Protections offered by the university’s nondiscrimination policy extend to harassment or discrimination of Jewish students, including harassment or discrimination based on Jewish students’ connections to Israel and Zionism

Getty Images
The quad of the University of Illinois in Champaign.
The new school year is bringing fresh protections for Jewish students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, following the administration’s announcement on Tuesday that its nondiscrimination policy will now extend to harassment or discrimination based on Jewish students’ connections to Israel and Zionism.
The guidelines are part of a new agreement with Hillel International, Illini Hillel and the Jewish United Fund, Chicago’s federation, and it comes as several elite universities have received criticism for a lack of transparency about specific messaging as to what university policies are and how they are going to be enforced.
Under the agreement, announced on Tuesday, the University of Illinois declared that the protections offered by the university’s nondiscrimination policy extend to harassment or discrimination of Jewish students, including harassment or discrimination based on Jewish students’ connections to Israel and Zionism.
UIUC published a set of examples, for the first time, of discrimination and harassment of protected classes as part of its nondiscrimination policy.
The examples include the use of antisemitic slurs and stereotypes, blaming a Jewish student for Israel’s policies, physical contact with an individual and derogatory or hostile messages on social media.
In 2020, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the law firm of Arnold & Porter filed a Title VI complaint on behalf of University of Illinois Jewish students who alleged antisemitism on campus. Also on Tuesday, a resolution agreement issued by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) was reached.
Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education, said that UIUC “has now agreed to take the steps necessary to ensure its education community can learn, teach, and work without an unredressed antisemitic hostile environment, or any other hostility related to stereotypes about shared ancestry.”
Lonnie Nasatir, president of JUF, told Jewish Insider that “the terms in this settlement are the best achieved across the country and will have a significant positive impact on the campus climate for Jewish students.”
Additionally, the university agreed to publish a summary report of bias incidents every month, commit to mandatory antisemitism training for administrators and students and hire an expert on campus antisemitism to enhance the university policies.
The agreement does not include implementation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, a definition that mainstream Jewish groups and congressional leaders have called for universities to adopt as schools confront antisemitism on campus. .
In a statement, Robert Jones, UIUC’s chancellor, said that the university is “deeply committed to implementing the Mutual Understandings we are announcing today and to working together to provide a safe and supportive educational environment for our entire Jewish student community and for all students at Illinois.”
Erez Cohen, executive director at Illini Hillel, said in a separate statement that Hillel will “work alongside UIUC during the implementation of their new policies and to help reaffirm their promise to protect the rights of Jewish students on campus.”
While antisemitism on campuses has skyrocketed since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks and the subsequent war in Gaza, the university’s agreement with Jewish groups had already been in discussion for several years. An OCR investigation from 2015 through December 2023 found 135 allegations of anti-Jewish discrimination (compared to four related to anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian or anti-Arab discrimination). Incidents in the OCR investigation include flyers distributed around campus via plastic bags containing rocks stating, “Every single aspect of the Covid agenda is Jewish” and a student throwing a rock toward an event at the Hillel Center.
Brandeis Center President Alyza Lewin said in a statement that “UIUC’s administration began engaging in meaningful discussions with the Jewish community about how to address antisemitism on campus after we filed our OCR complaint years ago.”
Lewin called the agreement “a significant milestone,” adding that it will “when implemented, improve the campus climate for Jewish students.”
The university is currently facing a federal Title VI civil rights investigation over alleged antisemitism and Islamophobia

Brandeis Center
Kenneth Marcus
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced on Friday that he had appointed Kenneth Marcus, the founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, as a member of the board of visitors of George Mason University in Fairfax County, Va.
Marcus is a former assistant secretary of education for civil rights, and his work has focused intensely on antisemitism on college campuses. George Mason, a public university, is currently under Department of Education investigation for alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act over accusations of antisemitism and Islamophobia.
“I am grateful to Governor Youngkin for appointing me to this position at George Mason — a university that has been near and dear to my heart for many years,” Marcus said in a statement. “I’ve been proud to support Governor Youngkin’s recent work combating antisemitism here in Virginia – including his leadership in legislation adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. I was also pleased to address Governor Youngkin’s Commission to Combat Antisemitism, which made significant contributions to the well-being of Virginians — and I deeply appreciate his support for adding my voice to the Board.”
The George Mason branch of Students for Justice in Palestine posted a statement days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack praising the attack and hosted a rally where chants calling for the elimination of Israel were reportedly heard.
GMU played host to the national SJP conference in 2016. Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is currently investigating American Muslims for Palestine, a group involved with supporting and organizing SJP chapters, accusing it of potentially supporting terrorist groups.
Members of the board of visitors — 16 in total — serve four-year terms and are responsible for policy-making and oversight at the school, including hiring and salaries for faculty and staff and academic programs.
