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.” 

The Department of Education has opened 48 cases tied to antisemitism at colleges and universities since Oct. 7, most related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Published 3/1/24 in The Forward; Story by Arno Rosenfeld

A federal investigation or lawsuit related to antisemitism on college campuses has been opened or filed nearly every other day on average since Oct. 7, according to a Forward analysis.

The complaints describe a range of incidents, including white supremacist flyers at Montana State University and a drunken assault at the University of Tampa. Many complaints center on speech related to Israel. A student at the New School said he heard someone comment, “I wish you had been in Israel on Oct. 7 so you would have been raped, too.”

This unprecedented flurry of civil rights lawsuits and Education Department investigations reflect spikes in antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents nationally during the Israel-Hamas war. But it’s also driven by an increased reliance on a legal doctrine — rooted in the idea that Zionism is part of Jews’ “shared ancestry” — that has been crafted to expand legal protections for Jewish students, especially those who support Israel.

The Biden administration has encouraged Jewish students who feel targeted by increasing hostility toward Israel and its supporters on many college campuses to look to the department for protection.

“This became an all-hands-on-deck moment after the terrorist attack,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said at a public briefing this month. “No student should ever feel that they are going into a learning environment where people are openly spewing hate.”

The Department of Education is currently looking into 46 cases related to shared ancestry at higher education institutions, along with dozens more at the K-12 level, although they represent a tiny fraction of overall civil rights investigations. But it is difficult to discern the nature of each complaint, because the department makes little information public, and several cases allege Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism since Oct. 7. Harvard, for example, is being investigated over claims of both antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias.

The cases are often called OCR or Title VI investigations, referring to the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, which oversees them. Schools are compelled to cooperate or risk losing massive sums of federal funding.

In addition, there are at least nine federal lawsuits against universities tied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — most also alleging antisemitism — making their way through the court system.

The caseload takes so long to adjudicate, and the number of final resolutions to date so sparse, that it’s not clear whether the federal government and courts can deliver the relief that students and their supporters are demanding.

But proponents of the litigation strategy say that more complaints and lawsuits are in the works, and that the escalation in campus antisemitism deserves an aggressive legal response.

“Oct. 7 just poured fuel on a fire that was already out of control,” said Mark Ressler, an attorney who is suing several Ivy League universities on behalf of Jewish students. “Our view was that the appropriate way to address antisemitism on campus was to force universities to do what they’re required under federal law.”

Even as some critics warn that some of the complaints are based on flimsy allegations, these remedies have offered a degree of validation for some Jewish students and the advocacy organizations supporting them. 

Katy Joseph, deputy director for faith-based partnerships at the Education Department, recalled meeting with a Yeshiva University student whose parents immigrated from the former Soviet Union and were flabbergasted by the country’s civil rights apparatus.

“They said, ‘You’re meeting with someone from the federal government about addressing antisemitism — who could imagine that the federal government would care about what Jewish students are experiencing?’” Joseph recounted.

A new doctrine covers Jews — and possibly Israel

Investigations into alleged antisemitism in American schools is a relatively new phenomenon for the Education Department because religious discrimination falls outside its purview and, until 2004, that is how it categorized discrimination against Jews.

This had long frustrated some Jewish civil rights leaders, who felt that Jews were getting short shrift from the federal government for viewing them too narrowly as a religious group.

When Ken Marcus took over the department’s civil rights office during the George W. Bush administration, he started looking for test cases for a new category of “shared ancestry” that would allow officials to investigate cases that touched on religion. He found one when a Sikh child in New Jersey was beaten by classmates who saw his turban and taunted him as “Osama,” a reference to the infamous Muslim terrorist.

Marcus believed that the discrimination wasn’t strictly religious in nature because the bullies weren’t intending to go after the boy’s Sikh identity. And it wasn’t obviously racial, either, since it was the turban that had drawn the bullies’ attention.

He authorized the department to investigate these types of cases under its authority to prohibit discrimination based on race or national origin, creating a new category called “shared ancestry.” Every subsequent administration has agreed that these cases fall under the department’s purview.

