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Department of Education opens new antisemitism investigations into Harvard, Columbia, U of Tampa
(JTA) — Harvard University, Columbia University and the University of Tampa have joined an expanding list of schools under federal investigation for alleged failure to respond to antisemitism on campus.
Meanwhile, Harvard’s president has been summoned to address Congress about campus hostilities connected to the Israel-Hamas war, and the University of California, Berkeley, faces a new lawsuit over antisemitism that students there charge is “unchecked.”
The U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office added the universities to its list of active investigations over the last week, just days after announcing seven other new investigations related to antisemitism or Islamophobia. The new investigation means that Columbia is now on the list twice. While the department does not share details of its investigations, independent reports say all three involve allegations of antisemitism.
The federal investigation at Harvard was opened Tuesday. According to a Fox News report quoting an anonymous Harvard graduate and a letter from the education department’s civil rights office, it concerns a incident in October when pro-Palestinian students allegedly assaulted an Israeli student at the Harvard Business School.
The student was accosted while he tried to film a “die-in” protest on campus, according to the Harvard Crimson student newspaper; the Crimson also identified one person who laid hands on the alleged victim as a Harvard Law Review member.
Harvard was one of the first schools to come under national scrutiny after several student groups signed an open letter on Oct. 7 that blamed Israel entirely for Hamas’ attack that day. Harvard President Claudine Gay took several days to issue a series of statements condemning Hamas, prompting further criticism. Some major pro-Israel boosters of the school, including the Wexner Foundation, cut ties in response.
Gay will appear Dec. 5 in a Congressional hearing on campus antisemitism — at least the fourth such hearing the House has conducted since Oct. 7 — alongside the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Both schools have also been caught up in their own controversies related to the war. MIT drew criticism over its decision to partially suspend students who held a pro-Palestinian sit-in, while Penn is the subject of its own federal investigation partially related to a Palestinian literature festival it held prior to Oct. 7.
The Columbia and University of Tampa cases, both opened Nov. 20, also both reportedly concern incidents that predate the Oct. 7 attacks. According to Bloomberg, the Columbia probe dates back to a 2019 complaint by Jonathan Karten, an undergraduate represented by the pro-Israel legal group Lawfare Project. At the time, Karten alleged that a professor ridiculed him and claimed he “is Mossad,” the Israeli intelligence agency. Karten, a former sergeant in the Israel Defense Forces, also said members of Students for Justice in Palestine called him a “Zionist pig.”
While the university did investigate Karten’s claim at the time, it took no formal action. The Lawfare Project decided to re-up his claim in the wake of Oct. 7, telling Bloomberg it “mirrors and even foreshadows events currently occurring at Columbia,” where anti-Israel campus activity has turned increasingly militant and where the university has banned its Jewish Voice for Peace and SJP chapters for the remainder of the semester.
The University of Tampa case, meanwhile, concerns an incident that the university says took place in September. A Tampa Bay Times report quotes from a letter sent by the parent of a Jewish student to the university president, detailing a Sept. 23 incident in which the student was accosted with antisemitic slurs while walking to his friend’s dorm.
The students broke out in a fight, and the Jewish student was put in a chokehold and punched, according to the report. He filed a police report; the student who attacked him later apologized on Instagram, and the university conducted a hearing into the matter.
But the father, Stuart Messiner, told the local newspaper that the university’s response was “absurd.” Its conduct board, he said, had determined that allegations of antisemitism were “uncorroborated” because the students didn’t know each other; it further disciplined the Jewish student along with his attackers and ordered him to write a letter of apology, which his father has refused to let him do.
Messiner went on to accuse the university of being “guilty of antisemitism too” because of its “flagrant refusal to consider this case for what it is — the case of a young man defending himself and his cherished heritage against bigots and bullies.”
“The university is fully cooperating with the request for information but cannot comment further due to student privacy laws,” a spokesperson for the university told local reporters.
The Department of Education has opened seven other probes that it said are directly tied either to antisemitism or Islamophobia since Oct. 7. (The civil rights office has opened additional investigations into a handful of K-12 school districts, but no information was available on them at press time.) Opening an investigation does not mean the Department of Education believes it has merit, only that it has determined the allegations fall under its purview.