Marc Short, the former chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence; Nina Rees, a former leader of the Office of Innovation and Improvement at the Department of Education and charter school advocate; and Jon Peterson, a real estate CEO, are joining the board alongside Marcus.
Agreements reached with the University of Michigan and the City University of New York are the first to address campus antisemitism since Oct. 7

Adam J. Dewey/Anadolu via Getty Images
A protestor creates a pro-Palestine chalk mural on the ground as anti-Israel protestors continue protesting at the encampment of the University of Michigan on May 13, 2024.
Administrators at the University of Michigan and the City of University of New York failed to adequately investigate students’ reports of antisemitism and Islamophobia, the U.S. Department of Education announced on Monday.
The department’s Office for Civil Rights, known as OCR, released the findings of its investigations into how both Michigan and CUNY handled antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents dating back to 2020, culminating in resolutions reached with both universities to end the investigations in exchange for the administrations promising to do more to take students’ complaints seriously.
The agreements were the first to resolve investigations related to discrimination on the basis of shared ancestry — including antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Israel discrimination and anti-Palestinian racism — on college campuses since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel sparked a wave of antisemitism and ushered in a slew of more than 100 new investigations into potential civil rights violations.
“There’s no question that this is a challenging moment for school communities across the country. The recent commitments made by the University of Michigan and CUNY mark a positive step forward,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights continues to hold schools accountable for compliance with civil rights standards, including by investigating allegations of discrimination or harassment based on shared Jewish ancestry and shared Palestinian or Muslim ancestry.”
Jewish community advocates praised the department for resolving the complaints. In recent months, Jewish leaders have called on Congress to increase funding for OCR, which has been unable to hire additional attorneys to handle an immense increase in its caseloads since Oct. 7. More than twice as many shared ancestry investigations have been opened since Oct. 7 than in the previous seven years combined.
“The findings are sobering, but not surprising. Both schools must take their obligations to protect students seriously,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a post on X.
Investigators found that at Michigan, there was “no evidence” that the university complied with federal civil rights requirements mandating that the school assess whether 75 incidents of shared ancestry discrimination reported from late 2022 to early 2024 created a hostile environment for students. Because the university failed to determine whether Jewish and Muslim students faced a hostile environment, investigators also raised concerns that the university did not act “to end the hostile environment, remedy its effects and prevent its recurrence.”
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon, who oversees OCR, said she was “grateful to the University of Michigan for its speedy commitment to course correct following the volatile campus conditions since October 2023.” The university pledged to review each report of discrimination from the 2023-2024 school year and to report on its progress assessing harassment over the next two years, as well as to better train employees to comply with federal civil rights guidelines.
In a statement, Michigan President Santa Ono said the university “condemns all forms of discrimination, racism and bias in the strongest possible terms.” The agreement, Ono added, “reflects the university’s commitment to ensuring it has the tools needed to determine whether an individual’s acts or speech creates a hostile environment, and taking the affirmative measures necessary to provide a safe and supportive educational environment for all.”
The resolution reached between CUNY and the Education Department combined nine open investigations alleging antisemitism and Islamophobia or anti-Arab discrimination at several CUNY campuses, including Hunter College, Brooklyn College and Queens College. The department specifically criticized the university for failing to investigate and address an alleged antisemitic incident that occurred in a 2021 class at Hunter College, and called on CUNY to reopen investigations into antisemitic or Islamophobic harassment.
“The good news is that they are finally issuing resolution agreements for universities to make changes to address discrimination against Jewish students,” Ken Marcus, chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which helps students file civil rights complaints against universities, said of the agreements. Adding a note of caution, Marcus, who headed OCR in the Trump administration, said he had hoped for “more specificity and detail” in the agreements. “Instead, the Education Department has kicked the can down the road, requiring [CUNY] to make some vaguely described changes to its policies.”
In a statement, William C. Thompson Jr., the CUNY board of trustees chairman, promised the university would work closely with the Education Department. “We look forward to working with the Office of Civil Rights to ensure that all members of our community feel safe and included in the CUNY mission of equal access and opportunity,” said Thompson.
That both agreements included mentions of both antisemitism and Islamophobia — even though the two OCR complaints against Michigan only referred to antisemitism — reflects a common Biden administration practice of linking the two forms of hatred, even when the incidents are not connected.
“We all want universities to provide equal protection for all of their students, including Jewish and non-Jewish students alike. But it’s unusual for the agency to address claims by one group by insisting that multiple groups be treated in a different way,” said Marcus. “When women come forward and say that an institution is discriminating against women, the agency doesn’t come up with an order saying that both women and men need to be treated better in the future.”
The Brandeis Center’s lawsuit also claims professors have spread ‘antisemitic propaganda’ in class

JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images
People walk through Harvard Yard at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on December 12, 2023.