More controversial is the question of what, exactly, constitutes discrimination against Jews based on their shared ancestry. Marcus and many Jewish advocacy groups have taken the position that anti-Zionism — opposition to a Jewish state in Israel — is often antisemitic because many Jews identify with Israel as part of their shared ancestry.

Organizations like Hillel have made this argument to colleges and universities for several years, with mixed success, and Marcus successfully lobbied the Trump administration to require the Education Department to use a definition of antisemitism that classifies much anti-Zionism as antisemitic.

Many recent complaints reflect this view. A Rutgers law student, for example, taking issue with a text group chat in which other students were expressing support for the Palestinian cause, filed a complaint with the department. And a lawsuit against Harvard objects to a screening of Israelism, a film about American Jews who have become disillusioned with Israel, as antisemitic.

Shabbos Kastenbaum, one of the students suing Harvard, said he was especially upset that one of the panelists who spoke after the screening suggested that Jews had internalized the trauma they suffered during the Holocaust and were now lashing out against the Palestinians. “The crux of the complaint is that someone is engaging in antisemitic tropes,” he said.

Some of the smaller number of complaints filed on behalf of Arab and Muslim students also reference incidents involving speech about the conflict. San Diego State University is under investigation for an email sent to students following Oct. 7 that condemned the “horrific” Hamas attack, while expressing sympathy for both Israelis and Palestinians who had been killed.

‘A very low bar’

Advocacy groups often herald the Education Department’s opening of an investigation as evidence that their case has merit. That used to be the case, according to Miriam Nunberg, a former civil rights staffer at the department, who told JTA that a decade ago her team would only open investigations if the complaints seemed serious enough.

But now the policy is to open investigations into any complaint that claims a school violated a civil rights law over which it has jurisdiction, as long as the alleged violation took place within the last six months.

“The opening of an investigation does not mean the law was violated,” said a senior Education Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the department did not permit her to speak publicly on the matter. “There’s a very low bar for opening complaints.”

The law also allows anyone to file a complaint, including those who have no affiliation with the school or firsthand knowledge of the incidents. Advocates say that’s important, so the onus is not on a potentially vulnerable victim of discrimination to report a problem, and because civil rights violations have a negative impact on society — not just on the handful of people directly impacted.

But this low bar, critics point out, also means the department must open cases even when there is not a clear victim of discrimination, or when investigators do not believe the claims have merit.

If the “shared ancestry” category has made it easier to file a suit against a college, so has the fact that no one in an alleged incident has to go to school or work there to file a complaint against it. Tulane, for example, is being investigated over the assault of a Jewish student at a protest although all four people arrested in the incident were unaffiliated with the New Orleans university and the student’s attorney has said the school is not responsible. Two years ago a single anonymous individual was responsible for nearly 40% of the 18,804 investigations that the department opened, mostly centered on allegations of sex discrimination based on the person’s review of school data about athletics.

Who’s filing these cases?

Though the department doesn’t reveal the details of what it’s investigating, many organizations have shared complaints they have filed about antisemitism in recent months. The Forward created a database of all known federal investigations and lawsuits based on the limited information released by the Education Department and lawsuit announcements. Though the department began releasing a list of its shared ancestry investigations in November, it does not share details of those cases, including whether the allegations involve antisemitism.

According to the Forward’s review, most of the complaints filed by organizations came from legal advocacy groups like the Brandeis Center and the Lawfare Project, which focus on defending Jewish students and Israel.

But these groups have a higher standard for taking a case than some other complainants. Alyza Lewin, president of the Brandeis Center, said the organization has declined to represent several students who may go on to file some of the weaker complaints independently.

“They’re filed by people who are unhappy, who are upset and who feel that they want to do something, and they’re very well-intentioned when they file them, but they may very well be filing complaints that might not have a successful resolution,” Lewin told JTA in a piece published Thursday detailing the recent uptick in cases.