In other campus news, a lawsuit filed against UC Berkeley by the pro-Israel legal group Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law accuses the university of not more forcefully punishing anti-Zionist law student groups in 2022, saying their bans of outside speakers who support Zionism effectively “exclude Jews.” That case is also under active investigation by the Department of Education.
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McGill cancels talk with former Hamas insider turned Israel advocate, citing fears of violence
McGill University has canceled an on-campus event planned by Jewish students—and temporarily halted bookings for all extracurricular activities—following threats of violence along with a death threat, as outlined in a […]
The post McGill cancels talk with former Hamas insider turned Israel advocate, citing fears of violence appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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US Lawmakers Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Strip Funding From Universities That Boycott Israel
US Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) at a press conference in Bergenfield, New Jersey, US on June 5, 2023. Photo: Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
US Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) on Tuesday introduced bipartisan legislation to cut off federal funding from universities that engage in boycotts of Israel.
The legislation, titled “The Protect Economic Freedom Act,” would render universities that participate in the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel ineligible for federal funding under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, prohibiting them from receiving federal student aid. The bill would also mandate that colleges and universities submit evidence that they are not participating in commercial boycotts against the Jewish state.
“Enough is enough. Appeasing the antisemitic mobs on college campuses threatens the safety of Jewish students and faculty and it undermines the relationship between the US and one of our strongest allies. If an institution is going to capitulate to the BDS movement, there will be consequences — starting with the Protect Economic Freedom Act,” Foxx, chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement.
Gottheimer added that the legislation is necessary to thwart the surging tide of antisemitism on college campuses. Although the lawmaker noted that students are allowed to engage in free expression regarding the ongoing war in Gaza, he argued that blanket boycotts against Israel endanger the lives of Jewish students and community members.
“The goal of the antisemitic BDS movement is to annihilate the democratic State of Israel, America’s critical ally in the global fight against terror. While students and faculty are free to speak their minds and disagree on policy issues, we cannot allow antisemitism to run rampant and risk the safety and security of Jewish students, staff, faculty, and guests on college campuses,” Gottheimer said in a statement. “The new bipartisan Protect Economic Freedom Act will give the Department of Education a critical new tool to combat the antisemitic BDS movement on college campuses. Now more than ever, we must take the necessary steps to protect our Jewish community.”
The legislation instructs the US Department of Education to keep a record of universities that refuse to confirm their non-participation in anti-Israel boycotts. The list of universities in non-compliance with the legislation would be made publicly available.
In the year following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre acrosssouthern Israel, universities across the country have found themselves embroiled in controversies regarding campus antisemitism. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Israel, hordes of students and faculty orchestrated protests and demonstrations condemning the Jewish state. Student groups at elite universities such as Harvard and Columbia issued statements blaming Israel for the attacks and expressing support for Hamas.
Several high-profile universities have also shown a significant level of tolerance for anti-Jewish sentiment festering on their campuses. Northwestern University, for example, capitulated to demands of anti-Israel activists to remove Sabra Hummus from campus dining halls because of its connections to Israel. At Stanford University, Jewish students have reported being forced to condemn Israel before being allowed to enter campus parties. Students at the University of Pennsylvania and Brown University launched unsuccessful attempts to convince the university to divest endowment funds from companies tied to Israel.
The post US Lawmakers Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Strip Funding From Universities That Boycott Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Harvard Chaplains Omit Antisemitism From Statement on Antisemitic Incident
Demonstrators take part in an “Emergency Rally: Stand With Palestinians Under Siege in Gaza,” amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Oct. 14, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University’s Office of the Chaplain and Religious and Spiritual Life is being criticized by a rising Jewish civil rights activist for omitting any mention of antisemitism from a statement addressing antisemitic behavior.
The sharp words followed the office’s response to a hateful demonstration on campus in which pro-Hamas students stood outside Harvard Hillel and called for it to banned from campus. Such a demand is not new, as it began earlier this semester at the direction of the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) organization, which coordinates the lion’s share of anti-Zionist activity on college campuses.