A federal lawsuit filed on Wednesday morning against Harvard University alleges that since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, students and faculty on campus have called for violence against Jews and celebrated Hamas’ terrorism daily as the university ignored harassment —- including a physical assault — of Jewish students, Jewish Insider has learned.
Filed in federal court in Boston by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Right Under Law, the complaint comes five months after the group filed a previous complaint against the university’s John F. Kennedy School of Government for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Since the Title VI complaint, “things have only gotten worse,” Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Brandeis Center and former U.S. assistant secretary of education for the Bush and Trump administrations, told JI. “This is what happens when an institution refuses to address even admitted violence. It is rare to see an institution admit as much as Harvard has had to admit and yet do as little to address the problem as Harvard has.”
The lawsuit, a copy of which was first obtained by JI, states that Harvard allowed student protesters to occupy and vandalize buildings, and interrupt classes and exams. “Professors, too, have explicitly supported Jewish and Israel terrorism, and spread antisemitic propaganda in their classes,” according to a Brandeis Center statement. “Jewish students are bullied and spat on, intimidated, and threatened, and subject to verbal and physical harassment.”
According to the complaint, a Harvard student’s message board provides a window into the toxic environment for Jewish students, describing it as being “filled with vile antisemitic slurs, threats and conspiracy theories, including calls for Jews to ‘cook’ and the Harvard Hillel to ‘burn[ ] in hell,’ and an antisemitic cartoon resembling Nazi-era propaganda that depicts a hand etched with a Star of David and a dollar sign holding a noose around the necks of what appear to be a Black man and an Arab man. The cartoon was posted not only by student groups but also by a faculty,” according to the Brandeis Center.
“We have been urging Harvard for quite some time to address antisemitism, even well ahead of Oct. 7,” Marcus told JI the day before the lawsuit was filed. “Their failure to do so is exactly what has led to the current catastrophe.”
Another example of harassment mentioned in the complaint involves the physical assault of a Jewish student. “When protestors realized a student was Jewish and/or Israeli, from a blue bracelet he was wearing in solidarity with Israel, a mob swarmed and surrounded him, and began physically accosting him and yelling in his face,” according to the Brandeis Center.
“The student pleaded with them to stop but, assailants violently grabbed him, pushed him, and he was physically attacked. The assault was captured on video, yet Harvard took no action to
redress the physical assault. And even now that the perpetrators have been charged with criminal assault and battery, Harvard has yet to discipline, suspend, or expel the attackers, or remove them from their leadership positions.”
The lawsuit also addresses harassment that predates Oct. 7, including the Title VI complaint from last October, which involves accusations of discrimination and harassment toward Jewish Israeli students Amnon Shefler, Gilad Neumann and Matan Yaffe. The alleged harassment took place in professor Marshall Ganz’s “Organizing: People, Power, Change” course last spring in Harvard’s prestigious Kennedy School of Government.
According to the complaint, Ganz told the students they could not use the term “Jewish democracy” to describe Israel – stating that using the words “Jewish” and “democracy” in regard to the Jewish state was akin to a project promoting white supremacy. When the students decided to stick with their project as designed, Ganz threatened them with academic consequences.
“Professor Ganz admitted he had never told students in any other class that they could not present their work, even when it centered on controversial topics. During the final class, two of Ganz’s teaching fellows taught a lesson on how to recruit support for Palestinians,” the complaint from October said, noting that while the topic itself was not objectionable, “it led to students making hostile claims, inaccurate characterizations and false accusations against Israel and Israelis. Ganz refused to let the Israeli students provide a response or any counter-arguments to the wildly inaccurate data presented.”
Marcus called Harvard’s case “unusual in its breadth and depth.”
“We have been able to show over a period of time repeated harassment of Jewish students and failure of the administration to do anything about it,” he said. “In particular, it is remarkable that Harvard has essentially admitted to Jewish student based discrimination, particularly at the Harvard Kennedy School and yet, they refuse to take prompt and effective action to address it. That’s why you end up with the sort of problems we’re seeing now.”
The legal team suing Harvard includes several law firms in addition to Brandeis Center: Holtzman Vogel, Baran Torchinsky & Josefiak PLLC, Vogel Law Firm PLLC, Libby Hoopes Brooks & Mulvey P.C, and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. “We’ve already seen intensive interest by the House Oversight Committee, leading of course to the resignation [in December] of Harvard’s president [Claudine Gay] and the recent report from the House Education [and] the Workforce Committee,” Marcus said, adding that the House committee report released last Thursday, “details some of the extraordinary failures of Harvard leadership, including their unwillingness to take actons that are suggested by their own antisemitism advisory committees.” The House report also highlighted a series of incidents of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus for which the school could not point to any specific response or disciplinary action it had taken.
