Download PDF For Immediate Release Washington, D.C., November 9 – Leaders of the controversial Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement conducted a covert campaign to take over academic associations, without disclosing their political agenda, and then to use their influence to impose boycotts on the State of Israel, according to newly discovered documents. BDS activists were forced to reveal this secret agenda, as well as the unsavory means used to advance it, in the course of the cutting-edge anti-boycott litigation brought against the American Studies Association by Professors Simon Bronner, Michael Rockland, Michael Barton, and Charles Kupfer in 2016 (Bronner et al v. Duggan et al (1:16-cv-00740), District of Columbia District Court). The professors’ success in partially defeating the ASA’s motion to dismiss in April 2017 set the stage for the dramatic new revelations. “The evidence shows that members of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel [USACBI], a movement which promotes BDS in the United States, have sought to take over the ASA and similar associations,” stated Jerome Marcus, of Marcus & Auerbach LLC, lead counsel for the plaintiffs. Five of the proposed amended complaint’s defendants are USACBI leaders: Sunaina Maira, Neferti Tadiar, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Jasbir Puar, and Steven Salaita. “This case is about the illegal, hostile takeover of a non-profit, academic association by leaders of an anti-Israel group,” added Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law’s Jennifer Gross, another attorney for the plaintiffs. “Through a series of misrepresentations and breaches of duty, USACBI activists obtained positions of trust in the ASA, and then abused those positions in order to capture and exploit the assets of the ASA to advance the agenda of the BDS movement.” As detailed in the lawsuit, USACBI is an anti-Israel political activist group that seeks to delegitimize the State of Israel in the world community. It proscribes any academic involvement with Israeli universities, including intellectual discourse, collaboration on research, and even study abroad programs. Newly-revealed emails show how USACBI activists took over the ASA in order to use the academic association as a tool for advancing their anti-Israel political agenda. The lawsuit reveals that they plotted to take-over the ASA by stealth, because most scholars opposed any form of academic boycott, and many considered the USACBI’s anti-Israel boycott to be anti-Semitic. The lawsuit shows that the plot was concocted in part by controversial BDS activist Jasbir Puar, who has suggested that Israel had mined for organs of Palestinians for scientific research. Explicit emails between and amongst various defendants show how Puar promoted the USACBI agenda by packing the ASA leadership with BDS advocates. BDS activist Sunaina Maira wrote in an email: “Jasbir is nominating me … for the Council and she suggests populating it with as many [USACBI] supporters as possible.” Another BDS supporter explains: “In my conversations with Jasbir it’s clear that the intent of her nominations was to bring more people who do work in, and are politically committed to . . . the question of Palestine . . . we were nominated in order to build momentum for BDS even though the question of BDS in American Studies Association may or may not emerge while we’re on the council.” Emails amongst candidates for ASA leadership positions explicitly agree that they would not disclose their plan to advance BDS to ASA members. The one candidate who disagreed, saying the issue was material and disclosed his support for BDS, lost. Those who kept it secret were elected. These same BDS activists, once elected, manipulated ASA procedures to suppress voting for the Boycott Resolution by ASA members who disagreed with them. In an email, ASA Executive Director John Stephens explained that those academics who would pay their dues after the announcement of the vote would likely vote against the BDS resolution. By artificially freezing the cut-off date for dues payment, the BDS activists succeeded in preventing some long-time dues-paying ASA members from voting. The complaint further alleges, in spite of these manipulations, BDS activists never actually obtained the number of votes necessary to impose a boycott but manipulated the association to impose one anyhow. “The email paper trails reveal nothing less than a focused campaign to capture a society of academics with no relationship to Israel, its Arab neighbors, or the Arab/Israeli conflict,” added Aviva Vogelstein, the Brandeis Center’s Director of Legal Initiatives. “The ASA’s boycott campaign was conducted by activists who are focused on only one thing: using organizations of scholars – including but not limited to the ASA – and their resources, including good will, to attack Israel.” ### The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law is a non-profit organization designed to protect the civil and human rights of the Jewish people, and promote justice for all. Specifically, LDB combats anti-Semitism on college and university campuses through legal advocacy, public policy education and research. It is not affiliated with the Massachusetts University, the Kentucky law school, or any of the other institutions that share the name and honor the memory of the late U.S. Supreme Court justice. For more information, contact Jennifer Gross at jenniegross@brandeiscenter.com.