More partisan actors have also joined the fray, including Campus Reform, a news outlet run by a conservative training center whose editor has filed at least nine federal complaints accusing various universities of antisemitism.

Cardona said that his team knows that some of the antisemitism complaints are coming from people who may have political motivations, but that doesn’t change the department’s obligation to investigate.

“I can’t say that we’re not aware of it,” he said. “There are a lot of things that have become politicized in this country and at the end of the day it’s our responsibility to make sure we’re thinking about the students.”

‘Vindicating their rights’ in court

While the Education Department investigates potential violations of federal law, complaints filed with the agency are not lawsuits. That means students or outside organizations don’t need to hire lawyers to sue a college or university. But it also means adjudication may be very slow, and they are unlikely to receive monetary damages even if the school is found to have violated their rights.

Of the 10 lawsuits filed against higher education institutions since Oct. 7 related to antisemitism or Israel on campus, four have been filed by one law firm, Kasowitz Benson Torres, whose lead partner Marc Kasowitz served as former president Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney.

Ressler, the attorney overseeing the cases, has sued Harvard, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia and Barnard, and said he is looking for more schools to sue. Ressler said his firm started recruiting student plaintiffs well before Oct. 7. Several individuals, who Ressler described as prominent Jewish leaders but declined to name, approached Kasowitz over the summer and told him they wanted to use the courts to fight antisemitism, including campus diversity initiatives they found problematic.

Federal lawsuits generally supersede administrative complaints, like those made through the Education Department, where officials said they have closed investigations into Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania after those schools were sued.

Ressler said litigation, far more effectively than filing a complaint with the Education Department, can force college administrators to hand over emails and other evidence of potential discrimination, and to defend themselves in public.

“American citizens vindicate their civil rights by going to federal court,” he said.

‘Pleading’ for resources

It can take years to resolve a complaint at the Education Department. Investigators are handling an average of 50 cases each compared to 36 cases two years ago and fewer than 10 each during the Bush administration.

Education Department officials and Democrats, along with some Jewish advocacy groups, have been lobbying to increase funding for the department’s civil rights office, arguing that it needs more investigators to handle the caseload and require schools to better protect students. The office currently receives $140 million in annual funding and has requested an increase to $177 million, although an outside coalition of civil rights groups wrote a recent letter calling on Congress to double its allocation to $280 million.

“It is astonishing to me that the complaint volume is so high,” said the senior department official. “And we have been pleading for years for Congress to increase our budget.”

Congressional Republicans have held hearings and launched investigations into campus antisemitism, but generally oppose increased funding for the department, calling for overall cuts to the federal budget. Marcus said the funding question was largely a partisan battle, and that only a tiny fraction of any new dollars would go toward addressing antisemitism because most of the office’s 19,000 annual cases are about discrimination against students based on gender and disability.

“Antisemitism cases — even post-Oct. 7 — are such a small percentage of OCR’s total caseload,” said Marcus, who now runs the Brandeis Center, which has filed at least four complaints with the department since October. “Antisemitism should be left out of this.”

Liz King, with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a coalition that sent the letter to Congress demanding more funding, said that the “shared ancestry” cases — including those about antisemitism — represent some of the most time-consuming.

“We really resent the idea that more complicated cases would fall to the bottom of the pile,” she said.

Published in vtdigger on 2/20/24; op-ed article by Matt Vogel, executive director of UVM Hillel

In the wake of a landmark settlement with the federal government, there has been a remarkable evolution in visible support for Jewish students.

Jewish life at the University of Vermont has improved remarkably since April 3, 2023, when the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights resolved the investigation into antisemitism under a Title VI complaint from Jewish on Campus and the Brandeis Center for Civil Rights. In the wake of this landmark settlement — the first of its kind — there has been a remarkable evolution in visible support for Jewish students, updated policies, and improved systems and processes for bias reporting.

Since the resolution, Jewish life at UVM has improved in many tangible ways including:

Even as we have seen more students feeling comfortable disclosing antisemitic bias and harassment to our staff, we feel that comfort is indicative of a culture that encourages reporting rather than one that seemed to stifle Jewish students’ voices.

