Stanford University suspended the student-run Kairos co-op for the upcoming academic year, after receiving reports that Jewish students were targeted, a spokeswoman for the private California school told JNS.
Students taking part “in an extracurricular activity were asked to leave the house and told that, among other things, the presence of ‘Zionists’ in the group was making residents of the house uncomfortable,” Dee Mostofi, assistant vice president of external communications at Stanford, told JNS.
Rabbi Jessica Kirschner, executive director of Hillel at Stanford, told JNS that “students had permission from the residents to be in the building to work on a group project,” and “some residents realized some of the visiting students were Jewish and therefore assumed to be Zionists.”
The residents “decided their presence made residents ‘unsafe’ and told the group to leave, which they eventually did,” Kirschner told JNS.
The Kairos website, which includes a land acknowledgement, states that the more than 35-year-old residence “has been a welcoming space for art enthusiasts of all varieties.” It adds that Kairos “builds intentional community, wherein members both put in the work to help each other thrive and enjoy the authentic connections to each other that result.”
Mostofi told JNS that an investigation by Stanford’s Title VI office found that “the extracurricular project had nothing to do with the Middle East and that none of the students present had shared their political beliefs.”
“Students were targeted based on their perceived Jewish identity,” Mostofi said. “It is simply not acceptable that Jewish students would be excluded from a university space, or asked to explain their political beliefs to remain in that space.”
“No student should be subject to this kind of discrimination, whatever their identity,” she added.
The prior year, students were “required to make disparaging statements about Israel before being allowed to enter a party at the house,” Mostofi told JNS. “Based on the severity of the recent incident, and in light of the prior incident, the university has determined that stronger remedial steps are now needed.”
Kirschner appreciates that Stanford “acted quickly and decisively,” she told JNS.
Tyler Gregory, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area, told JNS that the council applauds Stanford’s “concrete steps to demonstrate that anti-Jewish discrimination and exclusion are unacceptable.”
“There have been many incidents of antisemitism over the past two years, and today’s announcement helps rebuild student, alumni and faculty trust,” he said.
