American Jewish University President Dr. Jeffrey Herbst invited Brandeis Center Chairman Kenneth L. Marcus to join him in a conversation on August 1, 2024, about anti-Semitism on college campuses. On the AJU webinar “Using Law to Fight Antisemitism,” Marcus explained that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the single most important tool to combat anti-Semitism, since its scope was clarified (by him during the George W. Bush administration) to include the Jewish people. He explained that Title VI incentivizes best practices from universities at a time when “few institutions were doing all of the right things.” This information comes critically at a time when Jewish have been excluded, for example, from a sexual assault survivor club for demonstrating their support for Israel, as evidenced in the Brandeis Center’s SUNY New Paltz case and alluded to by Marcus. “You would expect these institutions, today, of all times, to be ready for a problem like this,” Chairman Marcus shared. He explained how university Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs have received significantly-increased funding following the murder of George Floyd, but Jewish students have received, at best, mixed treatment from DEI offices: “They don’t say ‘Jews have faced a history of persecution,'” Marcus continued. “They say ‘Jews are white’.” Marcus uses this framework to convey that DEI is often part of the problem when dealing with campus anti-Semitism, rather than the solution. If there is one thing a college campus can do to address anti-Semitism, Marcus suggests that schools adopt the IHRA definition, the only internationally-agreed upon definition of anti-Semitism. Watch Chairman Marcus and Dr. Herbst’s fascinating conversation below. Watch the full webinar below: Play videoTextBlockModalTitle × Your browser does not support the video tag. Authored by: Jonah Feuerstein
“The seeds of hate are sown long before the freshman year,” congressman Mike Kelly said. Published in Jewish News Syndicate on 6/14/24; Story by Andrew Bernard Experts told the House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday that Congress ought to use its power of the purse to combat antisemitism on college campuses. “We are seeing a kind of perfect storm of student violent extremism, professorial politicization, undisclosed foreign funding and often feckless and weak administration,” said Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. “Most of these institutions are tax-exempt and need to be held accountable if they do not meet the requirements of their tax-exempt status,” Marcus told the committee. “That’s true of the universities and also some of the organizations that have been fomenting hatred.” The Ways and Means Committee, which is responsible for taxation, is one of six House committees investigating the wave of antisemitism on college campuses in the aftermath of Oct. 7. Thursday’s hearing also included testimony from recent Cornell University graduate Talia Dror, Columbia University professor Shai Davidai, American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch and Jonathan Pidluzny, a director at the America First Policy Institute. The sharpest exchanges Thursday included partisan disagreements about the extent to which “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives contribute to Jew-hatred. “DEI teaches that the world is made up of oppressors and the oppressed, victims and those with privilege,” Pidluzny said. “Jews are coded as the oppressors by virtue of their political and economic success.” “This is what creates a kind of permission structure for students to join in with the true radicals cheering for Hamas terrorists who deliberately kill children and rape hostages,” he added. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) disagreed with that perspective. “Such claims not only misconstrue diversity, equity and inclusion but also basically pit one minority group against another,” he said. “DEI responds to decades of systematic exclusion of people of color from higher education in states like mine in Texas.” “It seeks to create a culture of respect and understanding for all. Both communities of color and Jewish Americans are all too familiar with the very real prejudice that they’ve endured,” he added. The hearing also probed the influence of foreign donations to American universities, with some congressmen questioning whether the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity status was intended to permit universities to receive billions of foreign dollars. Repeated mentions of Qatar at the hearing—both as the host of the Hamas political leadership and as a multi-billion dollar donor to U.S. higher education institutions—prompted pushback from the Qatari embassy on Friday. “Qatar has no desire or ability to influence anything that happens on U.S. university campuses,” the embassy stated. “It is flatly untrue, for example, that Qatar is the ‘largest foreign donor to U.S. universities’—a claim made to imply dark motives, and to undermine the strong U.S.- Qatar security and trade partnership.” Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) welcomed the testimony from Thursday’s panel but questioned the efficacy of congressional hearings in combating bigotry. “It’s amazing that we think we can have a meeting of the Ways and Means Committee to come together to try to figure out what the heck is wrong with what’s going on in the world today,” he said. “The seeds of hate are sown long before the freshman year.” “I am amazed that we think there’s a political answer to a human problem,” he added.
The Brandeis Center and our partners at StandWithUs and ADL jointly filed a federal complaint against Ohio State University (OSU), alleging a pervasive anti-Semitic climate for Jewish students. Pratt Institute removed a BDS resolution from its Academic Senate agenda after receiving a letter from LDB warning that passage “would trigger [New York State] to divest all state funding from Pratt. And NBC News sought LDB Chairman Kenneth L. Marcus’s comment on a major feature about anti-Semitism escalating across America’s college campuses. ‘Proactively Open Investigations,’ Kenneth Marcus Tells U.S. Dept. of Education NBC News contacted LDB Chairman Kenneth L. Marcus for a feature article about the pro-Hamas encampments that have been sweeping American university campuses. Marcus centered an important point about the U.S. Dept. of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) – the office which he used to lead – should be doing right now: “The department’s office of civil rights should be seizing the moment and taking charge of this situation. It’s not enough merely to wait passively for complaints to come in and log them and indicate that investigations have been opened.” Marcus continued: “They should be proactively opening investigations rather than waiting.” LDB, ADL, and StandWithUs File Complaint Against OSU for Hostile, Pervasive Anti-Semitism The Brandeis Center, Anti-Defamation League, and StandWithUs submitted a formal complaint with OCR against Ohio State University, alleging the university has failed to address the severe discrimination and harassment of Jewish and Israeli students following the October 7 massacre in Israel, which fostered “a hostile anti-Semitic environment that is now pervasive” at Ohio State. The groups allege that since the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, Jewish students at OSU have faced a litany of anti-Semitic incidents, including physical assaults, threatening graffiti in classrooms and university facilities, as well as the removal of posters and photos of kidnapped Israelis. The complaint seeks remedies under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “There is a clear, direct, and indisputable correlation between lack of accountability and rising levels of anti-Semitism,” stated LDB Chairman Kenneth L. Marcus. “Schools must act immediately to address incidents and hold violators accountable. Unfortunately, schools like Ohio State that continue to sweep incidents under the rug are getting worse by the day….Schools must uphold the law and address each and every incident of antisemitic discrimination and harassment, or the problem will continue to snowball.” The complaint urges OCR to compel the university’s administration to implement measures necessary to secure the safety of Jewish and Israeli students at OSU, including by issuing a public statement