Drexel University in Philadelphia has entered into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education following a review of how the school handled 36 reports of alleged harassment from October 2022 through January 2024.
While the Oct. 23 complaint of a potential violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act originally reported to the Education Department—a fire in a dorm—did not originate in antisemitism, researching the university’s records found that numerous other reports did.
“This review demonstrated growing evidence of a hostile environment for over 18 months,” the department stated in an Aug. 2 announcement of its conclusions. Examples included swastika graffiti, removed mezuzahs, social-media threats and vandalism by masked individuals at Drexel’s Center for Jewish Life.
It described the school’s response as “limited to addressing each incident on an individual basis, including offering supportive resources to students, but did not consider whether broader and more responsive action was needed for the university community.”
The university has agreed to numerous measures to address the hostile campus environment, such as reviewing the previous two years’ discrimination incidents, inform the Education Department of complaints in the next two school years and create an action plan after conducting surveys. The settlement also requires Drexel to revise its policies and provide staff training.
Catherine E. Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights, said that the Education Department “will work with Drexel in the coming years to ensure its full satisfaction of its federal civil-rights obligation to ensure that Jewish students at the university, and all students at the university, can learn safely in an environment free from stereotyped discrimination related to their shared ancestral backgrounds.”