Hillel vice president: ‘No university can exist if rules violators are rewarded with financial incentives, while students who do abide by the rules are not similarly rewarded’

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
EVANSTON, ILLINOIS - APRIL 25: Protest signs hang on a fence at Northwestern University as people gather on the campus to show support for residents of Gaza on April 25, 2024 in Evanston, Ill. The university's president struck a deal with protesters acceding to several of their demands, a deal that is being slammed by Jewish leaders.
As universities around the country strike various deals with anti-Israel protesters to quell the turmoil on college campuses — including giving protesters a seat at the table regarding investment decisions — Jewish leaders fear that even these largely symbolic concessions could further poison the atmosphere for Jewish students.
Negotiating with protesters sets up a climate in which “Jewish students — who are not violating rules —- are being ignored, bullied and intimidated,” Mark Rotenberg, vice president and general counsel of Hillel International, told Jewish Insider. “People who violate university rules should not be rewarded with financial benefits and rewards for the violation of university rules,” he continued.
Shira Goodman, senior director of advocacy at the Anti-Defamation League, echoed that the series of deals struck all “ignore the needs of Jewish students increasingly at risk of harassment and intimidation, or worse, on campus.”
“It is critical to acknowledge the facts on the ground,” Goodman said. “For days and in some cases weeks, anti-Zionist protesters have openly violated school policies and codes of conduct by erecting encampments that have provided cover for students to fan the flames of antisemitism and wreak havoc on the entire campus community… The protesters’ aim and impact on many campuses has been to intimidate and alienate Jewish students for whom Zionism and a connection to Israel is a component of their Jewish identity. They must be held to account, not rewarded for their conduct.”
The nationwide “Gaza solidarity encampments” began on April 17 at Columbia University. On April 29, Northwestern University set the precedent for conceding to some of the protesters’ demands when its president, Michael Schill, reached an agreement with the activists to end their anti-Israel encampment, in which protesters camped out and engulfed campuses for weeks.
The protesters — most, but not all, of whom were students — took over buildings, blocked access to throughways, vandalized school property and chanted intimidating, antisemitic slogans while calling for an end to Israel’s war with Hamas and demanding that institutions cut ties with the Jewish state.
The deal at Northwestern complied with several of the students’ demands. These include allowing students to protest until the end of classes on June 1 so long as tents are removed, and to encourage employers not to rescind job offers for student protesters. The school will also allow students to weigh in on university investments — a major concession for students who have been demanding the university to divest from Israeli corporations.
The Anti-Defamation League, StandWithUs and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law joined together to slam the strategy and call for Schill’s resignation after the agreement was announced. But a handful of schools, including University of Minnesota, Brown University, Rutgers University and University of California, Riverside followed suit — giving into the demands of encampment protesters in an effort to shut them down.
While all of the agreements center around divesting from Israel, resolutions at each school look different. At Rutgers, a proposed deal reached last Thursday includes divesting from corporations participating in or benefiting from Israel; terminating Rutgers’ partnership with Tel Aviv University; accepting at least 10 displaced students from Gaza; and displaying Palestinian flags alongside other existing international flags on campus. Eight out of the 10 demands were met, while Rutgers students, faculty and alumni continue to push for the two not yet agreed to — an official call for divestment as well as cutting ties with Tel Aviv University.
At Minnesota, meanwhile, protesters packed their tents after a 90-minute meeting with Jeff Ettinger, the school’s interim president. A tentative deal was reached, which could include divestment from companies such as Honeywell and General Dynamics, academic divestment from Israeli universities, transparency about university investments, a statement in support of Palestinian students, a statement in support of Palestinians’ right to self-determination and amnesty for students arrested while protesting (nine people were arrested on campus on April 22).
In a statement to students and faculty, Ettinger wrote that coalition representatives will be given the opportunity to address the board of regents at its May 10 meeting to discuss divestment from certain companies. Public disclosure of university investments would be made available by May 7. Ettinger also said that the administration has asked university police not to arrest or charge anyone for participating in encampment activities in the past few days, and will not pursue disciplinary action against students or employees for protesting.
Rotenberg, who was general counsel of University of Minnesota for 20 years before coming to Hillel, told JI that he is working on a statement objecting to the settlements, which will be addressed to the school’s board of regents.
“I am hopeful that this is not a trend,” Rotenberg said. “No university can exist if rules violators are rewarded with financial incentives, while students who do abide by the rules are not similarly rewarded,” he continued. “That’s an upside-down world and it cannot be acceptable for individuals who violate university regulations to be given the benefits while our students’ voices are not heard.”
Rotenberg expressed ire over universities’ lack of consulting with Jewish faculty or students ahead of making the agreements. At Northwestern, seven Jewish members of the university’s antisemitism advisory committee stepped down from the body last Wednesday, citing Schill’s failure to combat antisemitism while quickly accepting the demands of anti-Israel protesters on campus.
“Any meeting with the board of regents at University of Minnesota that relates to these issues, must include Jewish voices — voices of the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community who identify with and support Israel,” Rotenberg said.
