Email from Zionist Organization of America   ZIONIST ORGANIZATION OF AMERICA IN THE MEDIA       ZOA’s Tuchman/Klein JNS Op-Ed: Jewish Students Need and Deserve Stronger Action from Their Government The Office for Civil Rights takes years to resolve antisemitism complaints against universities, and the agreements have little impact on the campus environment for Jewish students. By Susan B. Tuchman, Esq., Director of ZOA’s Center for Law & Justice, and Morton A. Klein, ZOA National President (January 16, 2025 / JNS) In these last few weeks of the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights resolved antisemitism complaints filed under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act against Rutgers University, including a Title VI complaint filed by the Zionist Organization of America in 2011. Unfortunately, OCR’s response to these antisemitism complaints is more evidence of the futility of seeking help from our government when schools fail to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment and intimidation. The incoming administration has an important opportunity to demand more accountability from OCR so that Jewish students get the prompt and meaningful relief they are legally entitled to and sorely need. First, OCR’s prompt resolution of Title VI cases must become a priority–and a mandate. In our experience, long delays at OCR are the rule, not the exception. The agency’s abysmal handling of ZOA’s 2011 Title VI complaint against Rutgers is probably the most extreme example of the problem. It’s not easy for students who’ve been targeted, harassed and discriminated against based on their Jewish identity to come forward and alert the government. But many Rutgers students courageously did come forward when OCR investigated ZOA’s complaint, expecting that OCR would protect their legal rights and hold Rutgers accountable for its indifference to the discrimination they endured. When OCR finally issued its decision and dismissed ZOA’s complaint more than 13 years after it was filed, these students were long out of Rutgers, married and had children of their own. Had OCR promptly resolved ZOA’s Title VI complaint and held Rutgers accountable for failing to address campus antisemitism, university officials may well have responded more effectively to the threats and intimidation that Jewish students endured at Rutgers since Oct. 7, 2023. OCR attributes the long delays in resolving cases to insufficient funding from Congress. We recognize that OCR may have been dealing with a record number of antisemitism complaints since Oct. 7. But inexcusable delays have plagued OCR since it first began investigating campus hate. Twenty years ago, ZOA filed the first case of campus antisemitism under Title VI that OCR agreed to investigate. Jewish students at the University of California, Irvine endured severe and persistent antisemitism that limited their educational opportunities. But they never got the justice they deserved because it took OCR eight years to decide the case. During the Irvine investigation, an OCR investigator told us that Title VI cases are typically resolved in 180 days, but that because ZOA’s case was “precedential,” it would take longer. While that may have been true, a wait of eight or 13 years is indefensible. OCR must be made accountable to the president, Congress and Jewish students who depend on the agency to protect their civil rights. It is reasonable to expect OCR to resolve Title VI cases within 180 days. If a particular case demands a longer investigation, then OCR should be required to demonstrate why. Second, OCR must be required to deliver relief under Title VI that is not only timely but also truly meaningful. To this point, OCR’s resolution agreements have required relatively little from universities. For example, OCR recently concluded that Rutgers “likely operated a hostile environment” in violation of Title VI. Yet OCR negotiated a resolution agreement that requires Rutgers only to take such steps as reviewing its policies, conducting “listening sessions” and administering a campus climate assessment. While the agreement does require Rutgers to provide discrimination training to employees, it fails to mandate that the training include anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism as manifestations of antisemitism—the kind of antisemitism that most Jewish students are facing on their campuses today. Remember: Rutgers students were physically threatened because they were Jews, Jewish property was vandalized and Jewish students endured chants that threatened their sense of physical safety. It would have been far more impactful if OCR’s resolution agreement required Rutgers to acknowledge its bad behavior and make systemic changes to improve the campus climate. OCR has a powerful tool to effectively combat campus antisemitism: It can seek to defund a university if it fails to address antisemitism in violation of Title VI. But OCR has never used that tool, except recently in a case alleging disability discrimination, not antisemitism. In a meeting with lawmakers last September, OCR head Catherine Lhamon explained that seeking to withdraw a school’s federal funding would take years of litigation. But it’s also taking years for OCR to reach resolution agreements with universities that have little impact on the campus environment for Jewish students. OCR must start sending the message to universities that their federal funding is in jeopardy when they have tolerated a campus that is hostile to Jews. That would help persuade universities to take truly meaningful steps to eradicate the bigotry against Jewish students, such as agreeing to issue a public statement condemning the antisemitism on campus and its perpetrators, acknowledging the university’s failure to protect Jewish students, and outlining concrete steps the university will be taking to remedy these problems; adopt the widely accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism; institute mandatory antisemitism training for staff, faculty and students that uses the IHRA definition as a guide; ban antisemitic groups like Students for Justice in Palestine when they violate university policies; and institute disciplinary proceedings against staff, students and faculty who violate university policies, including by harassing and intimidating Jewish students inside and outside the classroom, and punish them if the evidence warrants it. 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