Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Laura Gillen (D-NY) this week introduced the Student Protection and University Accountability Act, which aims to compel schools to institute clear policies for addressing antisemitism and other forms of discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, or face losing their federal funding if they fail to do so.

The bill requires schools to designate a specified Title VI coordinator and to develop clear procedures for investigating student complaints and publicize those procedures, as well as to publicly display guidance from the Department of Education on Title VI complaints.

The bill also requires schools to provide timely notifications to complainants if an investigation is opened or declined, and on the outcome of such an investigation, as well as create a system for maintaining records of complaints and how they were addressed.

Schools would be required to certify annually to the Department of Education that they are complying with these provisions, and would be ineligible for federal funding if they fail to comply for two years in a row.

The legislation also limits the circumstances under which the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights can dismiss Title VI complaints before they are fully investigated, and requires the department to brief Congress monthly on investigations and how it plans to address them.

Some of the bill’s provisions have been included in other antisemitism legislation, including the Jewish American Security Act, a bipartisan and bicameral package of measures to combat antisemitism. Some provisions also mirror regulations around Title IX, which addresses sex-based discrimination on campuses.

“The surge of antisemitism on college campuses since October 7th is shocking and unacceptable,” Gillen said in a statement. “Colleges and universities must be held accountable for enforcing civil rights and protecting all students from harassment and discrimination. I’m proud to co-lead this bipartisan bill to stop antisemitism and all forms of hate on campus.”

Stefanik did not respond to a request for comment.

Nathan Diament, the executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, said the bill aims to ensure that antisemitism complaints are taken seriously and addressed.

“We appreciate Reps. Stefanik and Gillen’s leadership and effort to create actionable and enforceable policy surrounding Jewish students’ legally protected rights on campus,” Diament  said. “Many university administrations give second-class status to complaints about antisemitism on campus and have ignored, dismissed, or dragged out those complaints with no resolution or accountability.” 

“Passing the Student Protection and University Accountability Act will be a critical victory for Jewish students who have faced attacks and for any student experiencing discrimination under Title VI because it will compel university administrators to put proper procedures in place or automatically lose their eligibility for federal funds,” he continued.

A new complaint filed with the Department of Education accuses a Florida Panhandle school district of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by ignoring years of antisemitic harassment against a Jewish student, including Nazi salutes performed in the classroom. 

The complaint, filed Thursday with the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights by the Anti-Defamation League and Akerman law firm, requests that the agency initiate an investigation into the Bay County School District over allegations that the student, who is currently in 11th grade, faced antisemitic discrimination consistently since elementary school.

Approximately 27,000 students are enrolled in Bay District K-12 public schools, which operates 49 schools. Bay County has one of the smallest Jewish communities in Florida, with fewer than 1,000 Jewish individuals.

The student — who is one of the only Jewish students in the district— is referred to throughout the complaint as “Student A.” He said he was forced to transfer out of A. Crawford Mosely High School mid-year as a result of the bullying and has suffered adverse mental health impacts and academic challenges. Before transfering, the student said he made the decision to hide his Star of David necklace, wearing it inside his shirt so it was not visible to classmates.  

Incidents alleged in the complaint, while the student was still enrolled at Mosley High School, included a group of students in a media studies class presenting two PowerPoint projects, in August and September 2025, which displayed antisemitic conspiracy theories portraying Jews as powerful, greedy, manipulative and in control of banks, the media and government. 

The students performed Sieg Heil salutes and mockingly wore yarmulkes while making the presentation. None of the student presenters were Jewish. The teachers present in the classroom did nothing to stop it, even as the presentations did not address the assignment, according to the complaint — which alleges that one teacher laughed during one of the presentations.  

The complaint alleges the district ignored repeated outreach from the student’s mother — a former 20-year employee of the district — who sought better inclusion of Jewish culture, including teaching the story of Hanukkah, following her son’s harassment.

“Bullying and harassment have persisted during Student A’s time enrolled in the district, but the district’s institutional neglect of Jewish students isolated Student A and left him to suffer in silence,” the complaint alleges. The district “knew, or should have reasonably known, that Student A was being isolated, singled out and excluded from school-wide holiday celebrations and other programs.”

The complaint suggests reforms the DOE could require the school district to adopt, including usage of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism — which is codified in Florida state law — and enforcement of a zero-tolerance policy for antisemitic conduct. It also suggests implementation of mandatory antisemitism training for all students, administrators, school board members, teachers, faculty and staff, and modification of programs to include Jews, such as revising the “Christmas Break” to read “Winter Break” on the academic calendar.

Neither the Bay School District nor the office of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responded to requests for comment from Jewish Insider about the complaint. 