condemning anti-Semitic hostility on campus and devoting more resources and increasing security measure to deter future attacks. The complaint also urges the university to incorporate the IHRA working definition of antisemitism into its campus policies concerning discrimination, and to provide mandatory anti-Semitism training to university administrators, faculty, students and staff. LDB Letter Moves Pratt Institute to Back Down from Holding BDS Vote on Passover Brandeis Center Director of Corporate Initiatives and Senior Counsel Rory Lancman sent a letter to Pratt Institute’s Board Chair, President and Academic Senate President. The requests the Academic Senate to withdraw a BDS resolution – or risk running afoul of New York State law that “would trigger the state to divest all state funding from Pratt.” “Jewish faculty were being excluded from having any say because the measure was being introduced and potentially voted on during their religious holiday, when most if not all will be with family and friends,” Hon. Rory Lancman told the New York Post. “The anti-Semitic proposal is so broadly written that it could even ban Jewish community groups such as Hillel and Chabad from campus.” LDB represents staff and students opposed to the proposal. “Holding a vote to boycott Israel at that Passover meeting is positively obscene,” declared Lancman in the April 19 letter to Pratt board of trustees Chairman Garry Hattem, President Frances Bronet and Academic Senate President Uzma Rizvi, an archaeological professor. Lancman warned that Pratt’s refusal to accommodate the religious beliefs of Pratt’s Jewish students and staff by postponing a meeting that particularly impacts them as Jews would violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 covering higher education institutions that receive federal funding. He noted that a state executive order implemented first by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2016 and continued by Gov. Kathy Hochul bars New York State government from doing business with institutions that support the boycott, divest and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. “Any such boycott is illegal and, of course, among other things, would trigger the state to divest (oh, the irony) all state funding from Pratt,” Lancman wrote in LDB’s letter. In response to the Brandeis Center’s letter, Pratt ultimately relented and removed the BDS resolution vote from its Academic Senate agenda. The Post sought Lancman’s comment regarding a second anti-Semitic incident – involving the same professor who heads Pratt’s Academic Senate – concerning graphic and horrendous “Red Hands” vandalism to a tree on Pratt’s campus. “What better way to terrorize your Jewish students and faculty into submission than maintaining a display in the middle of your campus representing Jews getting lynched?” Lancman rhetorically asked the Post. Alyza Lewin Urges Vanderbilt to Admit Jewish Student Group to Campus Multicultural Organization Vanderbilt University has denied its local Students Supporting Israel (SSI) chapter membership in the Multicultural Leadership Council branch of its student government. The Algemeiner, in its coverage of the story, referred to insights from Brandeis Center President Alyza D. Lewin about a similar incident faced by Duke’s SSI chapter in 2021. At the time, LDB advised Duke’s SSI chapter and sent a letter warning the university about its exposure to legal liability should it fail to reverse the student government’s discriminatory decision not to grant the group recognition as an official student organization. “Grant them the same access,” Lewin said at the time, warning of potential civil rights violations. “Treat them no differently than any other student recognized organization. If the university chooses not to intervene and does not make sure that SSI gets equal access and it is understood to be no different than any other organization, there could be potential legal liability for the university.” Rachel Lerman Discusses LDB Anti-Semitism Lawsuit Against UC Berkeley on Bloomberg Podcast Brandeis Center General Counsel and Vice Chair L. Rachel Lerman joined Bloomberg Law’s “On the Merits” podcast for an episode titled “Why Lawsuits Against Campus Antisemitism May Succeed.” Lerman discussed the Brandeis Center’s pending lawsuit against the University of California Berkeley over the “longstanding unchecked spread of anti-Semitism” on Berkeley’s campus.“After October 7 it became dramatically worse. We are speaking to many students…who are telling us of their experiences on campus. A couple of them have been assaulted, some of them have been threatened, all of them have had to deal with the ongoing rallies…and different kind of pro-Hamas events going on at the school,” said Lerman. ‘Not Pro-Palestinian, This is Pro-Hate’ Declares Marcus on Fox News Brandeis Center Chairman Kenneth L. Marcus appeared on Fox News Live, the day following the Islamic Republic of Iran’s attack against Israel – to discuss protesters in Chicago erupting into applause to the news of the attack. “These are the moments when the anti-Israel activists give up the game….They are gleeful about an escalation of war, about an attack on the Jewish state. Peace activists don’t praise escalations of war. Human rights activists don’t support attacks on civilian populations,” asserted Marcus. “What we’re seeing when it comes to the organized anti-Zionist movement cannot be understood as anything other than an organized hate group or anti-Semitism organization.” Play videoTextBlockModalTitle × Your browser does not support the video tag. Kenneth Marcus Praises Congressional Hearing, Making it Harder for Columbia ‘Administrators to Gaslight Students’ Brandeis Center Chairman Kenneth L. Marcus provided insights to Politico, ahead of the U.S. House Committee on Education & the Workforce hearing on campus anti-Semitism with Columbia University President Minouche Shafik. Marcus praised the Committee’s decision to hold another public hearing on campus anti-Semitism. He said the heightened awareness from Congressional scrutiny greatly benefits Jewish students, who have faced anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination long before the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel triggered nationwide campus demonstrations. “This has made it harder for administrators to gaslight students and pretend that the problem doesn’t exist,” declared Marcus. “It’s also created pressures that have led some administrators to take useful actions, but they’re still too few and far between.” Marcus Quoted Extensively in Free Press Article Examining Results from OCR Anti-Semitism Complaints and Independent Lawsuits The Free Press quoted Brandeis Center Chairman Kenneth L. Marcus extensively in a feature broadly examining anti-Semitism complaints filed with the U.S. Dept. of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR), along with independent lawsuits. The story describes the Brandeis Center as “the driving force behind much of this litigation.” “The goal in these cases is to change the behavior of university administrators,” Marcus said, “so they will deter this sort of activity, which is not tolerated toward any other group.” Responding to the question of whether these legal challenges work, Marcus pointed to LDB’s landmark resolution agreement reached between the federal government and the University of Vermont, spurred by LDB’s Title VI anti-Semitism complaint: “No one is saying we’ve cured antisemitism in Vermont or that the work can stop there,” Marcus said. “What people are saying is that the university is dramatically more responsive to antisemitic incidents than it was before.” The piece included Marcus’s views that the DEI ideological approach as a whole needs to be dismantled if Jews are to be fully protected from anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination: “As long as DEI programs are built upon the dichotomy of oppressors and oppressed, Jews will too often be defined as oppressors and told to own their privilege,” he said. “This entire ideological approach needs to be dismantled.” The article also mentioned LDB’s rapid staff expansion following October 7. Jewish Press Includes LDB in Select Group of Organizations, Urging Readers to ‘Donate Jewish’The Brandeis Center thanks the Jewish Press for including our organization in its select group of pro-Jewish and Israel organizations to consider donating to this year.