By Jeremy Bauer-Wolf Inside Higher Ed College campuses nationwide have seen an escalating number of anti-Semitic incidents over the past several years, but academics, experts and politicians remain divided on how to combat them. At a hearing of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Tuesday, some panelists depicted the Education Department as floundering without a definition with which to consider cases of harassment toward Jewish students. While the Education Department is charged with examining claims of harassment under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, it lacks any formal description of anti-Semitism, which can complicate an investigation, panelists said. Conversation Tuesday largely centered on a bill, first introduced last year, to change that. The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act would instruct the Education Department to rely on the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism. The proposal generated bitter debate, with some of its opponents claiming it would chill free speech at universities. In part, this is because the State Department’s definition includes demonizing Israel as an example of anti-Semitism, and opponents felt that this would suppress opposition to the actions of the Israeli state among both students and professors. The bill passed the Senate but not the House last year. At least two panelists floated the idea that faculty members who teach lessons critical of Israel could be construed to be spouting hate speech, for instance. But advocacy group representatives on the panel, such as those from the Anti-Defamation League, characterized the troubles for Jewish students as reaching a disaster level, and they implored lawmakers to step in. “We need your help,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Generally, there has been a jump in anti-Semitism nationwide this year. The Anti-Defamation League, which tracks such bigotry across the country, has documented almost 1,300 anti-Semitic incidents from January through the end of September. The group did not specify the number that occurred on college campuses. But anecdotally, anti-Semitism has intruded on college campuses more frequently over the past year. Perhaps most prominent was a white supremacist rally on the University of Virginia campus in August, where members of various white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups circled the campus wielding torches and chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” During the hearing, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, played a clip of the march on her phone from the dais, to illustrate her “horror” at these types of incidents and the need for a fix. She said she could only imagine how the students on the campus that night felt looking at the spectacle. And on the other side of the country, at San Francisco State University, Jewish students sued in June, alleging that the institution and the Board of Trustees who oversee the California State University system left them vulnerable and perpetuated anti-Semitism. Jewish students said San Francisco State administrators never intervened when students were harassed and bullied and that they felt fearful, to the point they wouldn’t wear symbols that identified their religious affiliation and avoided certain campus routes. The federal lawsuit was referenced during the hearing by Sandra Hagee Parker, chairwoman of the Christians United for Israel Action Fund. She cited incidents at other institutions — rocks being hurled at Jewish students at the University of New Mexico, a George Mason University student wearing a pro-Israel shirt being called “a baby killer” in the middle of the cafeteria. “Sadly, history has already clearly shown us what happens when good men and women do nothing in the face of such evil. Not to act is to act,” Parker said. Professors on the panel, among others, said the portrayals of campuses in crisis were false, and that the legislation would contradict free speech principles on campus. Suzanne Nossel of PEN America called the definition overly broad and inappropriate for a college campus. She said any policy that treated criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic was a mistake. “It is undeniable that some anti-Israel sentiment is fueled by hostility toward Jews. But to declare, ipso facto, that any speech that blames Israel for regional tensions or subjects Israel to a higher standard of behavior constitutes anti-Semitism risks chilling a wide range of speech,” she said in her testimony. To counter, some on the panel said that the State Department definition had been adapted from one used worldwide, specifically by an agency of the European Union. If passed, the legislation could lead other minority groups, such as black or lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender men and women, to demand similar flawed blanket protections, Nossel said. Paul Clement, solicitor general under President George W. Bush, now a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, said that the bill wouldn’t run afoul of First Amendment principles. Simple criticisms of Israel wouldn’t rise to the harassment level, he said, but the legislation would give the Education Department rules with which to investigate discrimination against Jews, and use the speech as evidence in such a case. A definition could be developed by adjudicating these types of cases, but the Education Department has not opened any Title VI cases related to anti-Semitism, panelists said — so Congress should intervene, according to Clement. President Trump’s pick to lead the Office for Civil Rights, Kenneth Marcus, who also worked for the George W. Bush administration, has vehemently advocated for the legislation. Marcus leads the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a Jewish advocacy group. He has been particularly critical of the anti-Israeli movement known as boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS. In a Politico column, Marcus called the Office for Civil Rights “powerless” in handling cases related to anti-Semitism. “The 115th Congress should take action on this legislation immediately and give the new secretary of education the tools necessary to stamp out this ugly blight of campus anti-Semitism,” he wrote in January. Original Article