A university professor who resigned from her position following a Title VI antisemitism investigation, and another who organized large-scale anti-Israel demonstrations, are among several controversial speakers scheduled to speak at an event on Friday hosted by the University of Washington. 

The day-long conference, called “The World as Palestine: On Advocacy, Activism, and Justice,” is organized by the Middle Eastern Studies department and is scheduled to be held in the university’s student union building. 

Andrea Brower, a former instructor in a “Solidarity and Social Justice” program at Gonzaga University in eastern Washington, is scheduled to speak during the program’s opening panel, “Reflections from Eastern Washington’s Palestinian Liberation Movement.” She resigned in 2024 after the school opened an antisemitism investigation into the protests she led on campus against Israel’s war in Gaza and her criticism of the university’s investment in companies with ties to Israel.

The panel will examine “academic dissent, critical thought, and resistance with reflections from Eastern Washington’s Palestinian liberation movement,” according to its registration page.  

Another speaker on the panel will be Majid Sharifi, the director and professor of international affairs at Eastern Washington University. When Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel in October 2024, Sharifi told CBS News Miami that Iran was “defending itself” after its “sovereignty was violated” by Israel’s assasination months prior of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. 

The third speaker alongside Brower and Sharifi is Kathryn DePaolis, an associate professor and interim chair and director of the School of Social Work at Eastern Washington University. DePaolis helped create a new group called the Inland Northwest Coalition for the Liberation of Palestine two months after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks. During Israel’s war in Gaza, the organization staged Palestinian “die-ins” in front of the Spokane courthouse. 

“The event isn’t about the scholarship of activism, which would be different — it’s activism itself,” a Jewish faculty member at UW told Jewish Insider. “It’s using state resources to promote an ideology and worldview that contributes to antisemitism and anti-Zionism on campus.” 

Other panel topics are “Lessons from the Palestinian and Filipino Struggles for Liberation” and “Activism and Civic Engagement in Washington State.” Laila Taji, an author speaking on the latter panel, has ties to the radical student group Students United for Palestinian Equality & Return (SUPER UW), which led a destructive protest on campus last year over the school’s ties to Boeing — and Boeing’s ties to the IDF — that caused more than $1 million in damages to the university’s engineering building. 

The event will also screen “The Palestine Exception,” a documentary about “professors and students as they join calls for a ceasefire and divestment from companies that do business with Israel and face waves of crackdown from administrators, the media, the police and politicians,” according to the film’s synopsis. 

Neither the UW administration nor Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson responded to requests for comment from JI about the selection of speakers for the event at the university, which is a public college. 

The event comes days after students from SUPER UW who were suspended and arrested last spring for their participation in the engineering building vandalism were allowed to return to campus, Victor Balta, a spokesperson for the university, confirmed to JI. “The student conduct hearing process has been completed and the students have been found responsible for violations of the student conduct code and held accountable. The students were out of class and banned from campus for three quarters,” said Balta. Twenty-one students were suspended at the time.

“Suspensions also resulted in forfeiture of tuition paid or the repayment of tuition by any student who must remain in good standing in order to receive financial aid, such as tuition exemption grants for graduate students or work study. Once a suspension is concluded, any outstanding balances due must be paid in order to be eligible for re-enrollment,” Balta continued.

The students could still face criminal charges, though none have been brought in the nine months since the protest. The incident also led the Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism to open a review into the university. 

SUPER UW was suspended as an official student organization in December 2024 after its members were charged with “vandalism,” “unauthorized keys, entry, or use,” “failure to comply” and “disruption and obstruction” by the school’s administration, according to the group. As a result, SUPER UW does not have access to school resources but can still gather on campus. 

In August, Secure Community Network, found that a manifesto released by SUPER UW — which the student group published on Medium shortly before its building takeover began — was inspired by a foreign terrorist entity. 

The document praised Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel as a “heroic victory” and said the group looks to “the rich history of struggle in our university for strength and inspiration as we take action.” SUPER UW also released a statement of solidarity with the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a fundraising arm of the terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine that was designated as a terror group by the U.S. Treasury Department in October 2024. 

A new lawsuit filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Chicago branch last week alleges that Northwestern University violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by adopting time, place and manner restrictions on student protest and requiring students to watch an antisemitism training video.

The plaintiffs include Northwestern Graduate Workers for Palestine, a doctoral student who “is not Arab, Jewish, or Muslim, but publicly associates with these students” and a doctoral candidate of Syrian and Palestinian descent. 