Published in The Free Press on 3/27/24; Story by Eli Lake. At least 50 U.S. universities have been sued for Jew-hatred on campus since October 7. Will it solve the problem? On November 27, MIT postdoctoral associate Afif Aqrabawi posted on X that Zionists steal the organs of dead Palestinians. “I feel like I’ve seen this movie before,” he wrote. “Sounds like some crazy horror film, no?” But when a Jewish student approached MIT’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office to complain about the libel against the Jewish State, an administrator responded, “I would be very cautious before accusing any one of our colleagues, staff, or trainees of hate speech.” The email, which was included in a March 7 lawsuit against MIT that redacted the student’s name, continued: “Can I gently suggest, in the same spirit of working against polarization, that if we believe (as I genuinely do) that it is wrong to accuse Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs, it may also be a little misleading and inflammatory to compare recirculating, in effect, an old and decontextualized but confirmed report, to accusing Jews of murdering Christian children for ritual purposes (‘blood libel’)?” That incident is just one example of a disturbing trend that has swept American campuses since the October 7 atrocities against Israel. Jewish students complain about outrageous hate speech from colleagues and professors—and university administrators, typically eager to root out bigotry against other minorities, decline to take action. In this, critics say, they have betrayed not just the ethos of the universities, but Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which compels institutions to take action against discrimination and harassment. Now, some of the most elite universities in the country are facing a wave of investigations on behalf of Jewish students. At least 50 colleges and universities have become the targets of Education Department probes and civil lawsuits—including Wellesley, MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, and UC Berkeley. The driving force behind much of this litigation is Kenneth Marcus, a former assistant secretary for civil rights at the Education Department under Donald Trump and the founder of the Brandeis Center, a legal think tank that has sued and won antisemitism cases against universities for the last 12 years. Since October 7, Marcus has added three senior lawyers and two full-time staff to handle the caseload, bringing the total to 18 people. “All of our staff are stretched very thin,” he told The Free Press. “The goal in these cases is to change the behavior of university administrators,” he said, “so they will deter this sort of activity, which is not tolerated toward any other group.” But do these legal challenges work? Is it possible for lawsuits to change deep-seated cultures that have cultivated animus against Israel for decades? And do these lawsuits, as critics of them claim, squelch free speech? Answering the first question, Marcus insists they do. As proof, he pointed to a recent Education Department investigation, spurred by his center, against the University of Vermont. That complaint, filed in 2021, detailed a shocking series of incidents. For one, a campus organization for victims of sexual harassment declared on Instagram that Zionist students were not allowed to join. Also, a teaching assistant recommended on social media that the grades of Jewish students who expressed support for Israel should be lowered. And finally, after a mob of students threw rocks at the dormitory windows of the Hillel House on campus, and a student yelled at the crowd, they responded, “Are you Jewish?” Even in the face of these hostilities, the university almost never responded to complaints from Jewish students, the suit said. In fact, the university’s first response to the investigation when it was made public in 2022 was to dismiss the concerns. “The uninformed narrative published this week has been harmful to UVM,” the school’s president, Suresh Garimella wrote. “Equally importantly, it is harmful to our Jewish students, faculty, staff, and alumni.” But five weeks later, on October 28, 2022, Garimella reversed his position after national Jewish organizations signed a letter taking him to task for ignoring the problem. As a result, one year later, the university has reformed. While in the past, its official antidiscrimination policy did not include special protections for students based on their ancestry, the school has now updated its rules to be clear that antisemitism, along with any other hatred toward ethnic groups, is not accepted at the university. And Jewish students, according to the university’s Hillel House president Matt Vogel, now say they receive prompt responses to complaints from the administration, often within 24 hours. “There has been a remarkable evolution in visible support for Jewish students, updated policies, and improved systems and processes for bias reporting,” Vogel wrote in a recent post. On April 3, 2023, the Education Department considered its investigation into the University of Vermont resolved. “No one is saying we’ve cured antisemitism in Vermont or that the work can stop there,” Marcus said. “What people are saying is that the university is dramatically more responsive to antisemitic incidents than it was before.” Yael Lerman, the director of the StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice, one of the groups representing Jewish students at MIT in the lawsuit filed this month, said many universities are in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which protects minority students’ ability to “participate in or benefit from the services, activities, or opportunities offered by the school.” Lerman said she wants universities to take “forceful and timely remedial action against those who violate school policies and target Jewish students for discrimination and harassment.” But this wave of lawsuits also highlights the tension between civil rights law and free speech. Pro-Palestinian groups have accused Marcus of using these complaints to pressure college administrators to suppress political activism critical of Israel. A lawyer for Palestine Legal, Radhika Sainath, told The New York Times that the goal of these lawsuits is “not to win on the merit, but to force universities to investigate, condemn, and suppress speech supporting Palestinian rights, because they are so fearful of bad press and donor backlash.” And yet, her critique ignores the fact universities have practiced a double standard when it comes to free speech for years. A Penn law professor, Amy Wax, was disciplined by the university for private remarks she made about African American students that were recorded on Zoom, suggesting some were not prepared for the rigors of the classroom. Other students and professors have faced sanctions from universities for speech-related offenses. But when Jewish students have complained about antisemitic speech, universities have largely been unresponsive. Still, clamping down on campus antisemitism can go too far. After Texas governor Greg Abbott signed an executive order Wednesday mandating that his state’s higher education institutions “update free speech policies” and even consider expulsion from colleges as an appropriate punishment, free speech organization Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) accused him of overreach. “State-mandated campus censorship violates the First Amendment and will not effectively answer antisemitism,” FIRE said in a statement. “When speech on contentious issues is subject to punishment, minds cannot be changed.” Marcus said a better way to combat antisemitism is to target the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracies on college campuses, which often perpetuate the notion of Jews being “oppressors.” In the short term, universities should “audit their programs to ensure they are not disseminating the same kinds of anti-Jewish stereotypes circulating in the institution and they are not exacerbating the problems they are trying to address,” he said. But, in the long term, the entire DEI model should be dismantled, Marcus said. “As long as DEI programs are built upon the dichotomy of oppressors and oppressed, Jews will too often be defined as oppressors and told to own their privilege,” he said. “This entire ideological approach needs to be dismantled.”