Richard Cravatts Newsweek No sooner had President Trump nominated Kenneth Marcus, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law, to be Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, than extremist anti-Israel groups began to mount an aggressive campaign to derail the appointment. This is a remarkable affront to a civil rights lawyer who has spent his career fighting for the rights of women, the disabled, and members of many minority groups: African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians, as well as Sikhs, Arabs, and Muslim Americans. Marcus’s prior tenure at the federal Office for Civil Rights was widely lauded for effective leadership and support for the rights of all students. For this reason, most civil rights groups have thus far refrained from subjecting Marcus to the vituperation that other recent Trump nominees have faced. Some extremist anti-Israel groups, however, have broken ranks, attacking the administration’s Jewish civil rights nominee with reckless and malicious falsehoods. One of these groups, Palestine Legal, whose mission is to bolster the anti-Israel movement by challenging efforts to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism, immediately issued a letter smearing Mr. Marcus as an “Anti-Palestinian Crusader” and opposing his nomination in terms of the so-called Livingstone Formulation. Under that formulation, as identified by British sociologist David Hirsch, anti-Semites accuse Jews of fabricating anti-Semitism claims in order to silence decent people who are concerned about Israel’s supposed human rights violations. In this way, Palestine Legal’s director, Dima Khalidi, levels the spurious charge that “Marcus is the architect of a strategy to abuse civil rights law to suppress campus criticism of Israel.” In other words, she contends that Marcus’s campaign to ameliorate campus anti-Semitism is not based on a virtuous desire to end bigotry but is a disingenuous attempt at “shielding Israel from scrutiny,” consistent with the “Livingstone Formulation.” Part of that notion is “the counter-accusation that the raisers of the issue of anti-Semitism do so with dishonest intent, in order to de-legitimize criticism of Israel. The allegation is that the accuser chooses to ‘play the anti-Semitism card’ rather than to relate seriously to, or to refute, the criticisms of Israel.” Of course, those who refuse to acknowledge that their speech or behavior may, in fact, be anti-Semitic normally resist such designations, but the allegation of Palestine Legal against Mr. Marcus is particularly odious because it seeks to impugn his integrity as someone fighting anti-Semitism, suggesting instead that his true motive, carefully hidden from view and masked as benign activism, is actually to serve the interests of Israel by trying to delegitimize and libel its campus critics. Moreover, Palestine Legal claims, in order to shield Israel from scrutiny, to insulate its policies and state behavior from critique, Mr. Marcus pretends to be interested in anti-Semitism but is actually creating a smokescreen to shield Israel “at the expense of civil and constitutional rights.” In addition to the Livingstone Formulation, these groups are also going after Marcus with the classic charge that Jews are attempting to use gain control of government power for nefarious purposes. “Marcus has no business enforcing civil rights laws when he has explicitly used such laws to chill the speech activities and violate the civil rights of Arab, Muslim, Jewish, and other students who advocate for Palestinian rights,” Khalidi charged. It is not coincidental, of course, that a group dedicated to undermining efforts to fight anti-Semitism would have been aware of the efforts of Mr. Marcus and his colleagues as they attempted to identify the causes and corrosive impact of campus anti-Semitic speech and behavior. For at least the last decade, the primary source of anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic activism on campuses has been anti-Israel individuals and groups, including the Muslim Student Association and the radical Students for Justice in Palestine, among others. So, even as Ms. Khalidi would have one believe that Mr. Marcus launched a campaign to silence pro-Palestinian activists merely as a tactical ploy to insulate Israel from critique and condemnation, the anti-Israel activism which she so ardently defends has regularly spawned instances in which agitation against Israel has included speech and behavior which has been considered, and in fact often was, anti-Semitic. Of great concern to those who have observed the invidious byproduct of this radicalism is the frequent appearance of anti-Israel sentiment that often rises to the level of anti-Semitism, when virulent criticism of Israel bleeds into a darker, more sinister level of hatred—enough to make Jewish students, whether or not they support or care about Israel at all, uncomfortable, unsafe, or hated on their own campuses. That is precisely the type of “hostile environment,” created by generating hostility toward Jewish students over their perceived or actual support of Israel, that may violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, one of the legal tools Mr. Marcus has used and may well continue to use in his new role to help insure that universities take steps to ameliorate situations in which such prejudice-laced campus climates are allowed to develop. Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), another anti-Israel group that also, not insignificantly, supports the BDS movement, published an open letter denouncing the choice of Mr. Marcus for the OCR appointment, as well, repeating the spurious charge that the use of Title VI statutes, and such guidelines as the U.S. State Department Working Definition of Anti-Semitism, would have the perverse side effect of suppressing the free speech of “pro-Palestinian” activists. And despite Palestine Legal’s fear that the conflation of “criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism . . . has really serious consequences for those who advocate for Palestinian human rights and are being condemned and censored and punished as a result of the enormous pressure being placed on universities by the likes of Marcus and dozens of other Israel advocacy groups,” the truth is that not all human rights advocates behave in civil ways, and the fact that “pro-Palestinian” activists support a minority group does not justify their misbehavior and extremism, even for what they clearly believe to be a noble cause. But pro-Palestinian advocacy on campus—the very activism Palestine Legal is so intent on preserving—has been shown to correlate directly to an uptick in anti-Semitic speech and behavior. For example, in two studies it conducted of anti-Semitism on U.S. campuses, the AMCHA Initiative, an organization that investigates and documents anti-Semitism at U.S. universities, found that “Schools with instances of student-produced anti-Zionist expression, including BDS promotion, are 7 times more likely to have incidents that targeted Jewish students for harm than schools with no evidence of students’ anti-Zionist expression and the more such anti-Zionist expression, the higher the likelihood of incidents involving anti-Jewish hostility.” This “anti-Zionist expression” and “BDS promotion are,” of course, the central aspects of Palestinian activism. That is the issue here, and why it is necessary and important that, in the effort to promote the Palestinian cause and help them to achieve statehood, another group—Jewish students on American campuses—do not become victims themselves in a struggle for another group’s self-determination. Richard L. Cravatts, PhD, President Emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and the author of Dispatches From the Campus War Against Israel and Jews,is also a member of the board of directors of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law and the AMCHA Initiative. Original Article
Download PDF Washington, D.C., November 6: Today, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law (LDB) urged Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University President Timothy Sands to take bold actions to address intolerable neo-Nazi activity on his campus. In a letter issued today, the Center admonished President Sands that he must do more to protect his students, especially one whom the instructor (or his spouse) allegedly called a “fat ugly turd clown” while urging associates to “f*** her up” and “destroy her). LDB Senior Staff Attorney Jennifer Gross explained, “We are horrified by the reports that we are hearing from Virginia Tech students. The problem is not just that Virginia Tech employs an avowed white supremacist as a graduate student instructor and that many undergraduate students are required to take his course. Worse, he has allegedly urged his associates to violently attack a Virginia Tech student who has stood up to him.” “I am a white supremacist,” the graduate student allegedly announced on social media. Multiple sources note that he has posted numerous offensive on comments social media including this example of Nazi propaganda: “I agree with pretty much every word. 1 million might be a tad too many dead Jews but that’s just splitting hairs,” while sharing a link to an article with a photo of Hitler titled, “If Hitler Had Won World War II, We’d Have A Better, More Just World Today.” This summer, LDB admonished Virginia Tech to honor Virginia House Majority Leader-Designee Delegate C. Todd Gilbert’s request that Virginia public universities address this issue [of anti-Semitism] on their own initiative through effective policies, education, orientation, and training. . . with clarity and detail.” Virginia Tech did not respond. LDB is now concerned that the administration is failing to address problems on their campus that LDB had urged, and are experiencing the problems about which LDB had warned. “The university’s response to a self-proclaimed white supremacist teaching assistant fails to address the impact on the students that take his course and rely on him for a grade,” Gross commented. “This TA’s commentary ranges from a clearly racist and falsely intellectual defense of white supremacism to regurgitation of long-debunked Holocaust denial propaganda and anti-Semitic tropes. And this TA also teaches freshman composition, a required class for freshman. The students who take his class do not necessarily get to choose their teacher, and while other TAs also teach this class, the fact remains that some freshman students will find themselves in his classroom, and will need to complete the required class. And these students may be black or brown, Jewish or Muslim, and they will find themselves required to sit in a classroom with a teacher who considers them unequal to him because of their ethnicity, and they will rely on that teacher for a grade in a required course.” “Putting aside questions of morality and justice, one has to wonder what Virginia Tech thinks its students will learn when they are required to take freshman composition with an instructor whose best-known words allegedly include ‘fat ugly turd clown’ (to describe a Virginia Tech student) and ‘Fuck her up/Destroy her’ (to describe what should be done to her),” Gross concluded. In late August, when a Virginia Tech undergraduate student whose anonymity we will preserve found out about a series