The Department of Education concluded that two universities failed to protect the civil rights of their students after lengthy Office for Civil Rights Title VI investigations.
According to the office, the University of Michigan and Hunter College, part of the City University of New York system, mishandled complaints involving tensions stemming from the war in Gaza and “may have allowed a hostile environment” for Jewish students both before and after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
These are the first cases pertaining to post-Oct. 7 campus tensions to be resolved by OCR.
At Michigan, OCR investigated 75 complaints of harassment, many targeting Jewish students. They found that very few had even been investigated by the university.
One complaint involved a campus demonstration where protesters shouted about “Nazi liberation.” Another involved a pro-Palestinian professor posting a screenshot showing that a Jewish student with an Israeli flag in his bio viewed his Instagram story, along with the caption, “Did you like my educational talk.”
OCR said it could not find evidence that the first complaint had even been addressed apart from forwarding the report to the school’s public affairs office. It additionally did not believe the school sufficiently responded to the professor’s Instagram conduct, as Michigan declined to weigh in on the situation.
The school also insufficiently responded to a report of a pro-Palestinian student being told she had “terrorist friends” for attending a Gaza protest, OCR said, as Michigan did not take conventional disciplinary action. The school instead opted for a “restorative circle,” an alternative to discipline in which those involved are encouraged to apologize.
In a statement shared with the Washington Examiner, University of Michigan President Santa Ono condemned “all forms of discrimination, racism and bias in the strongest possible terms” and noted that the school has been “deeply troubled by the statements and actions of some members of our community.” Ono continued, “U-M is required to uphold free speech under the First Amendment, even if that speech is reprehensible.”
“We continually work to educate our community around the rights and privileges of free speech to ensure that debate does not tip over into targeted harassment or bullying,” he said. “This agreement reflects the university’s commitment to ensuring it has the tools needed to determine whether an individual’s acts or speech creates a hostile environment, and taking the affirmative measures necessary to provide a safe and supportive educational environment for all.”
At Hunter College, part of the CUNY public university system, a required virtual course was “hijacked” by anti-Israel students and faculty in a call for the decolonization of “Palestinian territories.” Jewish students in the class who tried to speak were told to listen and not talk, while the instructor “remained silent” and allowed it to happen, according to the StandWithUs complaint. OCR found that the school’s response to this incident was inadequate.
Carly Gammill, the director of legal strategy for the StandWithUs Saidoff legal department, told the Washington Examiner: “We appreciate that OCR appears to have carefully scrutinized the information provided by Hunter, was readily able to recognize the deficiencies in the school’s internal investigation, and has required it to conduct a proper investigation, including communicating directly with the students impacted by antisemitism in one of the school’s academic programs.”
Gammill said that as OCR treats each complaint according to its own merits, StandWithUs expects it to “apply similarly careful scrutiny to the allegations about hostile antisemitic climates on other campuses” as more complaints get resolved going forward.
StandWithUs is an international nonprofit Israel education organization.
On top of finding inadequate responses from Michigan and Hunter College, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights made a number of requirements both schools agreed to, including the reopening of Hunter College’s investigation into the virtual class incident, training for faculty and students, and detailed reporting to OCR.
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The OCR investigation into the University of Michigan is one of two Title VI investigations into schools in the Great Lakes State since Oct. 7. The investigation into Hunter College is one of four into CUNY schools alone, with 15 civil rights investigations occurring in New York in total.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the University of Michigan, Hunter College, and the Department of Education for comment.