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U. of Vermont agrees to improve antisemitism training, ending federal case and capping a tumultuous year
(JTA) – A year of strained relations between the University of Vermont and its Jewish community has led to the school resolving a federal antisemitism complaint and pledging to do more to protect its Jewish students — including from anti-Zionist rhetoric.
The university and the U.S. Department of Education announced Monday that they had reached a resolution to the complaint, which the department took up last fall after it was filed by students and pro-Israel groups. The complaint alleged that the institution had not properly responded to Jewish students’ allegations of antisemitic discrimination. Investigators determined that the university “received notice, but did not investigate” several claims of antisemitic behavior on campus, and that the steps it ultimately took did not adequately address students’ concerns.
Notably, the department’s office of civil rights determined that one of the ways the university’s Jewish students had been discriminated against was through “national origin harassment on the basis of shared ancestry,” reflecting a controversial argument promoted by pro-Israel groups that anti-Zionist rhetoric is harmful to all Jews because the Jewish people share Israel as an ancestral homeland. The resolution of the complaint also reflects a sharp change in course for the school, which had initially denied wrongdoing and blamed the accusations on an orchestrated external campaign — a response that upset the campus Jewish community.
“This complaint was overwhelmingly dealing with the antisemitism that masks as anti-Zionism, and what the resolution demonstrates is how seriously [the office] is taking that kind of antisemitism,” Alyza Lewin, president of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency after the ruling. A pro-Israel legal group that often involves itself in campus disputes, the Brandeis Center was one of the organizations that filed the initial complaint on behalf of mostly anonymous students.
The Department of Education responded to a JTA request for comment by pointing to its letter of resolution with the university. Its civil rights office has fielded several challenges to anti-Zionist rhetoric since the Donald Trump administration expanded the department’s mandate around antisemitism in 2019 under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The office of civil rights is fast becoming a favorite tool for pro-Israel activists: It also announced this week it would open an investigation into allegations of a professor’s antisemitic behavior at George Washington University, a week after the university’s own investigation cleared the faculty member of charges brought by another pro-Israel group.
In the agreement, the University of Vermont pledged to revise its policies for reporting discrimination and to train its staff on how to specifically respond to discrimination complaints. The Department of Education will also review the university’s records regarding its response to last year’s allegations of antisemitism. One of the areas in which the university said it would train staff is on how to recognize “the Title VI prohibition against harassment based on national origin, including shared ancestry.”
Among the allegations: cases of unofficial student groups denying admission to “Zionist” students (including a support group for sexual-assault survivors); one graduate teaching assistant who had mused on social media about lowering the grades of Zionist students; and a group of students who’d reportedly thrown an object at the campus Hillel building (the complaint claimed it was a rock; Hillel staff told JTA it was a puffball mushroom). More than 20% of the university’s student body is Jewish, according to Hillel International.
Evan Siegel, a Jewish junior at the University of Vermont, poses in his off-campus housing in Burlington, October 13, 2022. Siegel was initially critical of his school for its handling of a federal antisemitism investigation, but praised its eventual resolution. (Andrew Lapin/Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
The agreement marked a sharp change from how the university first responded when the government announced its intent to investigate the complaint last fall. Back then, the university’s president, Suresh Garimella, issued a combative statement in which he said the university “vigorously denies the false allegation of an insufficient response to complaints of threats and discrimination.” He also issued a point-by-point refutation of the allegations in the complaint.
Garimella further charged that the complaint had been orchestrated by “an anonymous third party” that had “painted our community in a patently false light.” In addition to the Brandeis Center, the complaint was filed on behalf of students by the watchdog group Jewish On Campus, whose antisemitism-tracking methodology has been criticized by other groups.
Garimella’s combativeness at the time was an unusual move for the leader of a university accused of violating Title VI law, which prohibits discriminatory behavior at federally-funded programs or institutions, such as public universities. Groups like the Brandeis Center have increasingly leaned on Title VI in federal complaints to argue that pro-Israel students face discrimination. Title VI cases have become a central component of litigating multiple kinds of Israel discourse on campus, ranging from a pro-Israel student body president being targeted at the University of Southern California to a resolution passed by pro-Palestinian law student groups at the University of California, Berkeley.
In Burlington, where the university is located, some liberal Jews were initially dubious of the complaint. Felicia Kornbluh, a history professor on campus who often teaches American Jewish history, told JTA she was concerned about “playing into the narrative” of a conservative, pro-Israel agenda set by the Brandeis Center, whom she described as “allies of the Trump wing of the Republican party.” (The center’s founder, Kenneth Marcus, served as assistant secretary of education for civil rights under Trump.)