Title VI prohibits institutions that receive federal funding from discriminating based on a person’s race, color and national origin — understood to include both Arabs and Jews — though the lawsuit claims that “Antizionist Jews are also a cognizable ethnic group” under the statute. The suit also accuses the Chicago-area school of violating Title VI by discriminating against those who “associate with” Jewish and Arab students “who oppose or criticize Zionism.”

The suit, filed in federal court in Illinois, claims Northwestern violated students’ rights by requiring them to agree to the school’s code of conduct, which now incorporates the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, as well as mandatory bias training that includes a video on antisemitism created in collaboration with the Jewish United Fund, the city’s Jewish federation. 

The training is required to be completed by Monday, or students will be prohibited from registering for classes for the winter term.

The plaintiffs claim that the mandate to watch the JUF video, which includes information on the ties between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, has “caused Arab individuals and those who support them injury in the form of emotional distress.” The two doctoral students, who are considered student employees of the university, also claim the training, which is required for their employment, violates the Illinois Worker Freedom of Speech Act.

A spokesperson for Northwestern declined to comment on the ongoing litigation. The university responded to the allegation in court filings that students must attest that they “have reviewed and agreed to abide by” the student code of conduct but “notably, the attestation does not require students to agree or enforce the substance or viewpoints expressed in the training. It merely confirms that they will comply with the university’s uniformly applicable policies — just as all students must typically do to maintain good standing.”

The suit further alleges that Northwestern implemented an “Intimidation Policy” in response to the disruptive anti-Israel encampment that overtook the university’s campus in May 2024 by now requiring “a reservation, advance notice, and a permit from the University’s administration” in order to table on university property and a permit to use devices that amplify sound, as well as limiting flyers posted outdoors to university bulletin boards. 

Students participating in the encampment engaged in several instances of harassment and intimidation of Jewish students, which were detailed by the House Committee on Education and Workforce when it called then-President Michael Schill to appear before the committee. Schill negotiated with the encampment and acceded to several of the student leaders’ demands, including allowing students to weigh in on university investments, which earned the praise of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and drew condemnation from Jewish leaders.

The requested remedies of the suit include finding Northwestern’s use of the IHRA definition, which labels some criticism of Israel as antisemitic, to be illegal and prohibiting the school from using it and for emotional distress damages for the plaintiffs. 

Barnard College reached a settlement on Monday in a lawsuit brought by Jewish students which claimed that the school violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by failing to address antisemitism. 

Under the agreement reached, Barnard will adopt an anti-masking policy at demonstrations; refuse to meet with anti-Israel campus groups, including Columbia University Apartheid Divest; “consider” adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism; require students, faculty and staff to complete antisemitism training; and expand its discipline policy to include harassment that occurs off campus or online. 

Barnard will also hire a coordinator to review new allegations of Title VI violations and agreed not to divest from companies that have ties to Israel. 

The complaint, Students Against Antisemitism, Inc. et al v. The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, filed in district court in New York in February 2024 against Columbia University and Barnard, detailed several instances of antisemitism, including physical assaults of Jewish students. The complaint alleges that faculty members and students routinely referred to Hamas’ Oct.7, 2023 attacks as “awesome” and a “great feat.” 

Barnard also recently expanded its partnership with the Jewish Theological Seminary. Jewish studies courses at JTS — located near Barnard’s Morningside Heights campus — will now count toward Barnard degree requirements, with students able to participate with no additional tuition costs.

Laura Ann Rosenbury, president of Barnard, said in a statement that the settlement “reflects our ongoing commitment to maintaining a campus that is safe, welcoming, and inclusive for all members of our community.” 

Monday’s settlement comes as Barnard — which is closely affiliated with Columbia but has independent administration and affiliation — remains under investigation by the Trump administration for violating Title VI.

Barnard faced several major incidents of antisemitism on its campus during the last academic year. A staff member was assaulted and sent to the hospital in February by anti-Israel demonstrators who stormed the college’s main administrative building and remained there for several hours, chanting “resistance is justified when people are occupied” and “intifada revolution.” 

The demonstration was a response to the school’s decision just days earlier — in its most forceful response to anti-Israel activity on campus to date — to expel two second-semester seniors who disrupted a “History of Modern Israel” class on Columbia’s campus by storming in, banging on drums and distributing posters to students that read “CRUSH ZIONISM.” 

​​Marc Kasowitz of Kasowitz LLP, counsel for the plaintiffs, praised Barnard’s “commitment to take meaningful actions to combat antisemitism demonstrates its leadership in the fight against antisemitism and upholding the rights of Jewish and Israeli students.”

Kasowitz continued, “These commitments are not only the right thing to do, but are essential to creating a welcome and inclusive campus for all members of the Barnard community. I encourage other colleges and universities to do the right thing and follow Barnard’s lead.”