Title VI - Brandeis Center

Washington, D.C. (October 12, 2023): The Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Conference of Presidents, Hillel, and numerous others today sent a strongly worded warning to more than 500 university presidents of specific actions they must take under the law to protect Jewish and Israeli students from the fallout of today’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) “National Day of Resistance” taking place on campuses across the U.S.

To read this press release in PDF form, click here.

Published by Politico on 10/12/23. Story by Bianca Quilantan.

A wave of student activism is putting pressure on the agency to release a proposal that could force university leaders to referee advocacy as well as discrimination.

A Donald Trump-era push to squash antisemitism on college campuses is seeing new life as student protests erupt in the aftermath of the violence between Israel and Hamas.

The latest wave of activism is putting pressure on the Education Department to release a proposal — one twice delayed by the Biden administration — that could force university leaders to referee pro-Palestinian advocacy and discrimination against Jewish people. It would potentially force college administrators to investigate claims of discrimination against ethnic groups or risk losing federal money, making it harder for them to stay out of debates about campus protests.

The absence of the regulation will likely be felt as dozens of campuses expect to host pro-Palestinian rallies on Thursday with the backing of the National Students for Justice in Palestine. The group has been coordinating its 200 solidarity groups for a “day of resistance” since Monday — a wave of protests that has spurred nearly 150 Jewish student organizations to demand that campus administrators “condemn” the groups for their “campaign to glorify the Hamas attacks.”

Harvard, Columbia and dozens of other universities have rushed to put out statements declaring who they support. But the resulting attempts to sympathize with civilians on both sides while fielding concerns about the potential for antisemitism and Islamophobia has rarely satisfied campus factions.

“This highlights the need for the Biden administration to make good on its long delayed promised regulations,” said Kenneth Marcus, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights under the Trump administration and now leads the Brandeis Center, which advocates for the civil rights of Jewish people. “This has been promised over and over again and delayed throughout the administration.”

The Education Department’s rule on antisemitism and ancestry-based discrimination, which hasn’t been proposed yet, might not make college administrators popular with their students or free-speech activists, but it would make it clear when they must intervene in tense demonstrations or discussions. Advocates for the rule say past agency fact sheets indicate that it could closely align with Trump’s executive order that threatened to pull federal funding from colleges that ignore antisemitism on campus.

Without the Trump-era policy, its supporters see students, administrators and other education leaders struggling this week to balance free speech with potentially antisemitic or islamophobic rhetoric as tensions over the war in Israel and Gaza escalate on campuses and social media.

Statements from college presidents such as Harvard University’s Claudine Gay have dominated headlines as being too lax, especially when student groups have touted the invasion as a victory for Palestinians. Gay is one of many college presidents who have fumbled over how to respond to students following the war, and policy experts argue that the Biden administration could help navigate this issue. (Gay quickly released a second statement after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and other Harvard alum criticized her first.)

“This unfortunately sends a signal that the massacre of Jews is less important in the minds of university leadership, or at any rate that they are, for whatever reason, less capable of a response than when other groups such as Ukrainians are attacked,” Marcus said of Gay’s initial response.

Israeli-Palestinian protests on college campuses are not new. Palestinian student groups have long rallied in support of national liberation, while Jewish groups who support Israel have been worried about a rise in antisemitic incidents which have surged on college campuses in recent years.

“When there’s an uptick in violence in Israel-Palestine, we see ramifications here in the United States and in Europe, and we see an uptick in antisemitism,” said Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, a nonprofit that organizes and trains about 1,000 faculty and administrators on 300 campuses to combat antisemitism.

She added that Jewish student groups are largely concerned with National Students for Justice in Palestine, which “seems to have wrapped itself in a very pro-Hamas position and messaging.”

National Students for Justice in Palestine has asked its student chapters to rally because “we have an unshakable responsibility to join the call for mass mobilization… National liberation is near.”

Student organizers, however, say there has been increased police presence on campuses around their rallies and Jewish gathering places. Academic and mental health support has also been extended to Jewish students, “but that same support has not been extended to Palestinian, Arab or Muslim students at all,” said Craig Morton, a Yale University student organizer with Yalies4Palestine and a fellow at the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights.

“Whenever something comes up with Palestine, the narrative put out by police or elected officials is that they’re deeply concerned about Jewish Americans,” Morton said. “My community is made out to be a threat against the Jewish community here, which couldn’t be further from the truth.”