But the complaint also landed in the aftermath of a contentious Burlington city council meeting at which, Kornbluh and others said, pro-Palestinian protesters became hostile to Jews. The meeting featured a council resolution to endorse the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign against Israel, and resulted in a raucous scene where pro-Palestinian groups shouted down Jewish students singing prayers for peace. Kornbluh described the atmosphere there as “really scary,” and “a little like Nuremberg.” Vermonters for Justice in Palestine, a local activist group, held multiple rallies on campus in support of the administration after the antisemitism complaint was publicized.
Against this backdrop, Garimella’s dismissiveness left the university’s Jewish community frustrated and angry. During a Jewish Telegraphic Agency visit to Burlington after the president’s initial statement, Jewish students and faculty said they felt like university administration was not taking their concerns seriously.
“I feel like we’re not being supported here,” Evan Siegel, a Jewish junior who is involved with student government, told JTA while sitting in off-campus housing adorned with Jewish summer camp memorabilia. “And that sucks.”
Employed as a campus tour guide, Siegel wondered, “How am I supposed to give tours and be like, ‘UVM is the best,’ when my president is being an ass?”
Other Jewish students told JTA at the time they had no intention of supporting the university financially or otherwise after they graduated, and wouldn’t advertise the fact that they were alums.
Matt Vogel, executive director of Hillel at the University of Vermont, where one of the alleged antisemitic incidents had taken place, also reluctantly played a role in the drama of the last year, after hoping he would be able to keep his focus on Hillel’s student programming. As the fall semester was starting, he sent an email home to parents reading, “Antisemitism keeps me awake at night.” Throughout the semester, Hillel also became more active in calling out antisemitism on social media.
“Just by default, we’re at the center of it,” Vogel told JTA last fall in the Hillel building, as student volunteers chopped vegetables for that evening’s Shabbat dinner in the next room. “I’ve overheard a student saying, like, a Hillel sticker on their water bottle might turn into a political conversation about Zionism in the first two seconds.”
Matt Vogel, executive director of Hillel at the University of Vermont, prepares for Shabbat in his Burlington office, October 14, 2022. Vogel praised the university for ultimately resolving its federal antisemitism complaint in April 2023 after months of tension. (Andrew Lapin/Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
Soon, Kornbluh decided that the administration’s response to the allegations was unacceptable, and penned a local op-ed opposing it that was later shared by her faculty union in a show of solidarity.
“I was stunned by the tone and content” of Garimella’s letter, Kornbluh wrote in the piece. Accusing the university of “gaslighting,” she added, “I do know that one persistent rhetorical strategy of antisemites in Europe and the United States has been to say that there is no antisemitism.”
Garimella reversed course following weeks of criticism, a strongly worded letter from more than a dozen Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee and news of several high-profile antisemitic incidents nationally. In October, the university published a website intended to support Jewish students — accompanied by a new statement from Garimella, who now condemned antisemitism unequivocally.
“I have listened to members of our campus community who experience a sense of risk in fully expressing their Jewish identity,” he wrote. ”I want my message to be clear to the entire campus community: antisemitism, in any form, will not be tolerated at UVM.”
This time, Garimella pledged not only to investigate individual reports of antisemitism, but also to work to change the campus community’s approach to the issue. He committed to further anti-bias training and building a streamlined bias reporting system for students, and said the university’s diversity office would work to build and maintain “meaningful actions that ensure our Jewish students and community members feel support and care.”
After Monday’s resolution, Garimella was fully supportive of the findings of the Department of Education’s investigation.
“The resolution reflects an important step in UVM’s engagement with our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the surrounding community,” he wrote in a message to the campus. “It also reflects numerous conversations we have had with our campus Jewish community and important local and national voices on the consequential and complex issue of antisemitism.”
In response to a JTA request for comment, a university spokesperson sent copies of the letters from the president and provost. (Throughout the year, the president’s office had declined multiple JTA interview requests.)
Jewish groups, including the university Hillel, celebrated the resolution. “The President and senior leadership’s new statements today represent tangible and accountable steps forward,” Vogel told JTA in a statement. “We hope this ensures that no Jewish student or any student at UVM experiences discrimination or harassment because of their identity.”
