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Rutgers University Settles Antisemitism Complaint
Rutgers University students holding an anti-Zionist demonstration on March 19, 2024. Photo: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect
Rutgers University has settled a civil rights complaint in which a student accused school officials of failing to respond adequately to several antisemitic incidents, the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced on Thursday.
According to the agency, the incidents it investigated included calling for violence against an Israeli student — going as far as posting their address on social media — graffitiing a Jewish student’s door with a swastika and desecrating a mezuzah that was affixed to it, and a series of threats made against the predominantly Jewish Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) fraternity.
“OCR identified Title VI compliance concerns regarding both different treatment of students based on their shared ancestry as well as the university’s response to reports of alleged harassment and possible hostile environments for students based on students’ national origin,” OCR said in a statement. “The evidence the university has produced during OCR’s investigation so far reflects that the university likely operated a hostile environment … without redress as required under [Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act] and that the university subjected some students to discriminatory different treatment.”
Rutgers University has been a hotbed of campus antisemitism, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.
In the past few years, the school’s AEPi fraternity house has been vandalized at least three times. In one incident, in April 2022, on the last day of the Jewish holiday of Passover, a caravan of participants from a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) rally drove there, shouting antisemitic slurs and spitting in the direction of fraternity members. Four days later, before Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, the house was egged during a 24-hour reading of the names of Holocaust victims.
SJP has been a wellspring of antisemitic rhetoric at Rutgers. It was one of dozens of SJP chapters that cheered Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, an attack that resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths and numerous rapes of Israeli women. As video footage of the terrorist group’s atrocities circled the web, Rutgers SJP shared on its Instagram pages memes that said “Glory to resistance
” and “the clock started running when the majority of the Palestinian population was expelled from their land by Zionists during the Nakba.” It added, “You are watching an occupied people rise up against an apartheid nuclear power that has been occupying them and making their life unlivable since 1948.”
The milieu of extremism at the school resulted in at least one death threat against the life of a Jewish student since last Oct. 7. In November 2023, a local news outlet reported, freshman Matthew Skorny, 19, called for the murder of a fraternity member he identified as an Israeli, saying on the popular social media forum YikYak, “To all the pro-Palestinian ralliers [sic] … Go kill him.”
In March, the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce launched an investigation of Rutgers’ handling of antisemitism, responding to complaints that it has, for years, allowed an open season of hate against Jewish students. In notifying school officials of the probe, committee chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) denounced the university for having stood out “for the intensity and pervasiveness of antisemitism on its campuses.”
By settling with OCR, Rutgers University “committed” itself to forging a better future, the agency’s assistant secretary Catherine E. Lhamon said in a statement. The terms of the agreement include training employees to handle complaints of antisemitism, issuing a non-discrimination statement, and conducting a “climate survey” in which students report their opinions on discrimination at the school and the administration’s handling of it.
“Rutgers University has committed to resolution terms that will address serious Title VI noncompliance indicated in their records regarding different treatment of students based on stereotypes about the countries students and their families come from as well as unredressed harassment of students and faculty that appear to have created a hostile environment,” Lhamon continued. “OCR looks forward to the change that will come for Rutgers University as a result of this agreement and to ongoing work with the university to ensure its compliance.”
Other universities have recently settled civil rights complaints alleging antisemitism. Temple University in Philadelphia did so in December, agreeing to address what OCR described as several reports of discrimination and harassment, including “incidents of antisemitic, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian conduct.”
As part of the resolution of the case, Temple University agreed, for example, to enact “remedial” policies for past, inadequately managed investigations of discrimination and to apprise OCR of every discrimination complaint it receives until the conclusion of the 2025-2026 academic year. The university will also conduct a “climate” survey to measure students’ opinions on the severity of discrimination on campus, the results of which will be used to “create an action plan” which OCR did not define but insisted on its being “subject to OCR approval.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Report: Wary of Assassination by Israel, Khamenei Names 3 Potential Successors
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, May 20, 2025. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei named three senior clerics as candidates to succeed him should he be killed, the New York Times reported on Saturday citing unnamed Iranian officials. It is understood the Ayatollah fears he could be assassinated in the coming days.
Khamenei reportedly mostly speaks with his commanders through a trusted aide now, suspending electronic communications.
Khamenei has designated three senior religious figures as candidates to replace him as well as choosing successors in the military chain of command in the likely event that additional senior officials be eliminated.
Earlier on Saturday Israel confirmed the elimination of Saeed Izadi and Bhanam Shahriari.
Shahriari, head of Iran’s Quds Force Weapons Transfer Unit, responsible for arming Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, was killed in an Israeli airstrike over 1,000 km from Israel in western Iran.
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B-2 Bombers Moving to Guam Amid Middle East Tensions, US Officials Say
FILE PHOTO: A U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit bomber takes off from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam January 11, 2018. Picture taken January 11, 2018. U.S. Air Force/Airman 1st Class Gerald Willis/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
The United States is moving B-2 bombers to the Pacific island of Guam, two US officials told Reuters on Saturday, as President Donald Trump weighs whether the United States should take part in Israel’s strikes against Iran.
It was unclear whether the bomber deployment is tied to Middle East tensions.
The B-2 can be equipped to carry America’s 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, designed to destroy targets deep underground. That is the weapon that experts say could be used to strike Iran‘s nuclear program, including Fordow.