Published by Aish.com on 1/8/24; Story by Faygie Holt Resignation of Harvard and Penn presidents just a first step to address “double standard” Jewish students face in battling antisemitism on campus. In the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd by a white police office back in May 2020 America had reckoning of sorts with racism. Despite a worldwide pandemic and shutdown, people took to the streets to demand justice. Among them were young Jewish adults and college students, who like their peers, picked up the mantle and demanded action and change. Across the country, businesses and colleges scrambled to create or boost their DEI—Diversity, Equity and Inclusion—offices or departments. They offered training on unconscious bias and differences in cultural norms. Minority voices, it seemed, were finally being heard, welcomed and promoted. Yet, as many Jews would find out following the devastating Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel, DEI left them out in the cold. The same people who wrote impassioned pleas for understanding on how the African-American community felt about George Floyd’s death and its impact on that community failed to provide the same understanding for Jewish students. And some of those people were in leadership positions at the nation’s storied institutions, among them was Claudine Gay, the recently ousted president of Harvard University. On May 31, 2020, she issued a statement in the wake of Floyd’s murder saying, “like many of you, I have watched in pain and horror the events unfolding across the nation this week, triggered by the callous and depraved actions of a white police office in Minneapolis. … we are confronted again by old hatreds and enduring legacies of anti-black racism and inequality. It’s a familiarity that makes me deeply restless for change. “Part of that change is the work we do here to learn and listen across lines of differences and to build a community grounded in trust and respect,” she continued. Yet that sense of respect, that concern, was missing when it came to how the Jewish and pro-Israel students on her campus fared after Oct. 7. As Gay herself noted in an op-ed she wrote for The New York Times following her resignation, “In my initial response to the atrocities of Oct. 7, I should have stated more forcefully what all people of good conscience know: Hamas is a terrorist organization that seeks to eradicate the Jewish state.” To be sure, Gay was not alone in her failure to understand and empathize with students who, even prior to the Hamas attacks, were facing record antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents on campus. Yet it was Gay, along with her colleagues, Liz McGill from University of Pennsylvania, and Sally Kornbluth of MIT, who sat in before a congressional hearing on Dec. 5 and failed to clearly admit that calls for genocide of Jews required action on behalf of the schools. That moment served as a clarion call for many who did not understand the magnitude of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment at American universities and colleges. “I think people woke up after Oct. 7 to the deficient university response to antisemitism,” says Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, co-founder and director of Amcha Initiative, which tracks antisemitism on college and university campuses. “There were already unprecedented numbers on Oct. 6. When Oct. 7 happened, you couldn’t ignore it anymore.” While McGill tended her resignation at Penn shortly after the congressional hearing, Gay was determined to hang on to her post. (Kornbluth remains as the president of MIT.) Then came the numerous allegations of plagiarism. Gay and her supporters claim she was being targeted because of her race and by conservatives who were taking aim at DEI as implied by a Jan. 3 Associated Press story, “Plagiarism charges downed Harvard’s president. A conservative attack helped to fan the outrage.” But for many, her ousting and the subsequent examination of her scholarly works would not have happened but for how she handled herself during the congressional hearing. As Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who pressed the university presidents during their congressional testimony, said, Gay’s resignation is “long overdue.” “Claudine Gay’s morally bankrupt answers to my questions made history,” the congresswoman stated in a press release. “Her answers were pathetic and devoid of the moral leadership and academic integrity required of the president of Harvard.” It was Gay’s “disastrous congressional testimony that began her fall from grace,” says Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Right Under Law. At a minimum, her departure along with the resignation of Penn’s Liz McGill, should signal to others that this “is an issue they can no longer ignore or sweep under the carpet.” Sweet-Sounding Euphemisms of DEI Among those who helped bring the allegations of plagiarism to light was Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. In a Wall Street Journal article he called her departure part of a “great conflict” going on in academia and one that “if we are to preserve America’s core principles, America must win.” In his piece, he also took aim at the “sweet-sounding euphemisms of DEI,” noting that public support for DEI “cratered.” “Following the outpouring of sympathy on elite campuses for Hamas’s war of ‘decolonization’ against Israel, many Americans—including many center-left liberals—became of aware of the ideological rot with academic institutions,” Rufo wrote. According to Marcus, “What we need in the wake of Oct. 7 is a campus cultural change as profound as what we saw for African-Americans in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, which ushered in a period where administrators quickly and carefully rethought their approach to racist issue. What we need now is a shift in perspective toward antisemitism, which is as substantial as the shift we saw a few years ago.” Even before Gay’s departure, Harvard Hillel had requested several changes in how the school approaches allegations of antisemitism, changes that they will continue to push for with the goal of keeping students safe and healthy and sustaining a vibrant Jewish life on campus, according to Getzel Davis, campus rabbi at Harvard Hillel. Among their recommendations, which were highlighted in a Dec. 19 letter to Gay and other university leaders, are funding for security personnel and systems, prohibiting protests near student housing, and establishing guidance for teaching assistance and other faculty members when it comes to protests with the goal of ensuring that they are not using their professional positions to target those with different beliefs. Additionally, Harvard Hillel wants the school to require antisemitism education for “every student and member of the faculty, administration, and staff along with other mandatory DEI training.” That they must spell out a requisite of antisemitism education along with “other mandatory DEI training,” speaks to the failure by those tasked with implementing and addressing DEI to include the protection and care of Jewish students in their bailiwick. “DEI offices have often acted as if Jewish Americans were outside their scope of responsibility, but that is less of a legal matter than an ideological one,” says Marcus, served as the assistant secretary of education for civil rights under the Trump administration. “Built on this is the currently fashionable notion that we should view everyone as oppressor or oppressed. “This aspect of anti-racist ideology has had a negative impact on Jewish students, but it does not have foundation the law,” he continues, explaining that practically speaking when Jewish students go a DEI office seeking support “they will receive a cold shoulder from administrators who are quicker to support members of other groups such as African-American, Hispanics, or gay or lesbian students.” Rossman believes that Jewish students are simply not afforded the same protections that other groups are because DEI actions are based on identification of a student within a protected group, be it African-American, Latina, LGBTQ+, Native Americans and others. “This issue is so much