Jewish students also report that they are largely able to fully express their Jewish identity without fear of repercussion or social ostracization. There remain isolated incidents of challenging conversations among friend groups related to Israel and Gaza, both in person and on social media. However, UVM students are incredibly resilient and are able to approach the issues with nuance and depth that mirrors their academic pursuits on campus.

These leadership-level changes by the university have led to an increase in Jewish clubs and organizations and higher levels of participation in Hillel programs. Prior to the OCR resolution, there was Hillel and Chabad. Now there is a Jewish Student Union recognized by the University of Vermont and 11 additional Jewish and Israel-oriented student clubs on campus. We have seen an increase in Jewish parents reaching out to Hillel during their on-campus visits, and the Burack Hillel center at 439 College St. has seen an increase of nearly 40% in daily usage from students. 

In short, Jewish life at UVM is thriving. Even as we face rising levels of antisemitism around the country and flurries of activity on campus, the Title VI resolution and subsequent policy, systems, and process changes on campus have helped Jewish students feel better supported at UVM. In the wake of Oct. 7 and rising antisemitism around the world, Jewish students, their friends, and allies still need your tangible support, and here are five ways you can do just that including letters, baked goods, and donations. As Pirkei Avot reminds us, we are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are we free to desist from it. 

Published 11/14/23 by The Daily Pennsylvanian. Story by Nicole Muravsky.

The Brandeis Center, a Jewish legal rights advocacy group, filed a federal complaint with the Office of Civil Rights of the United States Department of Education, alleging that Penn failed to respond to the harassment of Jewish students.

The 27-page discrimination complaint alleges that Penn violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects against discrimination in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance. It suggests that Penn has nurtured a hostile environment against Jewish students and failed to protect them from harassment, representing a violation of the statute.

The complaint refers to Penn’s campus as a “hostile environment for its Jewish students” and — citing the harassment of Jewish students on campus — alleges that Penn has failed to take measures “reasonably calculated to end the harassment, eliminate any hostile environment, and prevent the harassment from recurring.”

The Center filed a similar complaint against Wellesley College on Nov. 9, and it previously has filed complaints on behalf of students at the University of Vermont and the State University of New York at New Paltz.

Founder and Chairman of the Brandeis Center and former Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Education Kenneth L. Marcus wrote in a press release that the complaint is intended to hold the University accountable.

“These colleges and universities have failed to keep Jewish students safe and are in clear violation of well-established federal civil rights law,” Marcus wrote.

The complaint provides a timeline of Penn’s alleged mistreatment of its Jewish students. It focuses on circumstances surrounding the Palestine Writes Literature Festival — and the University’s response to it — as well as the changes in the campus environment following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

1996 College graduate Deena Margolies, a staff attorney at the Brandeis Center, said she was a proud Penn alumna but was heartbroken that some Jewish students feared for their safety, showing their Jewish identity, or demonstrating their support for Israel.

“That was not my experience,” she said.

The complaint alleges that the Palestine Writes festival featured at least 25 antisemitic speakers, including Susan Abulhawa, Randa Abdel-Fattah, Bill V. Mullen, Marc Lamont Hill, and Roger Waters. It also critiqued the incorporation of the Festival into several courses’ curricula and Penn’s failure to quickly distance itself from the festival.

Though the University informed students that they could request exemptions, the complaint says that this was insufficient.

“Instead of Palestinian culture and poetry, the Festival celebrated ideologists advocating for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish State,” the complaint alleges.

The complaint also cites antisemitic events that have since occurred on campus, particularly following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. It accuses Penn of delaying emphasis of the University’s stance against antisemitism until Oct. 15 — over a week after the attack.

The complaint references alleged antisemitic incidents and rhetoric at events sponsored by Penn Against the Occupation. It also mentions a march participant pushing a bystander and tearing down pictures of missing Israeli civilians, and alleges that several Penn professors who participated in the Palestine Writes festival “posted vitriolic anti-Israel and pro-Hamas statements and cartoons on their X and Instagram accounts.”

