University of Illinois reaches agreements to protect Jewish students, resolving antisemitism probe

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.”

Columbia’s proposals to tackle antisemitism draw mixed reviews from Jewish leaders

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.”