bigger than Gay or McGill,” Rossman states. “It’s why there is such an outrageous double standard on campus. When you dole out protection and privilege based on identity it will hurt a lot of people, but it will always hurt Jews.” “We can’t just think that replacing the president will make a difference when you have these double standards built into the institution of campus life,” she continues, adding that the fixes must address the deficiencies of the DEI movement. For now, though, those who work with Jewish students at Harvard hope that Alan Garber, who will be serving as Harvard University’s interim president, will tackle the issues that Gay refused to confront head-on and restore the school’s pride and stature, especially as it relates to the safety and security of Jewish students. As Davis said, “We look forward to continuing to work with the next president of Harvard and the rest of the senior university administration, to ensure that Jewish students are able to safely express their identities on our campus.” “President Alan Garber is an admired friend, and a man of great integrity and high moral character,” said Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, leader of Chabad at Harvard. “At this critical moment in history, we look forward to working with President Garber to ensure that Harvard can be a beacon of light to our students and world hungry for wisdom and moral clarity.” “Claudine Gay was the leader of a major Ivy League institution and failed to exercise the sort of leadership that should be a minimum criterion for success,” says Marcus. “My hope is that other college presidents will take note and change their direction before there have to be other repercussions like this one.”
Published by The Wall Street Journal on 1/4/24; Story by Ray A. Smith and Lauren Weber DEI programs have come under fire from many directions The management philosophy known as DEI, which had gathered momentum since 2020, has been under siege over the past year amid a collision of legal, economic and geopolitical forces. The Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in colleges, removing the legal rationale buttressing many diversity programs. An expected slowdown in the economy prompted companies to cut jobs and financial support for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. And the Israel-Hamas war and college presidents’ responses to antisemitism on campus led some to question whether DEI programs and the values behind them extended to all students. This week brought the resignation of Harvard University President Claudine Gay, whose championing of diversity initiatives made her a target of conservative critics. Gay, Harvard’s first Black female president, had come under additional fire in recent weeks for allegations of plagiarism and for congressional testimony in which she and other college presidents struggled in their responses to questions about antisemitism on campuses. Also this week, Texas became the second state, after Florida, to ban DEI initiatives at publicly funded colleges and universities. Texas A&M University had already announced in the fall that it closed its DEI office and reassigned the team’s staff members. It isn’t clear whether the upheaval of the past year will have a broad and lasting impact on how companies and colleges approach diversity. Some DEI consultants say the scrutiny surrounding such efforts in academia could have a chilling effect on corporate diversity initiatives, emboldening critics to take them on. Others maintain that DEI is resilient. “I do expect we’ll see activists targeting companies and leaders who have been outspoken on the importance of diversity and inclusion,” said Joelle Emerson, CEO of Paradigm, a provider of consulting services and analytic tools that has worked with organizations including American Express, Grubhub and the National Football League on their DEI efforts. “In our work, we’ve already seen this start to happen. I’ve heard a number of leaders at Fortune 500 companies say that they’re planning to continue their diversity and inclusion efforts, but just plan to be quieter about what they’re doing.” Affirmative action The Supreme Court’s June decision to strike down affirmative action in college admissions boosted efforts by conservative groups to fight initiatives in the corporate sphere designed to rectify imbalances in the workplace, from hiring targets to fellowship and internship programs reserved for people from underrepresented groups. Since the high court’s decision, conservative activists have launched a string of legal challenges against companies, including Starbucks and Amazon, targeting DEI programs they say violate rules against race and sex discrimination by steering opportunities or funds to racial and ethnic minority groups. Some companies have made changes to diversity initiatives. Comcast altered a small-business grant program to minority- or female-owned companies to make all small businesses eligible after the cable company was accused of violating the civil rights of white, male business owners. Companies are largely maintaining their programs or making only small alterations to address the areas where they see the most potential legal or reputational risk, said Ishan Bhabha, an attorney at Jenner & Block and co-chair of the firm’s DEI Protection Task Force. “There’s less backing away than one might think and I’ve actually been surprised by it,” he said. A principal aim of the conservative assault on DEI programs, he said, is to create the perception in the corporate world that the legal liability is broader than it actually is “so that companies back away voluntarily from programs that are completely legal and were totally uncontroversial even a couple of years ago.” Corporate cuts Demand for chief diversity officers surged after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 sparked a wider examination of racial inequity at work. Diversity executives arrived with big mandates, healthy budgets and momentum on their side. Many found resources and support from senior executives waned over time, and dropped off sharply after the Supreme Court decision and a slowdown in the economy that prompted companies to cut corporate staff. In some cases, DEI-related roles were among the first to be eliminated when companies pulled back on hiring broadly because these initiatives were often tied to recruiting. Many chief diversity officers left their jobs and their teams dwindled. Nearly 30% of workers who began a diversity-related role after mid-2020 have left the field altogether, according to employment data provider Live Data Technologies. The advancement of Black professionals has stalled as well. Recent data from McKinsey show promotion rates for Black staff have fallen back near 2019 levels. “DEI is going to come under full-out attack in 2024, no holds barred,” said Johnny C. Taylor Jr., the CEO of SHRM, an association for human resource managers, at a December breakfast with journalists in New York City. The organization highlighted DEI as one of the top issues companies would be grappling with in the new year. Taylor said companies are already moving away from DEI efforts, especially those efforts tied to numeral targets for hiring or promotions of Blacks and other people of color or base executive bonuses on those targets. The Israel effect A pro-Palestinian movement on college campuses in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas has elevated criticism of some aspects of the DEI movement. Critics say colleges focused on the goals of DEI have cultivated an environment where students see the world as divided between the oppressed and their oppressors, leading to an anti-Israel or anti-Jewish sentiment on campuses. At a congressional hearing in December in which Gay and other university presidents were questioned about antisemitism on their campuses, some Republican lawmakers drew a direct line from schools’ DEI initiatives to antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assaults. Their argument, in part, is that these initiatives have been overly focused on race and gender, at the expense of other groups that are victims of bigotry. “Institutional antisemitism and hate are among the poison fruits of your institution’s cultures,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.) at the hearing, where both Democrats and Republican lawmakers were critical of the leaders’ handling of the problems. Some workers report feeling similar concerns in their workplaces, said Rory Lancman, director of corporate initiatives and senior counsel at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which fights antisemitism. His organization is fielding calls related to several workplace themes, he said, including “anti-Israel and anti-Zionist animus” driven by the Israel-Hamas war, leading to what some employees say they are experiencing as a hostile work environment. In addition, he said, “Jewish concerns and antisemitism have been erased from corporate DEI programs to the point where there is no training on combating antisemitism.” Some workers are also finding that their requests to have workplace affinity groups, also known as employee resource groups, are being denied, often on the grounds that companies have a policy of not allowing religiously-based employee groups.