The Hillel building at the University of Vermont in Burlington, October 14, 2022. Hillel found itself at the center of a federal antisemitism complaint against the university. (Andrew Lapin/Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
Also celebrating the ruling was Jewish on Campus, a subsidiary of the World Jewish Congress and one of the groups that brought the initial complaint. “Today’s announcement is a victory for the safety and security of Jewish students,” Julia Jassey, the group’s CEO and a University of Chicago undergraduate, said in a statement.
Avi Zatz, the only University of Vermont student on the initial complaint who has made their identity public, is himself an employee of Jewish on Campus. Citing antisemitism in Vermont, Zatz recently transferred to the University of Florida — in a state that may soon pass legislation that, critics say, could harm Jewish studies on all its public campuses.
“I can’t have hoped for a better resolution,” Zatz, a junior, told JTA from his new school in Gainesville, Florida. While he said he was still glad to have left Vermont, he added, “I finally feel a sense of closure.”
Kornbluh, for her part, said the resolution was “a start,” but criticized the university for not voicing a stronger commitment to Jewish studies or meeting with Jewish faculty.
Reached by phone from Madrid, where he is studying abroad this semester, Siegel said he was “proud, determined, ready for more” following the university’s agreement.
“This resolution was really, in a respectful way, a slap in the face to the university to do better,” he said. “I, for one, am ready to get back on campus and continue my work as hard as I can.”
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The post U. of Vermont agrees to improve antisemitism training, ending federal case and capping a tumultuous year appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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The Israel news we don’t hear – and the forces that silence us
I spent part of Shabbat reading about the stunning performance of the Israeli stock market — which is up dramatically since Oct. 7, outpacing the gains of the S&P by a significant margin.
The 35 Israeli stocks with the largest market capitalizations are up a whopping 90 percent since Oct. 7. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 was up 60 percent during that same time period.
I wondered why I had not read more about this, and was struck by what Eugene Kandel, the chairman of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, told Investors Business Daily.
“Israel was, and still is, under a PR attack from ideological actors, who finance huge campaigns against us,” Kandel said. “But even during these two years, the collaboration with so many organizations, companies, governments and investors did not stop despite threats and protests.”
Why aren’t we hearing about those collaborations?
Then the news of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah shooting broke. Instantly, all the peace of Shabbat dissipated, along with all the thoughts of collaborations — and who is covering what and why, and in which language.
Instead, I thought again of how terrorists worldwide seem to own a well-thumbed Jewish calendar. The date and timing of this massacre — on yet another Jewish holiday — was no accident, and Jews around the world know this.
We are living through a sustained campaign to make Jews afraid to be Jews. Attacks on Jewish holidays are an effort to erase Jewish joy, Jewish observance, and in the case of Hanukkah, Jewish history.
And perhaps we are also under a sustained campaign to minimize Jewish achievement.
Some politicians take notice
Some politicians are making efforts to look at the often-exhausting layers of what is happening and find ways to name them.
I appreciate the effort to find language for all of this. Representative Brian Mast, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a Florida Republican, commented that he discerns a “very specific network that is in place that works together to sow antisemitism that is now, in many cases, working on the left and right across the media, to go out there and put this wedge in this relationship.”
He was referring to the U.S.-Israel connection.
Speaking at a Hudson Institute conference on antisemitism, he called this network a “very, very serious global threat across multinational organizations, media across the globe and adversaries and terrorist organizations.”
When he said “media,” I thought of the minimal coverage of the Israeli stock exchange and the strength of Israeli stocks.
The relief of acknowledgment
I felt a strange sigh of relief as I read Mast’s comments. It was the relief of actual acknowledgment. It was the relief of hearing someone trying to name things, even though I’m not sure if “network” is the best possible word.
Because something must be said.
What I noticed the day after the Bondi Beach massacre was the deep silence. The silence came from so many people that maybe “network” was the right word for it.
I went to a non-denominational holiday party this week, and no one mentioned what had happened in Australia. I wondered what the conversation would have been like if the shooting had happened at a Christmas tree lighting, or a drag story hour that turned into carnage. What would the conversation have been if any other group, but the Jewish community, had been targeted?
It’s unlikely that there would be total silence. Total non-acknowledgment. No words in a room of people who work with words.
The threat we face is not just the threat Representative Mast detailed, or the PR threat Kandel described. It’s also the silence, a silence so loud that it is visible as candlelight in the darkness.
How to respond to silence
I don’t know how to answer silence, but maybe some wiser people out there do.
Late last night, I saw a reel of a very long line of cars with menorahs on their roofs driving along the New York State Thruway, not far from the Palisades Mall, just a short drive from where I grew up.
