Since its founding in 2011, the Brandeis Center has set the standard for identifying and combatting civil rights violations against Jewish and Israeli students in colleges across the country.

The “Marcus Policy,” named for our Founder and Chairman Kenneth L. Marcus, who served as Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education for Civil Rights in two U.S. administrations, established that federal civil rights law protects Jewish students and members of other faiths, such as Muslims and Sikhs, when they are targeted due to their ancestry or ethnicity.

The Marcus Policy provides the Brandeis Center with a legal basis for aiding college students when they are targeted for harassment or discrimination on the basis of their Jewish ethnic identity. The Center also works with college administrators, educating and reminding them of their legal obligations to protect Jewish students, faculty, and staff from anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination. When universities fail to comply with their legal obligations, the Center holds them accountable by taking legal action, in administrative agencies or in the U.S. courts. This encourages administrators to take their responsibilities towards Jews more seriously.

The Brandeis Center has used the Marcus doctrine, as well as other legal strategies, to protect the rights of Jewish students, faculty, and staff at institutions across the country, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Southern California, Tufts University, Brooklyn College, Stanford University, the University of Vermont, among many others.

The Center has also helped schools recognize newer forms of anti-Semitism, including “erasive” anti-Semitism, which obscures the history and ethnic identity of the Jewish people, and anti-Zionism that crosses the line from criticism into demonization of the Jewish State. The Center has helped non-Jews to understand Jewish commitment to the State of Israel, which is frequently mischaracterized as a political preference instead of what it is–an integral part of Jewish identity.

Recently, the Brandeis Center has begun applying the knowledge it has gleaned and tools it has developed in higher education to the corporate space. As U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioner Andrea Lucas recently observed during a Brandeis Center webinar, “instances of anti-Semitism in the workplace [too often] go ignored, unreported or unaddressed.” The Brandeis Center’s new Corporate Initiative offers legal advocacy and training to address this problem.

The Brandeis Center’s impact is also felt in the corporate space through litigation such as that on behalf of Ben & Jerry’s Israeli licensee, Avi Zinger, whose lawsuit was successfully resolved through a settlement with Ben & Jerry’s parent company, Unilever, that prevented a discriminatory boycott of Israel and enabled Mr. Zinger to continue selling Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in perpetuity throughout all of Israel. The Brandeis Center’s impact is also felt through the Center’s ongoing efforts to ensure that ESG investment is not used to promote BDS objectives.

Over the course of the next few years, the Brandeis Center aims to increase its scope and become an internationally-known resource for students, faculty, and others who face anti-Jewish and BDS-related discrimination in high school, on college campuses, in the workplace, and elsewhere.