“There are many ways to enforce university time, place and manner regulation that do not involve rewarding violators,” he continued, applauding the University of Connecticut, University of Florida and Columbia University for shutting down encampments while “eliminating the dangers of disruption and violence, without rewarding the violators.” At Columbia, for example, officers in riot gear removed demonstrators who had seized Hamilton Hall and suspended students who refused to dismantle their encampment.
Not all efforts to strike deals have been successful. At University of Chicago, for instance, negotiations to remove encampment tents from the campus central quad were suspended on Sunday, after protesters reached a stalemate with the university president, Paul Alivisatos.
“The Jewish community is right to be outraged,” Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, told JI. “You don’t capitulate to groups that are in violation of reasonable restrictions by giving into demands. That is not moral leadership… the right statements are not negotiations with rule violators, but rather say that free expression is a core value but you have to abide by university policy in doing that,” she continued, noting that she has observed a “trend with private universities being more able to weather the storm, as well as just doing better than some of the public universities.”
Like Rotenberg, Elman singled out Minnesota for its “disheartening” snub of Jews.
“Their statement [on encampments] had nothing to say to the Jewish community,” Elman said. “Nothing condemning the rank antisemitism on display, in rhetoric and calls for violence against Israeli citizens. How can you not even in one paragraph of your statement condemn how antisemitism has infused these protests?”
In a statement to JI, Jacob Baime, CEO of the Israel on Campus Coalition, called on university administrators to “clear the encampments, equally enforce existing policies, and protect Jewish students and their friends and allies,” without capitulating to “supporters of Hamas.”
Experts said that it’s too early to know whether or not the concessions offered are merely symbolic — Brown, for example, plans to wait until October for its corporate board to vote on a proposal to divest from Israeli interests, as per its negotiation with protesters. But already, according to the ADL’s Goodman, administrations that have made deals “[incentivized] further rules violations and disruption and normalized antisemitism on campus.”
Goodman cautioned that as universities try to restore order during finals and graduations, more may strike similar deals. “Administrators may see this as an acceptable solution to resolve the current situation on their own campus… It will also be interesting to see how they determine whether protestors who committed no further code of conduct violations comply and what happens if they do not comply.”
Rotenberg warned, “The Jewish community has ample reason to fear when people take the law into their own hands and who, after being warned, decide to violate the norms of their community and then get rewarded for doing so.” Going down that path, he said, is “marching down the road to authoritarianism.”
Task force punts on whether some slogans chanted at anti-Israel rallies are antisemitic

InSapphoWeTrust / Flickr
Columbia University
The recommendations handed down earlier this week from Columbia University’s task force on antisemitism painted a picture of Jewish students feeling “isolation and pain” in the wake of pro-Palestinian protests that have gripped the campus since Oct. 7.
They also cited a lack of disciplinary response from the university regarding unauthorized protests of the Israel-Hamas war as contributing to Jewish students’ struggles on campus, and called for the university to more effectively investigate policy violations by creating an easier process for filing complaints.
But on the pivotal question of whether some of the slogans chanted at those rallies veer from legitimate political speech into antisemitism the task force’s recommendations are ambiguous.
The report states, “Obviously, the chants ‘gas the Jews’ and ‘Hitler was right’ are calls to genocide, but fortunately no one at Columbia has been shouting these phrases… Rather, many of the chants at recent Columbia protests are viewed differently by different members of the Columbia community: some feel strongly that these are calls to genocide, while others feel strongly that they are not.”
The report does not, however, specifically address the slogan “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free,” which has frequently been chanted at protests on Columbia’s campus and is widely viewed by Jewish groups as a call for genocide of Israelis.
According to David Schizer, a professor of law and economics and dean emeritus of Columbia’s law school, who is one of the three co-chairs of the task force, the key issue that the 24-page report addresses is the thorny matter of campus free speech — emphasizing that “everyone needs to have a right to speak and to protest,” he said.
“How can we make sure the people have the right to speak and protest, while at the same time ensuring that protests don’t interfere with the ability of other members of the community to teach classes, study for a test, to hear their professors,” Schizer, who is also the former CEO of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, continued. While the report emphasizes the right to peaceful demonstrations, it also condemns faculty for participating in unauthorized demonstrations.
But some prominent leaders of the movement to fight antisemitism in higher education expressed skepticism that a set of recommendations could fix the raging antisemitism on Columbia’s campus — which has included repeated violations of the rules on protests and physical assault and other serious attacks on Jewish students.
“The new recommendations have some technically good work which could provide incremental advances, but it’s certainly not the kind of thing that will solve Columbia’s problems,” Kenneth Marcus, founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, told JI. The Brandeis Center recently filed federal complaints against the University of California for antisemitism at UC Berkeley and American University, while the Department of Education is currently investigating Brandeis Center complaints filed against Wellesley, SUNY New Paltz, the University of Southern California, Brooklyn College and the University of Illinois for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and for discrimination against Jewish students.