As seen in footage of the demonstration, the students chanted “Zionists aren’t welcome here!” and held signs which accused the organization — the largest campus organization for Jewish students in the world — of embracing “war criminals” and genocide.
Addressing the behavior, Harvard Chaplains issued a statement, which is now being pointed to as a symbol of higher education’s indifference to the unique hatred of antisemitism, as well as its permutation as anti-Zionism.
“We have noticed a trend of expression in which entire groups of students are told they ‘are not welcome here’ because of their religious, cultural, ethnic, or political commitments and identities, or are targeted through acts of vandalism,” the office said, seemingly circumventing the matter at hand. “We find this trend disturbing and anathema to the dialogue and connection across lines of difference that must be a central value and practice of a pluralistic institution of higher learning.”
It continued, “Student groups who are singled out in this way experience such language and acts of vandalism as a painful attack that undermines the acceptance and flourishing of religious diversity here at Harvard. Let us all endeavor to care for one another in these divisive times.”
Recent Harvard graduate Shabbos Kestenbaum, who addressed the Republican National Convention in August to discuss the ways which progressive bias in higher education fosters anti-Zionism and anti-Western ideologies, described the statement as a moral failure in a post on X/Twitter on Tuesday.
“Disappointing,” he said. “After Harvard Jews were told by masked students ‘Zionists aren’t welcome here’ outside of the Hillel, the Chaplain Office finally released a statement that did not include the words Jew, Zionism, Israel, or antisemitism. A total abdication of religious responsibility.”
Kestenbaum noted in a later statement that Harvard’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, has so far declined to speak on the issue at all. He charged that when Charleston “isn’t plagiarizing, she and DEI normalize antisemitism,” referring to evidence, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, that Charleston is a serial plagiarist who climbed the hierarchy of the higher education establishment by pilfering other people’s scholarship.
Harvard University president Alan Garber — installed after former president Claudine Gay resigned following revelations that she is also a serial plagiarist — has, experts have said, been inconsistent in managing the campus’ unrest.
During summer, The Harvard Crimson reported that Harvard downgraded “disciplinary sanctions” it levied against several pro-Hamas protesters it suspended for illegally occupying Harvard Yard for nearly five weeks, a reversal of policy which defied the university’s previous statements regarding the matter. Unrepentant, the students, members of the group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP), celebrated the revocation of the punishments on social media and promised to disrupt the campus again.
Earlier this semester, however, Garber appeared to denounce a pro-Hamas student group which marked the anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by praising the brutal invasion as an act of revolutionary justice that should be repeated until the Jewish state is destroyed, despite having earlier announced a new “institutional neutrality” policy which ostensibly prohibits the university from weighing in on contentious political issues. While Garber ultimately has said more than Gay when the same group praised the Oct. 7 massacre last academic year, his administration’s handling of campus antisemitism has been ambiguous, according to observers — and described even by students who benefited from its being so as “caving in.”
The university’s perceived failure to address antisemitism has had legal consequences.
Earlier this month, a lawsuit accusing it of ignoring antisemitism was cleared to proceed to discovery, a phase of the case which may unearth damaging revelations about how college officials discussed and crafted policy responses to anti-Jewish hatred before and after Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
The case, filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, centers on several incidents involving Harvard Kennedy School professor Marshall Ganz during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Ganz allegedly refused to accept a group project submitted by Israeli students for his course, titled “Organizing: People, Power, Change,” because they described Israel as a “liberal Jewish democracy.” He castigated the students over their premise, the Brandeis Center says, accusing them of “white supremacy” and denying them the chance to defend themselves. Later, Ganz allegedly forced the Israeli students to attend “a class exercise on Palestinian solidarity” and the taking of a class photograph in which their classmates and teaching fellows “wore ‘keffiyehs’ as a symbol of Palestinian support.”
During an investigation of the incidents, which Harvard delegated to a third party firm, Ganz admitted that he believed “that the students’ description of Israel as a Jewish democracy … was similar to ‘talking about a white supremacist state.’” The firm went on to determine that Ganz “denigrated” the Israeli students and fostered “a hostile learning environment,” conclusions which Harvard accepted but never acted on.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Harvard Chaplains Omit Antisemitism From Statement on Antisemitic Incident first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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