The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, declined to disclose any further details. One official said no forward orders had been given yet to move the bombers beyond Guam. They did not say how many B-2 bombers are being moved.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Experts and officials are closely watching to see whether the B-2 bombers will move forward to a US-British military base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. Experts say that Diego Garcia is in an ideal position to operate in the Middle East.
The United States had B-2 bombers on Diego Garcia up until last month, when they were replaced with B-52 bombers.
Israel said on Saturday it had killed a veteran Iranian commander during attacks by both sides in the more than week-long air war, while Tehran said it would not negotiate over its nuclear program while under threat.
Israel says Iran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, while Iran says its atomic program is only for peaceful purposes.
Trump has said he would take up to two weeks to decide whether the United States should enter the conflict on Israel’s side, enough time “to see whether or not people come to their senses,” he said.
Reuters was first to report this week the movement of a large number of tanker aircraft to Europe and other military assets to the Middle East, including the deployment of more fighter jets.
An aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific is also heading to the Middle East.
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Nuclear Diplomacy Stuck, Israel Says it Killed Top Iran Commander
Smoke rises following an Israeli attack in Tehran, Iran, June 18, 2025. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iran deems European proposals to curb its nuclear program unrealistic and a hurdle to agreement, a senior Iranian official said on Saturday, while Israel said it killed a veteran Iranian commander during attacks by both sides.
The more than week-long air war between longtime foes Israel and Iran continued with reports of strikes on an Iranian nuclear facility. The US was weighing whether to back Israel in the conflict while other powers urged de-escalation.
Iran‘s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met British, French and German counterparts, plus the EU, on Friday in Geneva in search of a path back to diplomacy and a possible ceasefire.
But proposals made by the European powers were “unrealistic,” the senior Iranian official told Reuters, saying that insistence on them would not bring agreement closer.
“In any case, Iran will review the European proposals in Tehran and present its responses in the next meeting,” the official said, adding that zero enrichment was a dead end and Tehran would not negotiate over its defensive capabilities.
Israel launched attacks on June 13 saying Iran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, while Iran says its atomic program is only for peaceful purposes. Israel is widely assumed to possess nuclear weapons, which it neither confirms nor denies.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Saeed Izadi, who led the Palestine Corps of the Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ overseas arm, was killed in a strike on an apartment in the city of Qom.
Calling his killing a “major achievement for Israeli intelligence and the Air Force”, Katz said Izadi had financed and armed the Palestinian militant group Hamas ahead of its October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza.
The Revolutionary Guards said five of its members died in attacks on Khorramabad, according to Iranian media. They did not mention Izadi, who was on US and British sanctions lists, but said Israel had also attacked a building in Qom, with initial reports of a 16-year-old killed and two people injured.
HUNDREDS KILLED
At least 430 people have been killed and 3,500 injured in Iran since Israel began its attacks, Iranian state-run Nour News said, citing the health ministry.
In Israel, 24 civilians have been killed by Iranian missile attacks, according to local authorities, in the worst conflict between the longtime enemies.
At a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul, Araqchi said Israel‘s aggression, which he said had indications of US involvement, should stop so Iran can “come back to diplomacy.”
“It is obvious that I can’t go to negotiations with the US when our people are under bombardments under the support of the US,” he told reporters on the sidelines, before meeting Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.
The top Iranian diplomat said US involvement in the conflict would be “very dangerous.” Araqchi is set to visit Moscow, Iran‘s ally, on Monday.
President Donald Trump has said he would take up to two weeks to decide whether the United States should enter the conflict on Israel‘s side, enough time “to see whether or not people come to their senses,” he said.
Iran would be able to have a nuclear weapon “within a matter of weeks, or certainly within a matter of months,” he said on Friday, adding: “We can’t let that happen.”
Yet in March, Tulsi Gabbard, his national intelligence director, testified to Congress that the US intelligence community judged that Tehran was not working on a nuclear warhead.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said that a centrifuge manufacturing workshop at the Isfahan nuclear facility, one of Iran‘s biggest, was hit – but added it contained no nuclear material.
Gulf Cooperation Council ambassadors expressed concerns to UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi about the safety of nuclear facilities close to their countries and “dangerous repercussions” of targeting them, Qatar state news agency said.
Israel said it was attacking military infrastructure.
INTERCEPTIONS OVER TEL AVIV
Early on Saturday, air raid sirens were triggered across parts of central Israel and in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, with missile interceptions visible over Tel Aviv and explosions echoing. There were no reports of casualties.
Those killed in Iran include the military’s top echelon and nuclear scientists. Israel said it also killed a second commander of the Guards’ overseas arm, whom it identified as Benham Shariyari, during an overnight strike.
Iran‘s health minister, Mohammadreza Zafarqandi, said Israel has attacked three hospitals during the conflict, killing two health workers and a child, and has targeted six ambulances, according to Fars.
Asked about such reports, an Israeli military official said that only military targets were being struck, though there may have been collateral damage in some incidents.
An Iranian missile hit a hospital in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Thursday.
Turkey, Russia and China have demanded immediate de-escalation.
Despite the downbeat assessment from the senior Iranian official, French President Emmanuel Macron said he and Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian agreed on a Saturday call to accelerate talks.
Israel says it will not stop attacks until it dismantles Iran‘s nuclear program and ballistic missile capabilities, which it views as an existential threat, saying this could take more than a few weeks.
The post Nuclear Diplomacy Stuck, Israel Says it Killed Top Iran Commander first appeared on Algemeiner.com.