The Yalies4Palestine protest held Monday was peaceful, according to reports, and students from other nearby colleges including the University of Connecticut and Wesleyan University joined the demonstration held in New Haven.

But a Harvard University student-organized vigil for solidarity with Palestinians was abruptly postponed Tuesday due to threats and safety concerns. Police officers divided protesters Monday at Indiana University. And dozens of students were injured in a stampede during a candlelight vigil supporting Israel at the University of Florida after a woman fainted at the event.

California State University at Long Beach disavowed rhetoric at a pro-Palestinian student rally as “deeply offensive.” And there has been pushback over the posters used widely to promote rallies held by student groups that depict a paraglider, which were used by Hamas in their attack on Israel.

Gay, the Harvard president who came under criticism for not responding to student groups’ pro-Palestinian messaging, condemned the “terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas” and said no student group speaks for Harvard. At Columbia University, President Minouche Shafik urged students to support each other, and encouraged her faculty to “find ways of bringing clarity and context to this painful moment.” New York University President Linda Mills also acknowledged that the violence in the Middle East will “likely intensify the feelings of those on our campus who hold strong views on the conflict,” and presidents of other institutions released similar statements disavowing the attacks.

“Where leadership really has to intervene is to say, we do want robust conversations that can be quite critical of Israeli policy,” said Elman, of the Academic Engagement Network. “We do want conversations about how to advance Palestinian rights and justice and we want to create space for that, but not to the point where we are allowing — in an uninhibited way — speech and activism that is crossing a line into advocating for violence and terror.”

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has yet to publicly acknowledge the conflict and how it is roiling colleges. Lawmakers and advocates for Jewish students have been urging the Education Department to make combating antisemitism on college campuses a priority after the agency delayed its rulemaking on the issue, which was first expected in January 2022. A proposed rule is expected to be unveiled in December.

An Education Department spokesperson said the administration “remains deeply concerned about antisemitism and related forms of discrimination and hate at schools and on college campuses,” and pointed to its national strategy and awareness campaign on antisemitism.

“Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination against students based on shared ancestry and national origin, including Jewish students and those from other religious groups, as well as students from Israel and Palestine,” the Office for Civil Rights wrote on X.

Advocates for Jewish students said they want to see Cardona issue a strong statement. But the delay in response at Harvard has been top of mind for advocates who say Gay’s tepid statement from campus leadership and her delay to address her student groups’ statement was a failure.

Marcus said his group has already seen significant increases in antisemitic remarks on social media since the weekend, and they expect more calls this week regarding Jewish students facing harassment. He urged university leaders to get ahead of potential harassment.

But groups that support Palestinians see a clear imbalance and fear an erosion of free speech.

A pro-Israel narrative has dominated the airwaves from the U.S. government and the media, making it difficult to voice differing opinions, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights Executive Director Ahmad Abuznaid said. The group is afraid their activists are being labeled as antisemitic while protesting the conflict.

“The administration should refrain from allowing for certain adjectives like that to be levied at Palestinian students,” he said, “and they should make sure it’s a safe environment for Palestinians to organize and speak up.”

Brandeis Center Founder and Chairman Kenneth L. Marcus was a featured speaker during the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s May 2, 2023 online symposium: “A Winning Tool: How the IHRA Definition Has Transformed the Fight Against Antisemitism.”

The event highlighted the vital importance of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism — and promoted its continued growth and implementation. Along with Chairman Marcus, the forum featured representatives of entities that have adopted the definition — from the U.S. (Representative Josh Gottheimer from New Jersey; Tennessee Governor Bill Lee) to Australia (Glen Eira City Councilmember Margaret Esakoff) to Europe (Vice President of the European Parliament Nicola Beer; Mayor of Tirana, Albania Erion Veliaj). These officials shared why they chose to adopt the IHRA Definition and how this positively impacted their work and society as a whole.

Chairman Marcus spoke about how all U.S. colleges and universities are, in fact, bound by the IHRA Definition, whether or not they have chosen to formally adopt it. That is because higher education institutions that accept federal funding (which includes almost all U.S. colleges and universities) sign assurances that they will comply with applicable federal legislation, regulations, and executive orders. These include not only Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but also Executive Order 13899, which since 2019 has included the IHRA Definition (including its examples) and directs campus administrators to consider the definition when evaluating claims of anti-Semitic bias.

