The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently announced resolutions to a number of complaints at colleges and universities across the country related to concerns about various institutions’ response to the Israel-Palestine Conflict.
OCR is responsible for enforcing federal education laws, including Title VI, which prohibits recipients of federal funding from discriminating on the basis of race, color, and national origin.
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan received 75 reports alleging shared ancestry discrimination and/or harassment over the last two years. OCR reviewed these reports and found no evidence that the University complied with its Title VI requirements to assess whether incidents individually or cumulatively created a hostile environment for students, faculty, or staff. OCR also found no evidence that the University took steps to end the hostile environment, remedy its effects, and prevent its recurrence.
For example, in October 2023, protestors shouted on the central campus about “Nazi liberation,” and records show that the University only forwarded the reports to public affairs for response.
Similarly, the University did not assess the existence of a hostile environment or take remedial action after a Jewish student reported feeling targeted and harassed on social media when the student’s graduate instructor posted on their Instagram story with a discussion of pro-Palestinian topics, including tagging the student in the posts asking for the student’s opinions. The University told the student that there was no option for formal conflict resolution because social media is largely protected as free speech.
Finally, when a student reported that someone yelled an accusation at her that she had “terrorist” friends because she participated in a pro-Palestinian protest, the University reported that it held “restorative circles” to address the incident, but took no further action to address the effects on students.
To resolve the Title VI concerns, the University committed to reviewing the cases for each report; reporting to OCR on its responses to reports of discrimination and harassment for the next two years; revising policies; training employees; and administering a climate assessment.
The resolution letter can be found here; the resolution agreement can be found here.
City University of New York
The City University of New York (CUNY) entered into a resolution with OCR, resolving nine pending claims across multiple campuses and colleges. The complaints included events dating back to 2021, including when students and faculty disrupted two different sessions of a required college course by commandeering the class time to call for the decolonization of Palestine. Several students expressed that the disruption made them fearful and at least one student left class early. A Jewish student said that when Jewish students tried to speak, others told them they should be listening, not speaking. OCR found that CUNY failed to investigate whether this created a hostile environment for Jewish students and took no action to redress the situation.
In the resolution, CUNY committed to reopening or initiating investigations of claims and reports alleging discrimination and harassment based on national origin; providing OCR with the results of each investigation and any remedial action; providing training; administering a climate survey; and continuing third-party reviews of CUNY’s policies.
The resolution letter can be found here; the resolution agreement can be found here.
Lafayette College
Lafayette College entered into a resolution agreement with OCR following OCR’s investigation into the College’s response to an October 25, 2023 protest on campus and subsequent events.
OCR found that the College records showed inconsistent responses to the same conduct depending on whether it occurred on or off campus. For example, the College responded to a student protester who carried a sign during a campus protest by repeatedly meeting with the student to discuss the harm the phrase on the sign could inflict and securing a commitment from the student never to use the phrase again in future campus protests. However, the College did not respond to reports of use of the same phrase in social media or to other reports of social media content that students alleged had created a hostile environment for them.
In the resolution, Lafayette committed to reviewing its responses to previous reports of discrimination and harassment; reviewing and revising its policies; and providing training.
The resolution letter can be found here; the resolution agreement can be found here.
Brown University
Brown University entered into a resolution agreement with OCR following OCR’s investigation into alleged harassment of students based on national origin. In this settlement, OCR noted that Brown had taken proactive steps to support a non-discriminatory campus, including updating its policies and procedures in February 2024, providing investigators with training specifically addressing shared ancestry discrimination, and providing student and staff workshops on combatting anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim hate in February and March 2024.
Nonetheless, Brown received over 75 reports of alleged anti-Semitic, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Muslim harassment against students from October 2023 through March 2024, and the University appeared to have taken little or no action in response other than to acknowledge receipt, list resources, and request to meet with the complainant.
These reports included: allegations that students pointed at a Jewish classmate’s Star of David jewelry and yelled “Zionist pig Jew;” a Palestinian-American student’s roommate berated them about their Palestinian-American identity for weeks; and students blocked a Jewish classmate from attending a pro-Palestinian rally.
OCR found considerable variation among the half-dozen university entities responding to the reports, leaving students and staff without consistent redress.
In the resolution, Brown committed to revising its policies and procedures, conducting training, maintaining records related to complaints or reports of discrimination, reviewing the University’s response to complaints during the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 academic years, and analyzing the results of, and creating an action plan in response to climate surveys.
The resolution letter can be found here; the resolution agreement can be found here.
Note: While many private schools do not receive federal funding and are not under the enforcement of OCR, these four resolutions provide invaluable guidance for how schools should and should not respond to complaints of discrimination based on shared ancestry.