Published by Jewish Policy Center’s inFocus magazine’s winter 2024 issue Editor’s Note: This conversation is excerpted from a panel discussion, “Enriching the U.S.-Israel Alliance by Combating Antisemitism,” at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC on October 23, 2023, even before the full weight of events was felt. Kenneth L. Marcus is the founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. He is also a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for Liberty and Law at George Mason University Law School and formerly Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the US Department of Education and has served as Staff Director of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Ellie Cohanim is a broadcast journalist who served as Deputy Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism at the US Department of State. She had previously been a Special Correspondent and Senior Vice President for Jewish Broadcasting Service (JBS) and an Executive at Yeshiva University, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and UJA Federation of New York. Ellie Cohanim: To begin our conversation allow me to share context: Jews around the world are in a state of shock and horror. On October 7 while Jewish families in Israel celebrated the Simchat Torah holiday, Hamas infiltrated Jewish communities of southern Israel, massacred 1,200 people, wounded nearly 5,000 others, and committed atrocities not seen since the Holocaust. Israel says that 80 percent of the 1,200 murdered that day were tortured first. Hamas kidnapped young women, toddlers, babies, elderly people, and seems to have unleashed the forces of hate across the globe on that day. Ken, not only did we witness these horrific crimes, these atrocities committed against the Jewish people—but before Israel had even responded, before Israelis had even the opportunity to identify, never mind bury their dead—we saw students across US college campuses come out and protest, and rally, in support of Hamas. What is happening on our college campuses? There is something called the Marcus Doctrine, which is attributed to you. Can you also tell us about that and how it ties into what we are experiencing today? Ken Marcus: I have been fighting campus antisemitism for more than 20 years. It gets worse and worse, but never have we experienced anything like the past couple of weeks. It has been surging over the last few years, but this really has been something unlike anything we saw before. Think about what’s happening now. What we just saw, and as you described, was mass torture, murder, rape of civilians, burning people alive, decapitation. The immediate response from college campuses in many places was to support the terrorists. In one case, a professor talking about being “exhilarated.” In many cases, student groups arguing that people should “join the resistance,” meaning the genocidal attack on Jewish people. This goes beyond the hostile environments that we have seen over recent years. What we’re experiencing now is a mass phenomenon. Once we see it, we can’t unsee it. University presidents and the public now must face the fact that on our college campuses, something monstrous is developing. We have very substantial movements of pro-Hamas, pro-terrorist, pro-genocidal groups at some of the most important universities in the United States. Right now, there are university presidents arguing about whether they should or should not issue a “statement.” Those presidents who either don’t issue a statement or want a “both sides” statement are utterly incapable of understanding the moral issues. But even for those who do issue a statement and even a statement with moral clarity, it’s still just a statement! If you are the president of a university today, you are now aware that for all the millions of dollars you have put into “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” (DEI), you have created the opposite of DEI. For all that your admissions have done to create a student body that reflects the values you pretend to hold, you have created a student body which is in favor of murder. For all that you say that your curriculum should do more than just provide information or critical thinking, you have curricula that is training pro-terrorist people. This is beyond “statements.” We are at a time in which if you are a university president and you have not thought about cleaning house, you shouldn’t be there. It’s not about—“do you issue a statement.” It’s about—do you realize that you are running an institution that is fundamentally and totally wrongheaded in its approach and that is sending this country in the wrong direction? Even a good statement isn’t enough. You asked about what I call the Title VI Policy—and what other people may call the Marcus Doctrine. That is the notion that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits certain forms of race, color, or national origin discrimination in the public schools, and in colleges and universities, but that doesn’t mention religion, nevertheless protects Jews and certain other groups that have ethnic backgrounds as well as religious ones. It is based on the idea that a group that has ethnic or ancestral characteristics should not lose the protections that they would have, if they did not have a shared common faith. The Biden administration, to its credit, has expanded the use of the Marcus Doctrine to include not only the Department of Education—whose civil rights agency I headed—and the Department of Justice, but also eight other agencies. So, there are now 10 cabinet level agencies committed to the policy. I’m pleased with this. This is something that’s taken some 20 years to establish, but once we have this notion that these federal agencies are going to deal with antisemitism, are they going to deal with antisemitism? Because the signs aren’t great, the signs really aren’t great. So now they know they have to do something, let’s see them do it. Cohanim: Let’s talk now for a moment about Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The Louis Brandeis Center was leading an effort recently on an SJP campus program they held on October 12, the so-called “National Day of Resistance.” SJP chapters are known for their anti-Israel propaganda, often with inflammatory and combative rhetoric. Can you tell us what happened with SJP and how do we turn this tide of Jew-hate on US campuses? Marcus: I’ll give you a few examples of what’s happening on the campus and why it is that, respectfully, I agree that President [of the University of Florida] Ben Sasse’s statement was one of the best, maybe the best, but it’s a low bar. I’m not sure that it was good enough for the University of Florida, and it certainly isn’t enough for the universities that are seeing much worse levels of antisemitism. [Editor’s Note: Sasse’s letter read, in part, “We will protect our students and we will protect speech. This is always true: Our Constitution protects the rights of people to make abject idiots of themselves. I also want to be clear about this: We will protect our Jewish students from violence. If anti-Israel protests come, we will absolutely