In the final days of the Biden administration, the federal Department of Education has resolved a small number of its many remaining Title VI cases involving allegations of antisemitic and anti-Palestinian discrimination.
The resolutions at the University of Washington, Emory University, Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and Howard County Public Schools in Maryland come in the waning days of the administration’s closely scrutinized handling of campus issues during the Israel-Hamas war.
The Trump administration will now take over a portfolio that includes dozens more outstanding cases related to Jewish and Muslim shared ancestry. Trump has signaled hostility to both higher education and public education, and has even floated the idea of shuttering the Department of Education altogether.
After months of pressure on the department to resolve the complaints, some now say things are moving too fast. Kenneth Marcus — a former Trump official and founder of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which has filed several campus complaints — recently accused the department of being in “a rush to issue weak resolution agreements.” Michigan GOP Rep. Tim Walberg has called the recent resolutions “toothless” and “disgraceful.”
The new agreements generally follow the patterns of others the department has resolved in recent weeks, though a few differ in key ways. The schools have all promised to revise their discrimination and harassment policies. They are also committing to further staff anti-bias training, and say they’ll conduct campus climate assessments and report their findings to the department.
Protesters lead a chant during a pro-Palestinian anti-war encampment on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle, April 29, 2024. (Noah Riffe/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Notably, Washington’s agreement — which involved allegations of both antisemitic and anti-Arab discrimination tied to protests, encampments and graffiti after Oct. 7, 2023 — also included a pledge for the school to demonstrate “implementation of actions” from its internal task force on antisemitism. That task force was criticized by a cohort of Jewish faculty at the university. This contingent of largely progressive Jews objected to its survey methods, a lack of participation from the Jewish and Israel studies departments, and a recommendation that the school engage the services of pro-Israel activist group StandWithUs.
Emory’s agreement was also significant, as the complaint related entirely to allegations of anti-Palestinian discrimination following a crackdown on an unruly spring protest at the private school’s Atlanta campus. At that event, 28 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested and authorities were criticized for what some perceived as the use of violent restraint. Some Jewish groups contended the school and others like it never should have let the protests get so out of hand in the first place.
The government now says Emory demonstrated “gratuitous violence of the law enforcement activity” in quelling the protests. In its resolution agreement the school agreed to review its policies for the “equitable” handling of protests — a rare suggestion on the federal level that a university’s response to pro-Palestinian protests may have itself violated Title VI. The agreement stipulated that any such campus protests would need to be “permitted.”
Resolutions at Lehigh and Howard County Public Schools both involved allegations of antisemitic discrimination. The department also dismissed an investigation into allegations of antisemitism at the University of California, Los Angeles, dating back to 2018, citing insufficient evidence. (Several years-old Title VI cases, unrelated to the Israel-Hamas war, remain open.)
The remaining cases to be inherited by Trump’s team include allegations of antisemitic and anti-Arab behavior at elite universities such as Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, Yale and Princeton. Public colleges such as the University of North Carolina also remain on the docket, as does a new case at Sarah Lawrence College. Trump has threatened to rescind federal endowments and take other drastic measures toward schools that, in his view, appease “the radical left and Marxist maniacs.”
Several large public school districts also have outstanding antisemitism-related investigations, including in Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and Montgomery County, Maryland. Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League and Hillel have been involved in bringing some of these complaints to the department’s Office of Civil Rights.
A confirmation hearing for Trump’s controversial education secretary pick, Linda McMahon, was recently delayed until after Monday’s inauguration.
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