The Center suggested that Penn discipline these professors similarly to others who have “made derogatory remarks against minorities,” such as Penn Carey Law professor Amy Wax.

“Penn students report feelings of intense distress and fears for their safety while the rallies continue and while their professors continue to show their support for Hamas,” the complaint reads.

The complaint provided a list of suggested remedies for the University to better protect its Jewish community, including the appointment of an independent investigator, enforcement of the University’s moral code of conduct, increased education about antisemitism, and strict review and approval policies to ensure the University does not conduct or finance programs that deny equal protection.

“I do want students to know that if they do encounter any other antisemitic incidents or if they feel frightened that they should contact us because we can always send in an add to the complaint,” Margolies said. “We don’t want students to feel like this is it.”

Last week, multiple Penn staff members received antisemitic emails threatening violence against Jewish community members and naming Penn Hillel and Lauder College House. Penn Police and the FBI said at the time that they were conducting a joint investigation into a possible hate crime.

A vacant Campus Apartments property next to the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi was vandalized with the phrase “The Jews R Nazis” last month. DPS has since launched an investigation.

In October, Penn committed extra funding to meet Hillel’s extra security needs through the end of the 2024-25 school year, the organization said in an email addressing concerns about the safety of Jewish students. There has been heightened security for Hillel, the Katz Center, Lubavitch House, campus spaces for Muslim worship, and the Christian Association since September.

On Friday, Magill committed to “vigorously pursue” violations of Penn’s conduct policies and of the law following recent acts of hate in the Penn community. Magill also recently announced a University-wide action plan to combat antisemitism on campus, emphasizing increased security and education.

While many commended the plan, some students told the DP that they wanted to see follow-through from the University or a stronger commitment to combating Islamophobia on campus.

The Center is now waiting for the Office of Civil Rights of the United States Department of Education to review the complaint and potentially open an investigation.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 16, 2022

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We, the undersigned Jewish organizations, are alarmed, disappointed and troubled by the response issued yesterday by the President of the University of Vermont to the Title VI complaint filed on behalf of a number of UVM students by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Jewish on Campus.
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Simply put, President Garimella fails to condemn the existence of significant antisemitism on UVM’s campus. And instead of summoning the courage that other university leaders across the country have shown in acknowledging the problem or offering support for Jewish students who are fearful about identifying publicly as Jewish, the UVM President’s statement doubles down and refuses to take responsibility. The statement only offers inadequate excuses while failing to denounce those who have created a climate of intolerance for Jews, especially those who choose to openly express their Jewish identity through their deeply felt ancestral and ethnic connection to Israel. All the more concerning is the inference that aggrieved Jewish students should not have sought recourse through a regular legal process that exists for the very purpose of investigating civil rights complaints, including those pertaining to antisemitism.  As a consequence, the concerns of antisemitism are further delegitimized.
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The university has denied support to a targeted community, and, in suggesting that Jewish students need to learn how to better protect themselves, has essentially chosen to blame the victims. The students who filed the complaint raised awareness of a form of antisemitism that students at UVM have been experiencing for years, and gave a voice to students who felt unheard. Even now, the UVM President apparently has not really heard their voices of concern and anguish.
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We support these Jewish students at UVM and elsewhere who have the right to openly express their identification with Israel without being shunned, marginalized and excluded from campus opportunities. Every student at UVM is entitled to a college experience free from antisemitism and all other forms of discrimination. It is time for UVM to frankly acknowledge the serious concerns that have been raised and take concrete steps to address them.

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ADL
AJC
Alums for Campus Fairness
CAMERA on Campus
Chabad on Campus at the University of Vermont
Club Z
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
Hasbara Fellowships
Hillel International
ICC
Israel Peace Initiative
JewBelong
Jewish Federations of North America
Jewish National Fund – USA
Jewish on Campus
The Louis D Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law
Simon Wiesenthal Center
StandWithUs & StandWithUs Saidoff Legal Department
SSI
ZOA