Todd Rokita, attorney general for the state of Indiana, released a 13-page advisory opinion warning schools to abide by federal and state laws dictating their obligations to safeguard students from bigoted attacks based on antisemitism or targeting other forms of shared ancestry.
“The Indiana Code and various federal civil-rights laws prohibit discriminatory conduct based on one’s religion, shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics in, among other places, educational settings,” states the document released on Tuesday. “Those laws apply to Jewish individuals as much as they do other protected classes.”
The advisory opinion points to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Indiana Civil Rights Act. It states that “educators may in many cases be required to take affirmative steps to end harassment, intimidation and violence against Jewish individuals.”
Rokita, a Republican who formerly served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Indiana from 2011 to 2019, said that “antisemitism is an evil that spreads beyond the confines of college campuses into the fabric of general society” and that “we must deal with this ugliness wherever it arises.”
