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U of Minnesota, Temple, Brown among latest federal campus antisemitism investigations

(JTA) – Complaints about anti-Israel protests at Temple and Brown filed by a Jewish right-wing activist who attends neither university are among the latest round of antisemitism investigations opened by the U.S. Department of Education.

The department’s civil rights office is also looking into a series of University of Minnesota faculty statements condemning Israel, following a complaint by a prominent Republican on the law school faculty.

In addition, as of this week the civil rights office has opened investigations at the two largest Bay Area public school districts, where some families have cited antisemitism concerns in applying to transfer out. And it is scrutinizing a private college where a Jewish anti-Zionist professor has publicly supported Hamas.

The investigations are among a new batch announced Wednesday as the department hastens to use its leverage to get universities and school districts to tackle antisemitism on their campuses.

With this latest round, the department’s Office of Civil Rights has now opened more than 50 Title VI “shared ancestry” investigations in the months since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel triggered a wave of campus anti-Israel activism. The department does not comment on its ongoing investigations, which range from the most prestigious Ivy League schools to tiny rural K-12 districts, but says that opening a probe does not mean the case necessarily has merit.

“I think it’s about time,” Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who filed the antisemitism complaint that triggered the school’s Title VI investigation, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Universities all over America are dealing with this.”

Painter, a former George W. Bush administration official, filed his complaint in December alongside Michael Hsu, a former regent; the department opened its investigation Tuesday. The complaint alleges that the university should have done more to rebut three different liberal-arts faculty groups that published statements condemning Israel after the Oct. 7 attacks.

In a statement, the university said, “The University stands firmly in support of speech and actions that provide an atmosphere of mutual respect, free from any form of prejudice and intolerance, as our Board of Regents policies state.”

Previously, upon news of Painter and Hsu’s initial Title VI filing, the school had told local media, “The letter’s broad characterizations of the University are inaccurate and are fundamentally contrary to our mission and values.”

One such faculty statement, by members of the department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, reads in part, “We assert that Israel’s response is not self-defense but the continuation of a genocidal war against Gaza and against Palestinian freedom, self-determination, and life.”

This statement was especially galling, Painter felt, because a department with a focus on women, gender and sexuality didn’t mention the sexual assaults committed by Hamas during its attacks. His efforts to have the college’s dean intervene have been unsuccessful, he said. (The other statements he objected to came from professors in the American Indian studies and Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature departments.)

“Henry Ford was putting this kind of crap in newspapers back in the ’30s,” Painter said, referring to the auto mogul’s antisemitic newspaper The Dearborn Independent.

Neither Painter nor Hsu are Jewish, and Hsu, while he was a regent in 2019, opposed university efforts to rename campus buildings named after antisemites. (Painter’s wife Karen, who is not Jewish, is an academic who studies the antisemitism of Nazi-era music.) But Painter said he still sees the fight against campus antisemitism as one he can lead.

“This is a critical issue not just for the Jewish community, but for our democracy,” he said. And he believes his efforts at the university have already borne fruit: After a candidate to lead the school’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office recently hedged in an interview on whether Hamas had assaulted Israeli women during its attack, he and other like-minded critics mobilized against the potential hire. Following the resulting bad press, the person is no longer a candidate for the job.

“We did win,” Painter said about the DEI fight. “That went all over.”

Two other new antisemitism investigations, at Temple University and Brown University, both stem from one complainant: Zachary Marschall, a professor at the University of Kentucky and editor-in-chief of the right-wing college advocacy site Campus Reform.

Marschall is Jewish but has no connection to either school. He told JTA he independently filed those complaints, and 18 others, after interviewing “Jewish and pro-Israel students across the country who are too afraid to speak out.”

On Campus Reform, he published partial copies of letters from the Department of Education confirming that it had opened the investigations based on his complaints; a statement from a Brown representative also noted that the investigation stemmed “from beyond Brown’s campus” and named Marschall’s publication as its source.

Marschall said his Temple complaint was related to recent reports of pro-Palestinian protesters in Philadelphia targeting an Israeli-owned falafel shop, as well as “From the river to the sea” chants at rallies by the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The department opened its Temple investigation on Tuesday.

In a statement about the investigation, a Temple spokesperson said, “Temple University unequivocally condemns hate and discrimination against any person and will always strive to ensure that all of our students, faculty, and staff feel welcomed and safe in our community and throughout our campus.”

