Defending Jews on campus — a debate
Jewish groups should embrace federal law barring harassment
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April 25, 2012
Imagine if the NAACP responded with skepticism to the passage of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and urged African Americans to exercise their civil rights cautiously under this law. Title VI was landmark legislation when it was passed in 1964 to remedy racial and ethnic discrimination in programs receiving federal funding.
Jewish students are facing their own serious problems of harassment and discrimination at schools receiving federal funding. After a six-year campaign by the Zionist Organization of America, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, or OCR, finally clarified in October 2010 that Jewish students finally would be afforded the same protection from harassment and discrimination under Title VI that other minorities have enjoyed for close to 50 years.
Yet instead of embracing the new legal protection, some in the Jewish community have been strangely critical of it.
A year after the Office for Civil Rights’ policy clarification, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs proposed a resolution regarding Title VI. Instead of praising the new policy and committing to a nationwide campaign to educate Jewish students and university officials about students’ right to be protected from anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination under Title VI, the JCPA resolution tried to impose unreasonably harsh standards on when Jewish students should use the law to rectify a hostile anti-Semitic school environment — stricter even than the standards that the Office for Civil Rights applies.
Critics of the new Title VI policy have paid little attention to the fact that the policy has already shown its value. University of California President Mark Yudof recently issued a public statement in which he condemned anti-Semitic harassment on the UC campuses. This month, Rutgers University President Richard McCormick issued a statement publicly condemning The Medium, a student newspaper, for publishing an article mocking the Holocaust and ridiculing a vocal Jewish, pro-Israel student. McCormick said that “no individual student should be subject to such a vicious, provocative, and hurtful piece, regardless of whether First Amendment protections apply to such expression.”
Significantly, McCormick had failed to condemn previous anti-Semitic incidents on campus. It is likely that OCR’s Title VI policy, which recommends that university leaders label certain incidents as anti-Semitic, played a role in the decisions of both McCormick and Yudof to speak out. Surely also at play was the fact that there are Title VI investigations pending against their schools.
The David Project recently issued a report about rethinking Israel advocacy on campus. Curiously, the report cautions that “legitimate efforts to combat campus anti-Semitism could be complicated by overly aggressive complaints” under Title VI.
Only weeks after the Office for Civil Rights issued its new Title VI policy, the ZOA was able to use it effectively without even filing a complaint with the OCR. We contacted officials at a Maine high school where there was longstanding anti-Semitic harassment and informed them of their Title VI obligations. The school acted on nearly all our recommendations and rectified the situation.
Would the David Project consider our actions legitimate or overly aggressive? What if school officials had refused to fix the problems? Would a Title VI complaint then have been legitimate?
It is difficult to understand why members of the Jewish community are skeptical of a critical new legal tool under Title VI or why they are sending a cautious message about using it. We should be fully supportive of Jewish students and holding schools accountable when they don’t respond to campus anti-Semitism.
It’s time for us to stop being “shah-still” frightened Jews of the previous generation and start strongly speaking out on behalf of our Jewish brethren when necessary.
Comments
The JCPA
April 25, 2012
The following response was published in the JTA on April 24, 2012:
JCPA on Title VI legal protection
To the Editor:
In the April 16 Op-Ed on JTA “Jewish groups should embrace new legal protection for Jewish students,” authors Morton Klein and Susan Tuchman of the Zionist Organization of America misconstrue the Jewish Council for Public Affairs’ position on the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights determination that religious identity should be covered under Title VI of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The Op-Ed states that JCPA’s draft resolution on campus issues should have praised the OCR policy and committed to educate about it. In fact, JCPA’s resolution does exactly that, repeatedly.
The resolution, which will be debated by representatives from 125 Jewish Community Relations Councils and 14 national member agencies at the JCPA Plenum next month, terms the Title VI right “an important remedy” and calls for the Jewish community to “educate itself regarding the recourse now available to Jewish students.”
JCPA was among those groups seeking the policy and has consistently praised it. The resolution recognizes that “Lawsuits and threats of legal action may be warranted to redress a systematic climate of fear and intimidation which a university administration has failed to address promptly with reasonable corrective measures.”
The resolution further recognizes the need to guard against inappropriate use of Title VI, where it might serve to muzzle legitimate free speech activity on college campuses. The Jewish community has consistently championed the protection of First Amendment rights. The resolution warns of the risk of a backlash if Jewish students seek to invoke Title VI in circumstances where it is not intended to apply.
The resolution, which comes from two JCPA task forces that we each co-chair, reflects what we believe is the consensus view of the organized Jewish community. It considers action under Title VI an important and praiseworthy tool but also recognizes that it does not replace the other tools that have served the Jewish community for years. There is a time for dialogue, a time for education, a time for advocacy—and sometimes a time for litigation, and the resolution recognizes that. But it also recognizes that Jewish community interests are better served by flexibility and careful sequencing in our responses.
Gerry Greiman
Co-chair, JCPA Task Force on Jewish Security and The Bill of Rights
Geoffrey Lewis
Co-chair, JCPA Task Force on Israel, World Jewry, and International Human Rights
http://blogs.jta.org/letters/article/2012/04/24/3093701/jcpa-on-title-vi-legal-protection
Nathan Berson
April 25, 2012
I’ve read the JCPA resolution. The folks from ZOA completely misrepresent it. What a shame.
Harvey Blitz
April 25, 2012
This sue first, then talk approach is stupid why attack and slander everyone it helps no one I Like the face that the actual resolution seeks many voices