U.S. Jewish groups that have filed civil rights complaints alleging Jew-hatred at schools across the country hailed the wave of investigations that the U.S. Department of Education has opened in recent weeks.
The Anti-Defamation League, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Jewish on Campus and the National Jewish Advocacy Center welcomed the newly-opened investigations into Yale University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and three other schools.
“The experiences of the Jewish students at these institutions have been emblematic of what we have seen across the country, and that must change, and it must change now,” stated James Pasch, vice president of national litigation at the ADL, on Thursday.
“Jewish students being threatened, harassed and in some instances assaulted, have no place on our campuses,” Pasch said. “We hope these investigations will yield positive changes that reverberate on campuses coast-to-coast.”
Since March 13, the Department of Education has opened 15 “shared ancestry” investigations—a category that includes allegations of antisemitism—into schools and universities. These are the first such investigations launched since the Trump administration came into office.
While the department does not list the precise nature of each “shared ancestry” investigation publicly, the Trump administration has indicated that it intends to focus on combating Jew-hatred.
On March 10, Linda McMahon, the U.S. education secretary, wrote letters threatening enforcement actions against 60 universities, informing them that the atmosphere they have created for Jewish students might put them in violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin.
“The department is deeply disappointed that Jewish students studying on elite U.S. campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year,” McMahon stated. “University leaders must do better.”
Kenneth Marcus, chairman and CEO of the Brandeis Center and a former head of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights during the first Trump administration, stated on Thursday that he believes that these investigations at the department are only the beginning.
“While the Antisemitism Task Force is investigating 10 campuses and the Office for Civil Rights has warned 60 of them, the federal government has the bandwidth and the will to expand its investigations well past the initial campuses,” Marcus said. “They are clearly just getting started.”