of these postings, she shared her concern in what she believed to be a private Facebook group. “Jane Doe” then began suffering from harassment, including: The following message was posted on Facebook: My wife found the phone number of the bitch behind this: 571-XXX-XXXX* Fuck her up Destroy her [Jane] ((([Doe])))* She’s on the left (*Name and phone number redacted.) The post included a picture identifying the undergraduate student, and put her last name in three closed parentheses (“Jane ((([Doe])))”), a white supremacist symbol indicating “Jew.” The poster incorrectly assumed that Jane Doe was Jewish based on her Jewish-sounding last name. Following this posting, Doe has received threatening voice messages and upwards of 70 phone calls from blocked numbers. Other harassment included the posting of Doe’s private cell phone number on an online sex chat forum under the username, “FatAntifaBabyGurl4U.” The post read: “Hey hit me up if you like fat cuties! Ill b e waiting :),” and then listed her number. Doe has received numerous text messages with inappropriate sexually harassing content from numbers she does not recognize. Jane Doe has also been harassed with phone calls, text messages, and other messages on Facebook, Reddit and email listservs. “I have spent my last semester at Virginia Tech fighting with university administrators and officials about a clear-cut issue and direct threat of white supremacy on campus,” says Doe. “I have now had to fight them about a direct threat to my safety. I remain tangled in university red tape that has offered me no protection and continues to hide behind vague non-answers to my concerns and my inability to feel safe on campus. I remain tangled in university bureaucracy and unclear statutes, handbooks and codes of conduct that do not seem to offer me any form of protection. I continue to have to fight that for any action to be taken. Jane Doe continued, “I predicted that the situation involving [M] would escalate if preventative action was not taken, and there is no reason why I should be sitting here dealing with the fallout of a death threat and doxxing campaign against me had the university taken my concerns seriously when I first brought them to light in August. Student safety was put into jeopardy when a white supremacist was given authority and control over students in the classroom. The threat to my safety is just one instance in a pattern of intimidating and threatening behavior by [M].” Doe added, “Even if I hadn’t been personally targeted, [M] still poses a threat to campus because he believes certain people to be inferior and professes an ideology that inherently requires violence in order to secure a white state.” The graduate student, “M,” and his wife now reportedly claim that his wife was responsible for much of the threatening and retaliatory behavior. His wife is unaffiliated with Virginia Tech, meaning she would suffer no disciplinary consequences. LDB has urged the university to question and investigate this admission. Such harassing and threatening messages violate numerous university policies, including the Student Code of Conduct and the Policy and Procedures on Harassment, Discrimination, and Sexual Assault. If M is found to have been involved in these postings, either directly or as an accomplice, the Brandeis Center has urged that he be fully disciplined in line with Virginia Tech policies. LDB has notified Virginia Tech that they should thoroughly investigate the posting of Jane Doe’s phone number on an online sex forum under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, which includes unwanted online sexual behavior that interferes with a student’s education. LDB has urged Virginia Tech to adhere to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs that receive federal funds. OCR announced in guidance that Title VI applies to discrimination on the basis of perceived Jewish ethnicity or ancestry. Certain retaliatory actions are prohibited under both statutes. Though M has reportedly stepped down from teaching in the upcoming Spring semester, he is still teaching on campus this semester, and Virginia Tech has taken little responsive action. In LDB’s letter, LDB urged the Virginia Tech administration to take steps to remedy the current situation, including: 1) ensure safety – take necessary steps to ensure that Jane Doe as well as all students of any race, religion, or background, are safe on campus; 2) fully investigate the graduate student to determine if he was involved in the retaliatory harassment, and if wrongdoing is found under Virginia Tech policies for both students and employees, discipline fully, consistent with applicable constitutional protections; 3) issue a stronger statement specifically addressing and condemning M’s hateful rhetoric, in line with the guidelines laid out in LDB’s Best Practice Guide; 4) provide training and education, on an annual basis, to all instructional staff, including students, faculty, teaching assistants, and administrators, on what anti-Semitism is – in its contemporary as well as historical manifestations – and how it should not be tolerated on campus, just like all other forms of discrimination should not be tolerated; and 5) create more academic and extracurricular programming to raise community awareness about global and campus anti-Semitism. ### About The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law: The Louis D. Brandeis Center, Inc., or LDB, is an independent, nonprofit organization established to advance the civil and human rights of the Jewish people and promote justice for all. The Brandeis Center conducts research, education, and advocacy to combat the resurgence of anti-Semitism on college and university campuses. It is not affiliated with the Massachusetts university, the Kentucky law school, or any of the other institutions that share the name and honor the memory of the late U.S. Supreme Court justice.