The recommendations come as Columbia faces pressure from donors and investigations by Congress and the Biden administration over antisemitism. It also comes in the wake of scrutiny regarding a number of antisemitism task forces set up at elite universities as a response to the surge in antisemitism that erupted following the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel. Five months later, questions remain over the effectiveness and direction of such groups — with some experts claiming task forces have been all talk with minimal action so far.
But Schizer said that in Columbia’s case, there have been months of ongoing research of university policies, including interviewing students. It aims to release a series of reports in the coming months with the goal of gaining a deeper understanding of the campus climate and providing further recommendations.
The report states that while it agrees with the university’s principle that calls for genocide, like other incitement to violence, violate the rules, “the application of it should be clarified.”
It goes on to encourage the university’s legal team to “provide more guidance on this issue,” and emphasizes that clearer guidance is needed, like the university has done with its rules on gender-based misconduct to include “scenarios,” “to provide greater clarity help to provide fair notice, so Columbia affiliates have more of a sense of what is permissible (even if offensive) and what is not.”
Columbia administration plans to review the task force’s interim policy at the end of this semester. Minouche Shafik, the university’s president, said in a statement that the new recommendations — the first set in a series — are welcomed by the university and “will continue across a number of fronts as the University works to address this ancient, but sadly persistent, form of hate.”
Marcus said it’s “good that Columbia finally has good people asking serious questions about harassment and disruptive protests,” but he added, “What’s needed is not just a few recommendations regarding the rules on protest. The fact is that there’s been antisemitic bigotry [at] Columbia University for decades now.”
“It’s not as if a few changes to the protest policies are going to substantially change the institution as long as they continue business as usual,” he continued. “Much of what’s in this new set of recommendations could have been written on Oct. 6 given everything that’s happened since. What’s needed is not a series of incremental measures, but a rethinking of what Columbia is doing to cause harm, not just to Jewish students but also to the surrounding community. These recommendations may lead to technical and marginal changes in the ways that the university responds to specific incidents, and generally speaking that’s a good thing.
But it’s certainly not a solution to the problem.”
Marcus noted that the recommendations are “framed fairly narrow, with response to only one narrow piece of the problem.”
“I know this is only one of the series of reports that we can anticipate, but if this is an indication of what’s to come, it may provide some useful professional iteration but not a truly substantial change,” he said. “It does not indicate a new mindset that is ready to deal with the problems Oct. 7 has revealed.”
Mark Yudof, chair of the Academic Engagement Network, expressed a similar sentiment as Marcus, but added that he’s “hopeful” the report will bring change. Schizer, as well as the two other co-chairs of the task force, Ester Fuchs and Nicolas Lemann, are all longtime members of AEN.
“We need adequate rules about speech and we need to put teeth into it and have reasonable procedures in which people are actually disciplined for violating the rules,” Yudof said, calling the report “complex.”
While skeptical, Yudof also expressed praise for the recommendations — “I think Columbia’s report gets at the core problem of education and I applaud them,” he said.
“I like the report and am hopeful… I would urge the Columbia administration to adopt the recommendations of the task force, but the proof will be in the pudding.”
ADL, Brandeis Center file Title VI complaint against Berkeley school system for rampant antisemitism
The complaint alleges widespread bullying and taunting against Jewish students, with minimal recourse from school officials

Getty Images
Students in a classroom
Students chanting “kill the Jews.”
Students asking their Jewish classmates what “their number is,” referring to numbers tattooed on Jews during the Holocaust.
Teacher-promoted walk-outs in support of Hamas.
A second-grade teacher leading a classroom activity where children wrote: “Stop Bombing Babies” on sticky notes to display in the building.
Those are some of the incidents endured by K-12 Jewish students in the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) that have sparked a Title VI complaint filed on Wednesday with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, Jewish Insider has learned.
The complaint alleges that the district has failed to take action against “severe and persistent” bullying and harassment of Jewish students by peers and teachers since Oct. 7.
JI has obtained a copy of the complaint, which was filed jointly by the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Anti-Defamation League. It states that Berkeley administrators have ignored parent reports, including a letter signed by 1,370 Berkeley community members to the Berkeley superintendent and Board of Education, while knowingly allowing its public schools to become hostile environments for Jewish and Israeli students.
Chiara Juster, a parent in the district for years, recently made what she called the “uncomfortable” decision to pull her eighth-grade daughter out of the school district and homeschool instead because of “scary” antisemitism in the school district.
“She was called a ‘midget Jew,’” Juster told JI. “That just shook me in a different way than [other bullying she had faced]. It was scary.”
Juster recalled that her daughter was able to transfer to a different class, away from the student who name-called, but the situation grew worse. “That first day in the new class, she was told by a teacher that she should go to the watermelon club” — a reference to a symbol associated with Palestinian rights — “to learn the truth about Gaza.”