Marschall’s Brown complaint was also tied to that university’s SJP chapter, which released a statement shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks holding “the Israeli regime and its allies unequivocally responsible for all suffering and loss of life, Palestinian or Israeli.” His complaint also quotes from campus vigils held by the chapter in the days after the attacks, at which students reportedly chanted “Glory to our martyrs.” The department opened its Brown investigation Jan. 9; universities elsewhere have banned or suspended their SJP chapters since the war began.

Information on the reasons for the other new Title VI investigations was not immediately available, but several of the schools in question have made headlines recently for antisemitism-related reasons.

Two large Bay Area public school districts, San Francisco Unified School District and Oakland Unified School District, are the sites of two of the remaining investigations. Oakland’s was opened on Tuesday and San Francisco’s was opened on Jan. 12.

Both districts have experienced a rash of controversy over Israel in recent months: Jewish parents in Oakland have begun pulling their students out of public schools after incidents including the local teachers union voting on a measure calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel, while San Francisco’s district recently reviewed a contract with a local anti-Zionist group that had organized a walkout for Palestinians and another protest.

The San Francisco teachers union also passed a resolution in November calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, which prompted the head of the local Jewish Community Relations Council to label the union “bigoted.”

In response to queries, a representative for Oakland’s district said it does not comment on pending legal matters but added, “OUSD is a sanctuary district, inside Oakland, a sanctuary city, inside California, a sanctuary state, which means we support all students, families and staff, regardless of religion, heritage, ethnicity, where they came from, or how they got here. We protect all students, and harassment of anyone is never acceptable.

“In this time of heightened tensions because of what’s happening in the Middle East, we are regularly communicating to our community, reminding them of our core values of love and support, so it should be clear that everyone is welcome and valued in our schools,” the statement continued.

Representatives for the San Francisco district and both teachers unions did not return requests for comment.

In response to a query about an investigation at Ohio State University opened Tuesday, a spokesperson for the school did not say what the investigation concerned. “Ohio State has never – and will never – tolerate discrimination or harassment of anyone based on their religious beliefs, nationality or identity,” the spokesperson wrote.

OSU had recently been the site of two reported incidents at which Jewish students and buildings were targeted: one in which two Jewish students were punched in the face after a “verbal altercation” outside a bar, and another in which trespassers to the campus Hillel stole Israeli flags and yelled insults at staff. Although the pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUs, which is active in campus antisemitism matters, had sent a stern letter to university leadership the same day the investigation opened, a representative for the group told JTA it was a “crazy coincidence” and that it wasn’t behind the investigation.

Meanwhile, Jewish alumni at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, told JTA that multiple Title VI antisemitism complaints had been filed against the school in recent weeks. More than 7,700 people have signed an online petition urging administrators to remove a Jewish anti-Zionist anthropology professor who has published opinion pieces supporting Hamas and questioning whether it can be blamed for the violence on Oct. 7. The Department of Education opened an investigation into the college on Tuesday, but the specific trigger for the investigation could not be verified.

In a statement, a Muhlenberg spokesperson said, “We do not tolerate antisemitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia or any other form of harassment, bigotry or abuse nor any incitement to violence or calls for genocide. If/when there are accusations of conduct violations, these are thoroughly investigated with appropriate actions taken based on the findings.”

Finally, the Department of Education announced a new investigation at the University of Illinois Chicago on Jan. 10, which it listed as the second such investigation at the university in the past month. The first concerned a complaint brought by Palestine Legal, a pro-Palestinian legal group that alleged the university had discriminated against Arab and Palestinian students by kicking them out of a 2021 webinar about the Israeli healthcare system.

But it was possible the second investigation might in fact be a correction of the first investigation. A spokesperson for Palestine Legal told JTA that the education department told the organization on the same day that it had revised the discrimination claim in its initial investigation from “shared Muslim ancestry” to “shared Palestinian ancestry,” as one of the complainants is Christian. UIC representatives and the Department of Education did not return requests for comment.


The post U of Minnesota, Temple, Brown among latest federal campus antisemitism investigations appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War

Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.

Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.

“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”

GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’

Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.

“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.

“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.

“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.

After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”

RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL

Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”

Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.

“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”

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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests

A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco

Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.

People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.

“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”

Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.

On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.

Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.

On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.

“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.

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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan

Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.

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