October came to an end with a flurry of activity. LDB President Kenneth L. Marcus was officially nominated for the position of Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education for Civil Rights. Read Brief
By Jeff Robbins Boston Herald The Trump administration has lent some support to the old adage that even a busted watch will tell the time correctly twice a day, actually appointing someone eminently qualified to a high-ranking position in the U.S. Department of Education. This may seem improbable, but it is true: Kenneth Marcus, president and director of the Washington, D.C.-based Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, has been tapped to be the department’s assistant secretary for civil rights. This is a natural fit for Marcus, who was a Phi Beta Kappa at Williams College before earning his law degree at Berkeley — not exactly a training ground for Trump appointees. Marcus is well-qualified for this position, having served the second Bush administration as its Department of Housing and Urban Development’s deputy assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity. He was also the de facto head of the Department of Education’s civil rights office. “With Marcus,” the Atlantic magazine recently stated, “the (Bush) administration started taking a stronger approach to enforcing civil rights laws.” In that capacity and later as staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Marcus was credited with energetically enforcing anti-discrimination measures. His confirmation by the Senate would seem to be a shoo-in, but for one strange wild card. An expert on anti-Semitism — he has written and lectured widely on the subject — his nomination, predictably, has been bitterly criticized by the fringe and unhinged groups who operate something of an anti-Semitism lobby. These include groups rabidly opposed to the existence of a Jewish national homeland, who fund and carry out efforts to scare the daylights out of pro-Israel students and faculty on American campuses, and whose hate speech can take on a hair-raising quality — even while they profess to be human rights activists. Marcus’ work at the Brandeis Center has often brought him into conflict with this crowd, which has already begun to try to smear him. Democrats in the Senate would do well not to fall for it. The impulse to decide that “the-appointee-of-my-enemy-is-my-enemy” may be tempting. But in the case of Ken Marcus, it is the wrong one. Jeff Robbins, a U.S. delegate to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in the Clinton administration, is a Boston attorney. Original Article
Jewish Journal SWAMPSCOTT – Last Sunday, a crowd of 70 attended “What’s Up at College: How Anti-Semitism is Affecting College Life,” a panel discussion at Congregation Shirat Hayam. The event was sponsored by the nonprofit Campus Anti-Semitism Task Force of the North Shore in order to raise awareness among area high school teenagers in light of increased anti-Semitism on college campuses across the country. The panel featured current and recent college students – Dylann Cooper, a senior at Roger Williams University; Rachel Wolff and Madeline Bondy, sophomores at Tufts University; Zachary Shwartz, class of 2016, Boston University, and Arinne Braverman, former Hillel director at Northeastern University. Moderated by Shirat Hayam’s Rabbi Michael Ragozin – who serves as president of the Campus Anti-Semitism Task Force – the event featured discussions of the panelists’ most meaningful Jewish moment in college before tackling their experience with anti-Semitism on campus. Bondy, who grew up as one of a few Jews in her Colorado community, found that while she enjoyed connecting with Tufts’ large community of Jewish students, she was not prepared for “the subtleties and small things that contribute to whether you feel comfortable being Jewish on campus.” Her classmate, Wolff, added, “Just because there are lots of Jews on campus doesn’t always protect you from anti-Semitism,” referring to political groups on campus like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). These groups have endorsed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, whose founders seek to isolate Israel. Shwartz said he “wasn’t aware of SJP” when he first encountered them at BU’s student activities fair, where first-year students get an opportunity to check out the hundreds of campus groups. “I had gone to Jewish day schools (Epstein Hillel School and Gann Academy) but was not aware of what SJP was and what they really stand for. I didn’t know how to react to students who are part of SJP. I was educated on Israel but not on these groups.” Braverman’s advice to students is to report incidents of anti-Semitism. “It’s super important to report it (incidents of anti-Semitism). Reporting can be confusing because there may be a different process, depending if an incident happens in a dorm room or a classroom or off campus. If it’s not reported, the school can’t do anything. There was a swastika in an elevator that wasn’t reported and stayed for weeks but once reported, it was quickly removed,” she said. Cooper agreed about the importance of reporting. As a sophomore, Cooper said there was a giant swastika drawn in a shower on campus. Once photos of it circulated on Snapchat, it was removed quickly. “We received overwhelming support from the administration.” The panel had an impact on the teens in the audience. “It’s more than just swastikas painted on the walls. There are more forms of anti-Semitism than I realized,” said Lily Gregory, a junior at Marblehead High School. The next planning meeting for the Campus Anti-Semitism Task Force will be held 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 27 at Congregation Shirat Hayam. 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
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. Be the first to know – Join our Facebook page. 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