“The answer shouldn’t have to be moving classes,” Juster said, adding that homeschooling has been a challenge but that she doesn’t “trust the district to keep my child safe at all.”
“I think [the administration is full of] empty words,” she continued. “I hear things like ‘this is a safe and inclusive environment,’ when it’s anything but. I think the school district is trying to sweep a problem under the rug, and I don’t have a lot of hope. What I would like to see is no kid ever feel uncomfortable because of the way they were born and for the schools to protect our kids. I can’t believe I even need to say this in this day and age.”
Trish McDermott, a spokesperson for BUSD, told JI that “the district is not aware of any families that have left the district for this reason [antisemitism].”
Since Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks on Israel, antisemitism has skyrocketed on U.S. college campuses. The Department of Education is currently investigating complaints filed against Wellesley College, SUNY New Paltz, the University of Southern California, Brooklyn College and the University of Illinois. The Brandeis Center recently filed federal complaints against American University and the University of California, Berkeley over concerns about the administration’s handling of antisemitism.
But the ideology behind anti-Israel sentiments infiltrating campuses is beginning earlier than college — and has been creeping in some public K-12 schools. The complaint against BUSD comes on the heels of a Title VI investigation that was opened in Oakland and San Franscico’s K-12 school districts. At least 30 parents between the two school districts have withdrawn their children and transferred them to other districts following an educator-organized unauthorized teach-in for Gaza last month.
“California has numerous anti-discrimination laws that apply to schools but are not being enforced by the district or by anyone else,” Rachel Lerman, the Brandeis Center’s vice chair and general counsel who is overseeing the complaint, told JI. “We are hoping this investigation will reveal some of the rot that is there and will prompt [action] on the part of the district.”
Since Oct. 7, the ADL has recorded a total of 256 antisemitic incidents, ranging from swastika graffiti to physical assault, in elementary, middle and high schools alone. The data represents a 140% increase compared to the same three-month period a year prior.
James Pasch, ADL’s senior director for national litigation, told JI that “there has certainly been a pattern of significant [antisemitism] in K-12 schools, particularly in California, but what we’re seeing is not isolated to California. We’ve seen it from coast to coast.”
“[The BUSD] district has certainly been [particularly] pervasive… and there’s a lack of a comprehensive response from the administration to protect its Jewish students… [which is] a legal obligation,” Pasch continued. “It needs to stop now.”
The university had previously acknowledged the three Israeli students were targeted by anti-Zionist Jewish faculty member

Getty Images
Gate at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
More than four months after Harvard University found that a professor at its John F. Kennedy School of Government discriminated against three Jewish Israeli graduate students, violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law on Monday morning sent a legal warning to the university demanding immediate action.
“It’s extraordinary that Harvard on the one hand is willing to acknowledge that clients faced inappropriate discrimination and different treatment and yet is not taking meaningful action to address it. This is just the sort of thing you would expect from a university that is under immense pressure for the waves of antisemitism that its students are facing,” Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Brandeis Center and former U.S. assistant secretary of education for the Bush and Trump administrations, told JI.
The letter, which was first obtained by Jewish Insider, comes as Harvard’s administration faces criticism from lawmakers and alumni over its mishandling of a surge of antisemitism at the school since Hamas’ deadly rampage in Israel on Oct. 7. In a letter to the university’s general counsel, the Brandeis Center said that the school’s failure to address the discrimination claim has exacerbated antisemitism at the university, pointing to a letter published earlier this month on social media by 31 student organizations claiming Israel is “entirely responsible” for Hamas terrorists’ murder of 1,400 Israelis.
“It isn’t a coincidence that you would see the extraordinary developments at Harvard since Oct. 7 in light of the weak administrative actions prior to that date,” Marcus said, noting that while the primary incident addressed in the case occurred prior to Hamas’ attacks, “Harvard’s inaction paved the way to what we’ve been seeing since then.”
The Brandeis Center wrote, “This failure, on top of other failures of leadership, have set the stage for the worsening climate that we have seen for Jewish Harvard students since [Oct. 7]. Harvard’s failure to speak out against anti-Semitism masked as anti-Zionism has only emboldened the student groups who are now celebrating Hamas’ atrocities. The silence needs to end.”
Marcus told JI that “this is a great example of what happens when university administrators fail to address antisemitic incidents when they should. Things just get worse and worse as we’ve been seeing at Harvard, especially in the days since Oct. 7.”
The incident involves alleged discrimination and harassment of Jewish Israeli students Amnon Shefler, Gilad Neumann and Matan Yaffe, which took place in professor Marshall Ganz’s “Organizing: People, Power, Change” course last spring. All three students have been called up for Israel Defense Forces reserve duty and were not available for comment.