be ready to act if anyone dares to escalate beyond peaceful protest. Speech is protected—violence and vandalism are not.”] I’ve gotten reports of physical attacks on Jewish students in the wake of the call for “resistance.” And when they use the term “resistance,” they’re using the Hamas term. They’re calling for people to join in a worldwide movement that has reached its culmination—so far—in a pogrom involving torture, rape, and murder. They’re calling for people around the world to join in replicating the atrocities that have already happened. In the wake of that, we’re seeing physical attacks on Jewish students. We’re seeing vandalism of Jewish institutions. We’re seeing students being followed, being taunted, being harassed in various ways. This is happening all over the place and it’s often supported by faculty members. Seldom are our university administrators really doing very much if anything about it. Keep this in mind. If you’re thinking about the campus in the same way after October 7 that you did before October 7, you’re not thinking about it right. Prior to that, yes, we were seeing environments made toxic by antisemitic and anti-American ideology. Yes, we were seeing Jewish students who were being harassed, marginalized, and excluded to the extent that Zionism was an integral part of their identity, but what we’re seeing now is university-funded—and in some cases taxpayer-funded—efforts to advance in a conscious and intentional manner, the program and communications agenda of a US State Department-designated terrorist organization. To be clear, what I’m describing is potentially a felony. So, if you’re a university president who is not sure whether you should or shouldn’t make a statement, let me say that on many campuses, it’s too late anyhow. Statements are okay in response to statements and people who are simply saying false things. You can then say things that are the truth. If people are saying things that are immoral, you can give a moral example. But if people are committing assault and vandalism, you can’t just make a statement. If your university’s facilities and resources are being used in a way that intentionally advances the agenda of a terrorist organization, if you aren’t sure whether you are committing a felony, forget about the statement. You need to take much greater actions even than the best of the university presidents are making. We need to hear very strong messages from university presidents, from attorneys general, from governors that this can’t continue. It’s not a question of political disagreement. It’s not even just a question of bigotry or harassment anymore. Now it’s also a question of whether our public institutions are being used not only to undermine American foreign policy, but potentially to advance terrorism in a way that is federally criminal. Cohanim: It is hard for us to believe that we have reached this low at our institutions of “higher” learning. Ken, you spoke a bit about a few steps that the Biden administration has taken to combat antisemitism. Do you think it should be doing more, and what kind of initiatives would you recommend? Marcus: The Biden administration issued a National Strategy on dealing with antisemitism and should be applauded for its breadth and for public attention it brought to the issue. But in terms of substantive work it is doing, I would say that so far it has lagged behind that of the last few administrations. I would also say that there has been a sense from those speaking with people in the Biden administration that they issued their National Strategy and were planning to do nothing more until after the election. I hope no one in the administration has been thinking that since October 7. Because while there are some good things in the National Strategy, it wasn’t sufficient for October 6, and it surely isn’t sufficient for now. I’ll give you a few examples. The Biden administration has continuously promised to issue a formal regulation that would implement the Trump Executive Order on Combating Antisemitism, and yet continually throughout this administration has delayed doing so. The current deadline, self-imposed by the Biden administration, is December of this year. Notably, they’ve been saying very little bit about it. They haven’t even mentioned it in many months, leaving some to think that they’re not ever going to do it. At a minimum, they should be doing what they promised. The US Education Department Office for Civil Rights has issued some materials, but when it comes to the anti-Zionist forms of antisemitism, the Department of Education hasn’t even spoken with the same specificity that we’ve even seen from the White House—and at a minimum, they should be able to do that. Now, look at all the campuses at which there is so much antisemitism over the last two weeks; all you need to have is Google and you can see substantial amounts of harassment and “hostile environment,” which the Department of Education is obligated to address. The education department shouldn’t be waiting to get complaints. There should be a nationwide compliance initiative from the Secretary of Education right now—at a minimum—to address those campuses, where obviously there are problems, because they’re all over the blogosphere and the papers. Audience Question: In the context of “corporate woke-ism,” I’m curious what you think companies should be saying about this? Is this different than coming out and talking about other issues? What would a good response from corporate America look like? Marcus: Those in the corporate world, especially the human resources world, can look to the Society of Human Resources Managers (SHRM) as a good source of advice. I’ve shared my thoughts with SHRM and they have those thoughts on their website. There are a number of things they should do to begin with; there are things they already should have been doing. A lot of corporations have months to recognize African American, women, Asian, and other workers, but don’t have them for Jewish workers. May is Jewish American History Month. Let them recognize that. Some of them have employee resource groups (ERGs) for African American and Hispanic and other identity groups but have refused to allow their Jewish workers to create them based on the notion that Jewishness is a religion only. They should be educated on that and provide the same ERG opportunities for Jewish employees as for others. They should monitor their DEI programs to see whether they’re making things worse, because sometimes that is the case. To the extent that they have education programs on various forms of discrimination, they should make sure that they’re including antisemitism, including those forms of antisemitism that we’re seeing today—which is to say left-wing as well as right-wing antisemitism. To the extent that they made statements about the Ukraine invasion or other world affairs, they should be making them about the Hamas pogrom as well. To the extent that they make accommodations for other workers who have various sorts of needs, they should consider their Israeli American employees who might be called to duty in Israel and might need some accommodations. They should certainly be making the sorts of statements that they make for others, and they should be considering both antisemitism and Jewish identity in the same way that they treat any other ethnic or racial background. Question: I’m a Jewish college student and my friends and I have personally experienced antisemitism, specifically by the organization that you mentioned, Students for Justice in Palestine. How can we ensure that Jewish students feel safe in college campuses expressing both their Jewish identity and their Zionist beliefs? Marcus: To the extent that you or your fellow students have been harassed, certainly talk to the Louis D. Brandeis Center. There are a lot of resources that can help you feel safe. We talk to students every day about that. Of course, there are also other institutions on campus that can support you ranging from Hillel to Chabad and Jewish Studies, but depending on what the issue is, I think the most important thing is that you do not feel alone. If you are facing a problem, there are a lot of organizations here to support you.