View Chairman Marcus’s address below.

On June 30, Brandeis Center President Alyza D. Lewin testified before the New York City Council Committee on Higher Education. Lewin, along with many others, spoke before the council to demonstrate the prevalence of anti-Semitism on college campuses and the threat that it poses to Jewish students all over the country. In addition to Lewin, numerous students including Adela Cojab and Ofek Preis bravely gave their own accounts of anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist behavior that they had personally experienced on college campuses in the state of New York.

In her testimony, Lewin highlighted the fact that self-proclaimed ‘progressive’ spaces on campuses marginalize Jewish students. University administrators do not recognize the discrimination that is happening right under their noses: “The reason that anti-Semitism is increasing and not decreasing on these campuses is because university administrators are misdiagnosing the problem,” said Lewin.

Universities don’t recognize how Jewish Zionist students are being ostracized on campus. They mistakenly treat the marginalization of pro-Israel students as a speech issue. Time and time again, administrators choose to take a step back and do nothing when Jewish students are excluded, often claiming that the groups who are shunning the Jewish students are simply exercising their right to free speech, rather than acknowledging the harassment and discrimination that is taking place.

Lewin explained that Zionism is the glue that has held Jews together for millennia, even if not all Jews would describe themselves as Zionists: “Judaism is not only a religion,” she explained. “Jews also share a sense of Jewish peoplehood with a common ancestry and ethnicity.” Jews have been praying for the return to Jerusalem for centuries, and this shared sense of ethnic and ancestral identity, this “Zionism,” is as integral to the identity of many Jews as observing the Jewish Sabbath or keeping a kosher diet.

The majority of university administrators do not yet understand these facts about Jewish identity and anti-Semitism. Therefore, when Jewish students are forced to shed the Zionist component of their Jewish identity to participate on campus, administrators fail to take action to protect them.

For example, as SUNY New Paltz Israeli international student Ofek Preis described in her testimony before the NYCC hearing, she was excluded from an advocacy group that fights against sexual violence on campus because of her Israeli national origin and Jewish ethnic identities: “I am an Israeli student, a political science and sociology major, and a prominent member of advocacy and activist spaces on and off campus, and a survivor of sexual assault, who was denied the right to fight against rape culture as a result of anti-Zionism,” stated Preis.

After Preis reposted to her personal Instagram account an infographic expressing pride in the Jewish people’s ethnic and ancestral connection to Israel and refuting the claim that Israel is a colonial state, she was told that she was no longer welcome to participate in a student group dedicated to combatting sexual violence. Despite fighting against injustice her entire life, and being a sexual assault survivor herself, Preis was castigated as an enemy in the fight against oppression and cast out of the student group she had been part of. As a result of the harassment she faced, Preis spent the rest of her semester feeling isolated and fearful.

At the NYCC hearing, Preis echoed Lewin’s message that university administrators’ misdiagnosis of the problem was to blame: “This is the result of promoting dialogue instead of directly denouncing anti-Zionism. It is not a matter of difficult conversations, but an issue of hostility, isolation, and discrimination.”

Another student, NYU graduate Adela Cojab, described for the NYCC hearing how she took legal action against her former university for refusing to address incidents of campus anti-Semitism. Cojab filed a Tit l e VI complaint against NYU for “failing to protect the Jewish community against discrimination and harassment.” Since 2004, OCR guidance has clarified that Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects members of faith based groups, including Jews, Sikhs and Muslims, from discrimination based on their ethnic or ancestral background.

During her time at NYU, Cojab experienced anti-Semitism when she saw that Zionism was equated to Nazism and racism by a governance council of minority students. When Jewish students wished to publish a response simply explaining why this was so offensive, they were told not to by mentors because it would “only make the problem grow.” Within just three months the problem grew significantly worse: there were anti-Israel boycott resolutions raised in student government, movements to boycott NYU’s Tel Aviv campus, harassment of Jewish students, and Israeli flags burned.

This all led to Cojab leaving her position on student government because she was being bullied: “Had that happened to any other minority group, the university would have responded,” claimed Cojab. According to her, the university was aware of the flag-burning incident, yet later gave an award to the very group that burned the Israeli flag.

This all circles back to Lewin’s point that Jewish students are held to a severe double-standard on college campuses. When a Jew is forced to shed the Zionist component of their Jewish identity, Lewin says that “it is comparable to demanding that a Catholic disavow the Vatican or a Muslim shed their connection to Mecca.”