The line of cars went on and on. The silent message was Do not be afraid. And I saw it as a response to Bondi Beach.
I hope there are more Hanukkah menorahs lit tonight, not less. And I also hope that we can consider bringing layers of truth into the light. Sometimes, layers represent both a dose of reality and an antidote against despair.
Yes, a father and son attacked the Jewish community on a holiday. But it is deeply important and also true that an unarmed Muslim father and fruit seller named Ahmed al Ahmed jumped on one of the gunmen and undoubtedly saved many lives.
The video of that heroic act should be watched by all.
It is a reminder that perhaps there is another “network” out there, a network of those who object to hatred. And it is a reminder that generalizations can only take us so far; as my mentor James Alan McPherson taught me, a story is about an individual at an individual moment in time.
Ahmed al Ahmed showed us all the power of an individual. And the power of a single layer in any truth, and in any story.
As for all those under-discussed Israeli companies holding on in wartime, through boycotts, pushing up the index by 90 percent since the worst day in Israeli history, continuing to collaborate with partners around the globe despite a PR onslaught to isolate them — even in this darkness, and in this silence, we see you.
The post The Israel news we don’t hear – and the forces that silence us appeared first on The Forward.
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Zohran Mamdani visits the Rebbe’s Ohel, increasingly a pilgrimage site for politicians
(New York Jewish Week) — Zohran Mamdani visited the gravesite of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s late leader on Monday, one day after the shooting that killed 15 people at an Australian Hanukkah event hosted by Chabad.
Yaacov Behrman, a Crown Heights activist who works as a PR liaison for Chabad, said Mamdani reached out about visiting the gravesite, known as the Ohel.
“Following the terrorist attack in Sydney, Australia, the mayor-elect asked to visit the Ohel to pay his respects and came last night,” said Behrman, who was present during Mamdani’s visit.
The New York City mayor-elect did not publicly share anything about his visit to the Ohel on Monday, but a photo obtained and posted by Forward journalist Jacob Kornbluh showed Mamdani wearing a black velvet kippah standing at the gravesite.
Mamdani had shared a lengthy statement on Sunday morning calling the Bondi Beach attack a “vile act of antisemitic terror.”
“I mourn those who were murdered and will be keeping their families, the Jewish community, and the Chabad movement in my prayers,” Mamdani wrote.
Mamdani specifically mentioned Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who was killed in the attack, and his “deep ties to Crown Heights,” the Brooklyn neighborhood that is home to the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
“What happened at Bondi is what many Jewish people fear will happen in their communities too,” Mamdani wrote.
Monday marked Mamdani’s first known visit to the Ohel, which is in the Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, and is a site with particular significance for adherents and admirers of the Chabad movement. It is the resting place of the movement’s two most recent leaders: Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and his father-in-law, Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson.
In recent years, it has become an oft-visited site by Jewish and non-Jewish politicians and public figures.
The Ohel draws 1 million visitors per year, according to Chabad’s website, who are “religious and not, laypeople and leaders, Jews and non-Jews, each one coming to pray, seek inspiration and find solace.”
Mamdani’s predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, has visited the Ohel at least seven times, and has said that he finds himself there during “the most difficult days” of his life. President Donald Trump visited the Ohel to mark the first anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Other visitors to the site in the last five years include Ivanka Trump; New York Gov. Kathy Hochul; then-Long Island congressman Lee Zeldin, who is Jewish and now heads Trump’s EPA; Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. during his presidential candidacy; Rep. Mike Lawler; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand; and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. Argentinian president Javier Millei and Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have both visited from abroad.
“There’s nothing opulent about it,” Rabbi Motti Seligson, a Chabad spokesperson, told the Free Press during a tour of the Ohel in early 2025.
Visitors have found deep meaning in their time in the open-roofed mausoleum. Booker, who prays at the Ohel on the eve of his elections, told the Free Press that he finds “something universally spiritual about that sacred space” even though he is not Jewish.
“I find my visits are both grounding and expanding,” Booker said.
Mamdani’s visit to the Ohel comes as Chabad officials and Jewish leaders are doubling down on their efforts to celebrate Hanukkah with public menorah lightings around New York City. Those events have surged in attendance in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack.
The visit is Mamdani’s most recent appearance in a primarily Orthodox Jewish space as he seeks to overcome skepticism among many Jewish voters who were turned off by Mamdani’s opposition to Israel. Voters in Crown Heights, where the Chabad-Lubavitch community is headquartered, turned out heavily for Andrew Cuomo in November’s general election.