Published 10/10/23 by Campus Reform. Story by William Biagini ‘These wrong-headed student voices are more pronounced in light of the administration’s failure to speak out quickly and firmly against the atrocities,’ said Brandeis Center founder Kenneth Marcus. Over 30 student organizations at Harvard University issued a joint statement on Sunday, asserting that Israel is “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” following Hamas’ weekend attack. Kenneth Marcus—founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law—told Campus Reform in an Oct. 10 statement that “It is reprehensible, to say the least, that so many Harvard student organizations are taking the wrong side on this massacre.” “When so many people are being slaughtered, raped, and their corpses desecrated, it shouldn’t be difficult to decide whether you are on the side of the murderers or the victims,” he continued. “And yet all of these Harvard students are rushing to join the wrong side—the side of the perpetrators.” “These wrong-headed student voices are more pronounced in light of the administration’s failure to speak out quickly and firmly against the atrocities, just as they spoke out when Russian [sic] invaded Ukraine,” Marcus added. Marcus criticized the administration’s prioritization of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) prioritization, claiming that it has “allowed such bigotry to grow unchecked. It is also a sign of something rotten in Harvard’s admissions program, that they have admitted these people.” Campus Reform also contacted the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which pointed to an organizational statement released in an Oct. 8 X post. “With over 700 Israeli dead, many more wounded, and Hamas claiming 130 Israelis including children captive, the joint statement by Harvard student groups blaming Israel for these acts of a foreign terrorist organization is despicable,” it reads. ADL’s statement concluded with “@Harvard must disavow or be seen as complicit in this antisemitism that should have no place on campus.”
On July 12, 2023, Brandeis Center President Alyza D. Lewin and novelist and People Love Dead Jews author Dara Horn discussed campus anti-Semitism, Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs and other issues relevant to Jewish students in the ICC Field Professional Retreat’s “Unmasking Antisemitism” dialogue session.
The Brandeis Center hosted a webinar earlier this month entitled “Anti-Semitism in the Workplace.” Panelists discussed the effects of anti-Semitism in the corporate world and the role it plays in current trends and perceptions, specifically within Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training and accommodations. . Brandeis Center Founder and Chairman Kenneth L. Marcus served as moderator. The panelists included: Holly Huffnagle, American Jewish Committee U.S. Director for Combating Antisemitism Jonathan A. Segal, Partner at Duane Morris LLP and Managing Principal at the Duane Morris Institute Craig E. Leen, Partner at K&L Gates LLP and former director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) Brandeis Center President Alyza D. Lewin also participated in the Q&A section. . After a brief introduction, Huffnagle provided background on the behavioral changes recorded in American Jews in the workplace: four in ten Jewish adults have changed their behavior at least once due to fear, 40% of US adults have reported seeing anti-Semitism, and 30% have reported seeing it more than once. There is an unfortunate disconnect in the workplace, which begins with a deep-rooted misunderstanding in who Jews are. Huffnagle urged for anti-Semitism to be discussed within DEI spaces and training. The flawed presumption that Jews are “white and privileged” has resulted in anti-Semitism to be extremely overlooked as Jews are perceived to be superior and having too much power. Anti-Semitism oversight is society’s blind spot that propels toxic and biased company culture. . Segal spoke about conscious anti-Semitism and how it impacts workplace stereotyping and organizational dismissiveness. Workplace accommodations tend to be treated differently for Jewish individuals – who must explain and reexplain their need for holiday or Sabbath observance. Jewish employees can be harassed via jokes or comments pertaining to wealth, power, Holocaust denial, the Middle East, and many other detrimental stereotypes. As these factors compound, there is an evident need for implementing anti-Jewish bias training in the workplace. . Leen highlighted the problems caused by the normalization of anti-Semitism in the workplace. He reiterated that religious accommodations must be taken just as seriously and with the same gravity as disability accommodations. Anti-Semitism in the workplace is a significant problem and proactive measures must be in place to protect Jewish professionals. These standards must be upheld in the highest regard and granted equally across the board. . In the webinar’s final Q&A section, Kenneth L. Marcus asked the group why some corporations have done the right thing while others have not. Huffnagle suggested it depends on a company’s leadership –being willing to ask hard questions and strive for more equitable outcomes. By seeking input from Jewish employees when creating new policies or restructuring current ones, leadership can leverage their unique perspective to propel improvement. Segal added that employees must listen rather than be defensive, be willing to integrate new training, and strive to do the trivial things that will ultimately go a long way in forging bridges. Sometimes when anti-Semitic incidents occur, discussion during their aftermath leads to improvements. Leen emphasized the need for DEI programs to include religion – with the understanding the Jews are both a people and a religion – an “ethno-religion.” He lamented the fact that, compared to other groups, Jews are often over-generalized as a falsely monolithic group to fit arbitrary stereotypes. . This webinar is part of the Brandeis Center’s corporate initiative and part of our support for the Shine A Light campaign.