastika and a fake concentration camp number on a Jewish student’s arm,” she wrote. “The Jewish student also suffered from ongoing antisemitic harassment and bullying, including having pennies thrown at him, Holocaust ‘jokes’ made at his expense, and being handed printouts of Holocaust memes.”

In May 2017, “a Muslim student was assaulted at a New York City public school,” Vogelstein added. “The assailant spit on her, called her a ‘Muslim b*tch’ and attempted to pull off her hijab.”

Later that year, in November, a Jewish boy at a New York school “was verbally harassed, pinned to the ground and had hot wax poured on his skin.”

That same month, in Washington State, “a 14-year-old Sikh boy wearing a turban was punched and knocked down by his classmate less than a block outside of his high school.”

To address such incidents, Vogelstein urged Congress to either pass a new bill or amend existing legislation to cover cases of religiously-motivated hate.

She also called for the matter to be addressed by the Department of Education, which she indicated had “made incremental improvements to protect students based on religion.”

In 2014, then-Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kenneth Marcus wrote a Dear Colleague Letter extending Title VI protection to members of groups that “exhibit both ethnic and religious characteristics, such as Arab Muslims, Jewish Americans and Sikhs.”

The informal guidance issued by Marcus — founder of the Brandeis Center and current nominee to the post of assistant secretary at the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) — was backed up by both the Department of Justice and the Department of Education in 2010. However, not much action has come of it yet, Vogelstein argued.

“For example, OCR has not found a single violation in a campus anti-Semitism case despite the high volume of incidents we know exist,” she noted, attributing this in part to a lack of clarity. “By properly defining what discrimination based on ethnicity or ancestry entails, OCR could more easily identify, address, and prevent such incidents from recurring.”

The guidance should also stress that anti-discrimination policies “should not be construed in ways that will limit freedom of speech.”

Vogelstein also called on the OCR to categorize the information it presents in its Civil Rights Data Collection survey by individual religion, and gather more information on each incident — which could be useful for differentiating between violent assault and verbal harassment, for instance.

“With over ten thousand incidents of religious hate in our schools, the federal government must act,” she stressed. “Our government cannot continue turning a blind-eye to incidents such as choking a Muslim girl with her hijab, punching a Sikh boy wearing a turban, and burning a Jewish boy with hot wax.”

Jackson Richman

The National Discource

Schools across the United States have consisted of an alarming number of incidents related to religiously-motivated bullying and similar abuse.

According to a Department of Education study last month, there were 10,848 incidents related to religion during the 2015-2016 academic year.

It was the first time the department included this kind of statistic in its annual Civil Rights Data Collection survey, thanks to a push from the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. Religion-based bullying constituted 8 percent of allegations of harassment or bullying by basis, preceded by disability, sexual orientation, race, and sex.

“This problem has been almost entirely ignored until very recently,” Aviva Vogelstein, LDB’s director of legal initiatives, testified in front of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on Friday. “Until last month, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) did not even collect data on religiously- motivated harassment and bullying, although it amassed data on sex, race, color, national origin, and disability.”

Vogelstein added, “It is unconscionable that this category of hate, averaging approximately 30 incidents per school day, 150 incidents per school week, and 602 incidents per school month, has, up until now, been largely unaccounted for and unaddressed.”

She added that the 1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964 only protects students based on “race, color, or national origin,” and does not cover those based on religious discrimination.

Reported examples of religiously-based bullying include two Jewish Towson University students, who were members of a Jewish campus fraternity, walking to a house last month when they were followed by two fellow students shouting, “F**k the Jews” and calling them an ethnic slur. The suspects then followed the victims to the front of the house and began punching one of the victims in the face.

Another includes a Muslim student assaulted at a New York City public school in May 2017. The assailant spat on her, called her a “Muslim b*tch,” and attempted to pull off her hijab.

Months later, in Washington State, a 14-year-old Sikh boy wearing a turban was punched and knockeddown by a classmate nearby his high school.

“With over ten-thousand incidents of religious hate in our schools, the federal government must act,”  Vogelstein said. “Our government cannot continue turning a blind-eye to incidents such as choking a Muslim girl with her hijab, punching a Sikh boy wearing a turban, and burning a Jewish boy with hot wax.”

“If any question remained, the Department of Education’s staggering findings of 10,000 incidents in one year provides us with 10,000 indisputable reasons to act,” Vogelstein added. “Religious harassment and bullying in our schools is a major problem that the federal government is inexplicably failing to address. We need better data, and we need serious and immediate action.”

Malcolm A. Kline
Accuracy in Academia

Proposals to force colleges and universities to boycott, divest from and sanction (BDS) Israel keep failing in the most left-wing of enclaves, such as the Modern Language Association (MLA). Nevertheless proponents of the measure keep putting forth BDS propositions with increasing stridency.

The latest last stand is George Washington University where the student senate approved a BDS proposal by 18-6 on April 24, 2018. “George Washington University President Thomas LeBlanc says he will not consider implementing a divestment resolution passed by the student government in a secret vote,” Abigail Marone reported on the Campus Reform website on April 26, 2018.

According to the GW Student Association, The Protection of Palestinian Human Rights Act is “A resolution to support the divestment of all of the investments in the George Washington University’s endowment profiting from violation of international law and human rights affecting Palestinians, but also other communities globally, specifically The Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin, Elbit Systems Ltd., Caterpillar Inc., CEMEX, General Electric, Northrop Grumman Corporation, The Raytheon Company, Motorola Solutions, Inc. pursuant to the University’s mission statement and core values as an institution.” That should make Career Day interesting.

Meanwhile, according to the Louis D. Brandeis Center, “April saw important victories for those working to combat increasing levels of anti-Semitism.”

“In what is being hailed as a ‘historic action,’ South Carolina’s state senate has adopted a definition of anti-Semitism for use by South Carolina public universities. Inspired by this success, other states, such as Georgia, may soon follow suit. In addition, the Brandeis Center teamed up with StandWithUs to send a message to the New York University administration following a boycott of NYU’s pro-Israel clubs. Also, several colleges saw success in the fight against anti-Semitism, such as the University of California–Santa Barbara’s student government passing a resolution condemning anti-Semitism.”