Kenneth L. Marcus Last night, the Louis D. 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 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. The Education Department’s Mandatory Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) has been collecting school and district level data for over forty years and is now the biggest collection of its kind. This data informs OCR enforcement activity as well as policy guidance for public schools. Since 2009, OCR has collected data at the school level through the CRDC regarding harassment on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and disability. The Brandeis Center argued that OCR must expand this program to include religious harassment and bullying. Indeed, the Center argued that it is unjustifiable that OCR “fails to collect this data when it collects data regarding other, similar forms of discrimination targeted at similar groups.” Religious harassment and bullying are a serious problem in the public schools, as the Center has repeatedly informed the federal government, and it is hard to address it without the kinds of data that are routinely gathered to address other forms of discrimination. The Center told that Obama administration that it “is about time that the U.S. Department of Education takes notice of this problem.” In its 2011 annual enforcement report, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights announced that, “Bullying based on students‘ religion is … a problem in America‘s schools.” The Commission documented numerous recent examples in which Muslim, Sikh and Jewish students were harassed and bullied because of their religion. The Commission’s report was based in part on expert testimony that Brandeis Center President Kenneth L. Marcus provided at the Commission’s public hearing. The Center urged OCR, however, that improved data-gathering is only a preliminary step, and much more work must be done. The Center argued that OCR must protect religious minority students from bullying and harassment to the same extent that it does with other minority groups. To do so would require an act of Congress. In the meantime, as a preliminary step, the Center argued that collecting and maintaining data on this problem is a good beginning, as long as the agency carries follows through on the implications of this initial work. Mr. Marcus explained, “Monitoring and data-gathering are important, but at the end of the day the Department must enforce the rights of religious minorities, and this will require more than data management. OCR must combat religious harassment and bullying, not just monitor it after the fact.”