
Jewish leaders and lawmakers of both parties are accusing President Joe Biden‘s administration of adopting a lenient stance towards the enforcement of civil rights laws, thereby subjecting Jewish students to ongoing harassment as antisemitic incidents on college campuses increase.
They point to an increase in unresolved complaints to the Education Department, which has created a backlog and essentially reduced the pressure on school administrators to take the necessary precautions to protect Jewish students amid anti-Israeli demonstrations.
Democrats from New Jersey’s Rep. Josh Gottheimer objected to the “speed of these investigations, pushed back conclusions, as well as lack of adequate resources allocated to these investigations” in a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Thursday.
The congressman noted that at Columbia University in New York, “the eruption of antisemitism… has created an incredibly hostile environment for Jewish students,” and he asked Cardona for an update on the ongoing investigations into antisemitism on college campuses.
Statistics regarding the quantity of antisemitic incidents at the school have not been made public by either the New York Police Department or Columbia.
For Biden, who is trying to reassemble the voting coalition from the 2020 presidential contest, the unrest that is sweeping across college campuses presents particular challenges. Many of the students participating in the Gaza War protests express dissatisfaction with him for failing to broker a cease-fire.
Meanwhile, a few Jewish students and those standing up for them are angry that the Biden administration isn’t doing more to stop antisemitic harassment on college campuses.
However, the breakdown of support is not so neat. Many Jewish Americans across the nation are against Israel’s handling of the conflict and have joined demonstrations calling for an end to U.S. military assistance to Israel and a cease-fire. One Jewish student at Columbia last week told NBC News that he and other protesters had quietly celebrated Passover inside the tents that have appeared in the shadow of Butler Library.
Any stance Biden takes in this unstable environment is certain to enrage someone, and it has.
Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, described team Biden as “they want to get re-elected, and they’re afraid of what’s going to happen in the swing states.” “The joke is that Pennsylvania and Michigan make up the two-state solution.”
The president does not act based on electoral considerations, according to White House Deputy Communications Director Herbie Ziskend.
He declared, “Politics doesn’t enter in.”
College campuses became hotbeds of rage after Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel on October 7 and the Israel counteroffensive that followed set off a nationwide wave of antisemitic incidents. The Anti-Defamation League recorded more than 5,200 antisemitic incidents nationwide in the two and a half months between the beginning of the war and the end of 2023, surpassing the total for the entire year of 2022. However, the organization noted that this figure includes 1,317 rallies that featured “antisemitic rhetoric, expressions that showed backing for terrorism against the state of Israel or anti-Zionism,” which weren’t “necessarily” counted in previous tallies.
The result was a wave of complaints that were sent to the civil rights office of the Education Department, which is the branch of the Biden administration responsible for enforcing Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination in programs that receive federal funding.
The office has opened 93 investigations into allegations of discrimination against members of ethno-religious groups since the start of the war, which is nearly seven times the number of investigations opened in a comparable period before Hamas’ attack. The most prominent colleges in the country, such as Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton, as well as secondary schools are all targets of the complaints.
According to Gottheimer, “many Title VI investigations are still unresolved for months, even years, despite the evidence being frequently clear and convincing.”
He said, “Immediate action is required in response to the increasing number of attacks and threats against Jewish and pro-Israel students.”
Others stated that it is pointless to begin an investigation if the department does not act quickly to address the complaint and hold schools responsible.
According to Brian Cohen of Columbia/Barnard Hillel’s Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life, “something needs to give.” “The colleges are not moving quickly enough. The Department of Education isn’t moving quickly enough, in my opinion. The nation’s universities are getting out of hand, which is bad for everyone involved in higher education.
Cardona was unavailable for comment when contacted by the Education Department. “As the nation’s secretary of education, I am extremely concerned about the reports we are hearing regarding antisemitic hate being directed at students,” he stated in a prepared statement. The Office for Civil Rights within the Department is dedicated to diligently looking into grievances from people who believe their organization is failing to uphold their civil rights.
Ziskend declared: “The president has strongly denounced hatred and antisemitism. He has made a clear moral statement about the need to denounce antisemitism. That is what the entire administration has done and still does.
Cohen had a phone conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff, last week.
Emhoff, a Jew, “wanted to check in and offer his support and to see how I and our Jewish students were doing,” Cohen said. “He reminded me to not forget Jewish joy and how important the work we’re doing is,” he said as he ended the call.
According to advisors, Biden has a strong connection to the Jewish community and has actively opposed antisemitism. He has been a proponent of Israeli statehood for a long time. He unveiled a 60-page national antisemitism strategy last May, claiming it to be the first of its kind.
In a recent statement, Biden stated, “This blatant antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous— and it has completely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country.”
A month into the Gaza War, schools received a letter from the civil rights office of the Education Department reminding them of their legal duty to shield students from discrimination based on their race, religion, or nationality.
However, lawmakers and Jewish rights organizations claim that these gestures aren’t keeping students safe as pro-Palestinian demonstrations expand to other campuses.
Under both the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations, Kenneth Marcus oversaw the Education Department’s civil rights office. He stated, “The department’s office of civil rights should be grabbing the moment and taking charge of this situation.” It is insufficient to simply wait for complaints to be received, record them, and state that an investigation has been launched.
Marcus, who serves as chair of the Brandeis Center, an organization that advocates for Jewish civil and human rights, continued, “They should be proactively opening inquiries rather than waiting.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, met in private with Jewish students during his visit to Columbia on Wednesday. He claimed that the students had shown him flyers that “looked like Nazi propaganda from the 1930s” that had appeared on campus. One, a drawing of a skunk with a Jewish star on its side, was presented to NBC News by Johnson’s staff. “Campus Skunk,” the caption said.
Some Columbia University Jewish students reported feeling intimidated when they were on school property. One said to NBC News that he had seen Hamas flags on campus after meeting with Johnson. Someone else reported hearing chants saying, “Go back to Europe.”
“It’s time to say, ‘Enough,'” declared 22-year-old political science and economics student Ben Solomon. “This isn’t a speech. This is interference. This is an act of intimidation.
Johnson informed NBC News as he was leaving the university that he intended to give Cardona a call and tell him “what I saw here and motivate him to come and make a visit himself.”