Lewin’s testimony, along with those of Preis and Cojab, emphasize the need to hold universities accountable. When Jewish students are marginalized on campus, action needs to be taken, or the problem will simply worsen, like we saw on NYU’s campus. The Brandeis Center works to do just that and is always willing to listen to students who feel that they have experienced anti-Semitism.

Universities need to acknowledge the struggles of their Jewish students. As Lewin stated: “No community other than the Jews is being charged such a high price for admission, and excluding an individual in this manner on the basis of their identity is discrimination and has to be recognized as such.”

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, presented a report to the United Nations General Assembly in 2019 on increased anti-Semitism around the world. It took more than two years for a recommended action plan to follow. This document was released in May 2022 for governments and other entities to combat anti-Semitism at all levels, including in the government, in education, and online. The action plan comes after an overall increase in anti-Semitic incidents around the world in 2021 and notes that while many officials have spoken out against anti-Semitism, others themselves have encouraged these ideas or displayed their own anti-Semitic views.

Many major Jewish organizations, such as the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee, have lauded this action plan and urge entities such as governments and non-governmental organizations to follow it to combat anti-Semitism.

The eight-point plan includes recommendations for governments to adopt their own strategies for fighting anti-Semitism, educating the general population, training educators on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, implementing safety measures for the Jewish community, and countering further anti-Semitism on social media and other websites online. Significantly, it recommends that governments adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Antisemitism (‘IHRA Definition’). This definition includes examples that demonstrate how certain conduct can be anti-Semitic if, among other things, it delegitimizes, demonizes, or places double standards on Israel. The Brandeis Center’s fact sheet ‘FAQs About Defining Anti-Semitism’, explains the IHRA Definition in the context of U.S. law.

Besides recommending action items for individual governments, the plan also recommends that States create or strengthen the connections between the Jewish community and other cultural or religious communities. It notes that international organizations should also condemn and combat anti-Semitism, as it does not only concern the Jewish people but is a broader human rights issue. The implementation of these suggestions will help to prevent further anti-Semitism through education on this issue and through the increased monitoring of incidents online and in other settings.

Implementing the UN Special Rapporteur’s ideas for combating anti-Semitism could help improve campus life for Jewish students. Educating university administrators, professors and student peers on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust could result in policy changes that better protect Jews on campus.

The adoption of the IHRA Definition by universities would also help students because those examples of anti-Semitism outlined by the definition will formally be considered anti-Semitic. For example, administrators often misunderstand many forms of anti-Semitism that Jewish college students face today as “anti-Israel” or “anti-Zionist” when they are anti-Semitic as well. Moreover, the IHRA Definition will help universities meet their legal obligations because – as our factsheet notes – federal agencies consider the IHRA Definition in determining whether universities are complying with federal antidiscrimination law.

The plan also discusses the anti-Semitism found across different social media platforms. A 2021 study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate noted that of the 714 posts they found that violated “platform standards on anti-Jewish hate”, 84% of these posts were not acted on – the post or account was not removed from the site, or the post was not flagged. These posts were seen by a wide audience and viewed up to 7.3 million times overall, further spreading hateful ideas about Jews.

At a broader level, the plan also encourages governments to monitor and record more data on anti-Semitism, and to adopt a zero-tolerance policy on anti-Semitism. In the United States specifically, data from both the FBI and the ADL show that even though hate crimes tend to be underreported, there have been a high number of anti-Semitic hate crimes recently. The 2020 FBI Hate Crime Statistics note that of 8,263 reported incidents, 683 incidents were anti-Jewish – the 3rd highest total for any group, even though Jews make up only about 2% of the U.S. population. The ADL’s 2021 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents shows that 2,717 antisemitic incidents were reported this year – the worst year on record and more than a 30% increase from the 2,026 reported in 2020. Responding to this increase in hate crimes – and reflecting the action plan’s call for better data on anti-Semitism – the state of Arizona recently adopted the IHRA Definition to guide its reporting of anti-Semitic hate crimes. Universities in the United States are also required to publicly report hate crimes under the Clery Act to help improve campus safety and to prevent further criminal offenses from occurring. Unfortunately, many anti-Semitic incidents are not reported by universities as hate crimes. Utilizing IHRA can improve the accuracy of their reporting, consistent with the action plan.