The mayor-elect attended a celebration by the Satmar Hasidic sect last week, which is anti-Zionist for religious reasons. He was endorsed by a Satmar rabbi, Moishe Indig, and was welcomed to a sukkah by Indig in the fall.
During the Democratic primary, he made an appearance at a breakfast organized by the Council of Jewish Organizations of Flatbush, where there was a large Orthodox Jewish population.
The photo of Mamdani at the Ohel circulated in Jewish WhatsApp groups, and has been shared by some local Chabad chapters’ social media pages.
“His decision to go was surprising,” Chabad Virginia Beach wrote in an Instagram post. “But we all know that when light and darkness meet, light has the power to transform. And this place is a place of light.”
The post Zohran Mamdani visits the Rebbe’s Ohel, increasingly a pilgrimage site for politicians appeared first on The Forward.
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Iran Opposes Grossi’s UN Secretary-General Candidacy, Accuses Him of Failing to Uphold International Law
UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi holds a press conference on the opening day of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) quarterly Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, Sept. 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elisabeth Mandl
Iran has publicly opposed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi’s potential appointment as UN Secretary-General next year, accusing him of failing to uphold international law by not condemning US and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites during the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June.
During a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, Iran’s Ambassador to the UN, Amir Saeid Iravani, sharply criticized Grossi, calling him unfit” to serve as UN Secretary-General next year, Iranian media reported.
“A candidate who has deliberately failed to uphold the UN Charter — or to condemn unlawful military attacks against safeguarded, peaceful nuclear facilities … undermines confidence in his ability to serve as a faithful guardian of the charter and to discharge his duties independently, impartially, and without political bias or fear of powerful states,” the Iranian diplomat said.
With UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ term ending in December next year, member states have already begun nominating candidates to take over the role ahead of the expected 2026 election.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Israel’s relationship with Guterres has spiraled downward, reaching a low point last year when then-Foreign Minister Israel Katz labeled the UN “antisemitic and anti-Israeli” and declared Guterres persona non grata after the top UN official failed to condemn Tehran for its ballistic missile attack against the Jewish state.
Last week, Argentina officially nominated Grossi to succeed Guterres as the next UN Secretary-General.
To be elected, a nominee must first secure the support of at least nine members of the UN Security Council and avoid a veto from any of its five permanent members — the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, and France.
Afterward, the UN General Assembly votes, with a simple majority needed to confirm the organization’s next leader.
As head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog since 2019, Grossi has consistently urged Iran to provide transparency on its nuclear program and cooperate with the agency, efforts the Islamist regime has repeatedly rejected and obstructed.
Despite Iran’s claims that its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes rather than weapons development, Western powers have said there is no “credible civilian justification” for the country’s nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”
With prospects for renewed negotiations or nuclear cooperation dwindling, Iran has been intensifying efforts to rebuild its air and defense capabilities decimated during the 12-day war with Israel.
On Monday, Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), declared that the IAEA has no authority to inspect sites targeted during the June war, following Grossi’s renewed calls for Tehran to allow inspections of its nuclear sites and expand cooperation with the agency.
Iran has also announced plans to expand its nuclear cooperation with Russia and advance the construction of new nuclear power plants, as both countries continue to deepen their bilateral relations.
According to AEOI spokesperson Behrouz Kamalvandi, one nuclear power plant is currently operational, while other two are under construction, with new contracts signed during a recent high-level meeting in Moscow.
Kamalvandi also said Iran plans to build four nuclear power plants in the country’s southern region as part of its long-term partnership with Russia.
During a joint press conference in Moscow on Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reiterated Iran’s commitment to defending the country’s “legal nuclear rights” under the now-defunct 2015 nuclear deal, noting that Tehran’s nuclear policies have remained within the international legal framework.
Iran’s growing ties with Russia, particularly in nuclear cooperation, have deepened in recent years as both countries face mounting Western sanctions and seek to expand their influence in opposition to Western powers.
Russia has not only helped Iran build its nuclear program but also consistently defended the country’s “nuclear rights” on the global stage, while opposing the imposition of renewed economic sanctions.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has described the reinstatement of UN sanctions against Iran as a “disgrace to diplomacy.”
In an interview with the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network (IRINN), Lavrov accused European powers of attempting to blame Tehran for the collapse of the 2015 nuclear deal, despite what he described as Iran’s compliance with the agreement.
Prior to the 12-day war, the IAEA flagged a series of Iranian violations of the deal.