The Brandeis Center filed a Title VI complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) against the University of Pennsylvania (“U Penn”) for failure to address pervasive incidents of campus anti-Semitism. The complaint alleges that the school administration allowed its campus to become not only a hostile environment for its Jewish students but a magnet for anti-Semites attending other colleges or just living nearby. By sponsoring, hosting, and funding a “Palestine Writes Festival” whose speakers included notorious anti-Semites, and by allowing University departments to publish brochures and fliers advertising the event in Penn’s name, the University effectively took ownership of the Festival and signaled to the Penn community that its campus is the place to go to engage in anti-Semitic rhetoric and activities. U Penn’s failure to adequately respond violates Title VI, which prohibits recipients of federal funding from allowing harassment, bias or discrimination on campus and protects Jews on the basis of their actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.

A few weeks after the Festival, the campus erupted in displays of anti-Semitism, with students, professors and others praising Hamas in the wake of its October 7 massacre of Israeli civilians. The University failed to take action to address the ensuing hostile environment, much less take immediate steps to end it, as the law requires it to do.