The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has advocated for increased education on anti-Semitism not only in higher education but in elementary and secondary education as well. If the United States follows the recommended steps, the Brandeis Center’s Best Practices Guide for Combating Campus Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israelism will be especially helpful for universities hoping to have a detailed guide on how to best fight anti-Semitism and protect their Jewish students. An updated version of this Best Practices Guide will be available on the Brandeis Center’s website later this year.

On March 24, Brandeis Center President Alyza Lewin presented a webinar titled “Responses and Solutions to Jew Hatred on Campus” hosted by the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation (CAEF). In her webinar, Lewin discussed the issues presented by modern-day anti-Semitism, then explained the Brandeis Center’s legal approaches to combat anti-Semitic discrimination and harassment on college campuses in the U.S.

According to Lewin, many people do not understand what anti-Semitism looks like today: “If anti-Semitism is society’s oldest hatred, why does it seem so difficult for society to recognize the Jew hatred that our students, our faculty, staff, employees are experiencing, particularly on these university campuses?” The anti-Semitism that most people recognize is anti-Semitism relating to the Holocaust, she pointed out. People understand that swastikas and Nazis are anti-Semitic. Additionally, if someone is targeted specifically because they look Jewish or practice Judaism, most people will recognize that as anti-Semitism. “But much beyond that, many people do not recognize today’s anti-Semitism,” she expressed.

The reason that anti-Semitism may be unrecognizable to many today is because it changes across generations. “It is difficult to recognize because it morphs,” Lewin stated. “It looks a little different in every generation. There is one constant, however, and that one constant is that no matter what the generation, no matter what the era, what anti-Semitism does is it takes whatever that society, whatever that generation, that period views as its worst misfortune as the evil that has to be confronted and it scapegoats the Jew. The Jew becomes the cause of that misfortune.” This process has always been used to ‘other’ the Jew, to push the Jew out, to deny Jews their place in society. In this generation, Lewin expressed, society’s worst offenses are racism, apartheid, and settler colonialism – all of which the Jewish people and Israel have been accused. Traditional anti-Semitism sought to target Jews as individuals, she noted, but the new anti-Semitism seeks to target Jews as a collective, taking aim at the only Jewish state and treating it as the worst offender of society’s evils.

The most common ways the new anti-Semitism manifests itself are through anti-Zionism and opposition to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. Anti-Zionists claim that their rhetoric is not anti-Semitic, but as Lewin showed, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. This is because many Jews see Zionism as an integral part of their Jewish identity – as important to them as keeping the Sabbath and a kosher diet. Zionism is not, as many anti-Zionists claim, a political ideology or a synonym for racism. Rather, it is a sense of Jewish peoplehood that Jews across the world share. It is the connected history and shared homeland of the Jewish people. Connection with the land of Israel is part of Jewish identity for many Jews. Over half of the 613 commandments in the Torah refer to the land of Israel and can only be fulfilled in the land of Israel. The Jewish people have been historically pressured to shed their Zionist identity, to turn away from their sense of peoplehood. On this basis, anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism: “People have to understand that when Jews express this part of their Jewish identity, they can’t be excluded on that basis, they can’t be shunned on that basis.”

Anti-Zionism has been a persistent issue on campus, and one that has been difficult to tackle. Campus administrators wrongly see anti-Semitism as a political debate between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups, believing they are prohibited from getting involved because of free speech. This non-involvement from campus administrators has blinded them to the anti-Semitism that Jewish students, faculty, and staff face. As Lewin states: “Any student who expresses support for the existence of the Jewish homeland, who believes that Israel has a right to exist as the Jewish homeland, that Jews have the right to exercise the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. . . . As long as they say they support Israel, the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, they are marginalized, they are excluded, they are shunned. We have seen students who have been pushed out of their positions on student government, in clubs – clubs that they created….People have turned on them and cut them off. Why? Because it has become clear that they are Zionists. And as soon as one accepts that label, that they are a Zionist, that they believe and take pride in the Jews’ shared ancestry and ethnicity, they take pride in their belonging to the Jewish people, they are treated as pariahs.” That is not an issue of legitimate debate, but instead an issue of discrimination and harassment.