According to the Brandeis Center, “the students decided to work together on a joint project that would examine ways to ‘to harness and unite a majority of diverse and moderate Israelis to strengthen Israel’s liberal and Jewish democracy.’”
“The students articulated their purpose as ‘organizing a growing majority of Israelis…that act in harmony, building on a shared ethos of Israel as a liberal-Jewish-democracy, being a cultural, economic and security lighthouse.’ Professor Ganz dismissed their project as illegitimate, demanded they change it, and subjected them to anti-Israel and anti-Semitic bias and discrimination when they refused,” the letter continues.
According to the complaint, Ganz told the students they could not use the term “Jewish democracy” to describe Israel – stating that using the words “Jewish” and “democracy” in regard to the Jewish state was akin to a project promoting white supremacy. When the students decided to stick with their project as designed, Ganz threatened them with academic consequences.
“Professor Ganz admitted he had never told students in any other class that they could not present their work, even when it centered on controversial topics. During the final class, two of Ganz’s teaching fellows taught a lesson on how to recruit support for Palestinians,” the letter said, noting that while the topic itself was not objectionable, “it led to students making hostile claims, inaccurate characterizations and false accusations against Israel and Israelis. Ganz refused to let the Israeli students provide a response or any counter-arguments to the wildly inaccurate data presented.”
The Brandeis Center’s initial complaint to the university was sent in March. In response, Harvard launched a third-party-investigation, which agreed with the Brandeis Center and concluded that “Ganz subjected the students to anti-Israel and antisemitic bias and discrimination on the basis of their identities as Jewish Israelis, silenced the speech of the Jewish Israeli students about a topic he viewed as illegitimate, treated the students differently and denigrated them on the basis of their Israeli national origin and Jewish ethnicity and ancestry, and prioritized others’ concerns over the Israeli students.”
Marcus said that the investigator made “fairly strong recommendations,” adding that he would have made “even stronger recommendations,” but was “happily surprised since investigators paid by colleges and universities seldom are as firm as this.”
According to the Brandeis Center, the investigator concluded that Ganz’s conduct violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which requires schools that receive federal funding to respond immediately to discrimination and/or harassment that “negatively affect[s] the ability and willingness of Jewish students to participate fully in the school’s education programs and activities.”
Harvard Kennedy School Dean Douglas Elmendorf pledged to address the problem, asking for time over the summer to do so, Marcus said, adding that ultimately, his plan was “an apology and unspecified personnel actions,” which Marcus called “deeply disappointing.”
Four months later, the Brandeis Center said that “not only has there been no action to address the anti-Semitism, Harvard is now publicly touting Ganz, who continues to teach there, as a civil rights hero. The latest edition of the Harvard Gazette esteems Ganz’s early civil rights work, leaving out mention of the antisemitic conduct.”
“Harvard, it seems, has no genuine intent to address the anti-Semitism on its campus, choosing instead to publicly celebrate a professor who recently subjected Jewish and Israeli students to bias and discrimination,” the letter sent on Monday states.
In July, amid the White House’s rollout of a national strategy to combat antisemitism, the issue was addressed in the Knesset by American Jewish leaders and Israelis studying in the U.S.
One of the Israeli students who spoke at the hearing was Lt. Col. Amnon Shefler, the former deputy military secretary to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also served as the IDF international spokesperson and as a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force. Shefler was studying at Harvard while still in the military on leave and mentioned the Ganz case when describing the struggles he and other Israeli students faced in their classes.
The Brandeis Center is demanding that Harvard “fulfill the commitment it made to address Ganz’s discrimination, and eliminate the hostile environment that is snowballing on its campus, as it is required under Title VI.”
It specifically calls on Harvard “to commit to university-wide changes, including requiring all faculty and staff to undergo training on anti-Semitism, including understanding that expressing support for the Jewish homeland is a sincere and deeply felt expression of Jewish ethnic and ancestral identity as well as the Jewish religion. The training also must help faculty and staff recognize when anti-Semitism directed at Jewish ethnicity is a concerted strategy to marginalize Jewish students on campus and make them feel unwelcome.”
Earlier this month, the Wexner Foundation cut ties with Harvard over “the dismal failure of Harvard’s leadership to take a clear and unequivocal stand against the barbaric murders of innocent Israeli civilians by terrorists [on Oct.7].” More than 250 Israelis have graduated from the long-standing and prestigious Wexner Foundation Fellowship, which includes a period of study at Harvard’s Kennedy School. These alumni have often gone on to hold high-ranking positions in the Israeli civil service and in government, including Knesset members, Israel Defense Forces generals, top state prosecutors and others.
A letter from the foundation to the Harvard Board of Overseers severing ties said that many Israel fellows “feel abandoned” by the university.
Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer and his wife, Batia, also announced they are quitting Harvard’s Kennedy executive board in protest over how university leaders have responded to the massacre.
eJewishPhilanthropy’s news editor Judah Ari Gross contributed reporting.