Jewish students are not the only ones to deal with anti-Semitism on campus. In one instance, the Brandeis Center filed a Title VII complaint against Stanford University. A campus Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) group placed Jewish employees in a white affinity group during trainings and told them to keep their whiteness in check, while promoting anti-Semitic stereotypes. These programs have inadvertently promoted anti-Semitism by ignoring Jewish history, Jewish heritage and the complexity of Jewish identity and instead portraying Jews as white supremacists and colonial settlers. Like anti-Semitism emanating from students, this anti-Semitism has also gone unchecked by university administrators.

After outlining some of the issues raised by today’s anti-Semitism, Lewin explained the ways that the Brandeis Center has been fighting back, including educating universities on their legal obligation to protect Jewish students, and utilizing the law to motivate university administrations to act when anti-Semitism occurs on campus. In some cases, such as with the University of Illinois, the Brandeis Center worked directly with the school to issue a joint statement addressing anti-Semitism on campus and ways in which it will be addressed in the future. LDB also uses its JIGSAW Initiative (Justice Initiative Guiding Student Activists Worldwide) to teach law students best practices for addressing campus anti-Semitism. This includes teaching JIGSAW fellows relevant areas of the law and how to support undergraduate students in bringing complaints of anti-Semitism to administrators.

One of the most effective practices for the Brandeis Center is using Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to combat campus anti-Semitism. Title VI protects against discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in public and private institutions that receive federal funding. If an institution does not comply, it risks losing its federal funding. For nearly two decades, LDB has advanced the most significant legal protections for American Jews this century. The “Marcus Doctrine,” named for LDB 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 Jews and members of other faiths when they are targeted due to their ancestry or ethnicity. The Brandeis Center has used this legal doctrine to protect the rights of Jewish students, faculty and staff at numerous institutions, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Southern California, Tufts University and Brooklyn College. Other organizations are now similarly utilizing the Marcus Doctrine. In 2019, President Trump signed an executive order on combatting anti-Semitism which adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition on anti-Semitism. As Lewin discussed LDB’s legal approaches, she declared, “We should be able to use [the Civil Rights] laws and make it clear that they apply to Jews in this situation.”

One of the most important things, according to Lewin, which can be done to combat anti-Semitism is to educate about Jewish history and culture. She mentioned that this promotes better understanding of Judaism and the Jewish people because: “there has to be an identity that we feel we have that’s worth fighting for.” One thing that Lewin stressed would be learned from studying Jewish history and culture is about the origins of social justice. “All of these notions of social justice: “These principles that we’re fighting for, you know where they originate? In our history, in our culture. In the Bible, in our philosophy. That’s where it starts.”

Lewin’s webinar emphasized the impact that the Brandeis Center has in the fight against anti-Semitism. It has pushed campus administrators to have a more critical view of the anti-Semitism that is occurring on campus, and it has empowered students to be proud of their Jewish identity. Lewin encouraged listeners to embrace Jewish identity and stand up for who they are: “The best answer to harassment and discrimination is self-confidence and pride.”

You can watch Lewin’s webinar here. The Brandeis Center is also excerpting the webinar into smaller TikTok posts here.

To contact the Brandeis Center regarding anti-Semitism on campus, email info@brandeiscenter.com.

On Friday, February 11, 2022, The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law (“LDB”) submitted

comments in response to the proposed regulations governing Civil Rights Data Collection (“CRDC”) issued by the Department of Education (“ED”).

Read the submission here:

Brandeis Center Comments on CRDC

On February 4, Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Los Angeles County) and a group of 39 bipartisan Members of Congress sent a letter to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), urging it to take concrete steps to support Jewish students and address the rising threat of anti-Semitism on campus. Members asked the Department of Education to resolve long-pending complaints of anti-Jewish discrimination and “reprioritize the rulemaking process for Title VI” of the Civil Rights Act, which would codify the Executive Order on Combatting anti-Semitism. The letter reflects recommendations previously endorsed by the Brandeis Center about the need for OCR to do more to signal its prioritization of campus anti-Semitism at a time when anti-Semitism is surging. LDB Founder and Chairman, Kenneth Marcus has explained that the Trump administration did this through public actions like providing technical assistance and guidance; similarly, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon “can use the bully pulpit in a lot of different ways. She can make speeches. She can issue statements.”

“Harassment of Jewish students can’t be tolerated,” Marcus said. “And I don’t think we will get significant action from universities…unless the Biden administration makes clear that this is a priority. That’s something that shouldn’t take another year. It should happen tomorrow.”

Read the entire letter from Members of Congress to OCR here.