The largest umbrella organization of Jewish policy agencies endorsed a statement urging selective use of civil rights legislation to combat anti-Jewish and anti-Israel activity on college campuses.
The Oct. 24 vote by a task force of the Jewish Council for Policy Affairs specifically addressed the use of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In October 2010, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued a directive to protect students attending publicly funded colleges from harassment “on the basis of actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.”
Since the directive, the Office for Civil Rights has opened investigations over harassment of Jewish students at three schools: U.C. Santa Cruz, Columbia University and Rutgers University.
Another case at U.C. Berkeley involves Title VI but is being handled in federal court.
The JCPA called for Jewish and pro-Israel students to be educated about using Title VI to remedy “appropriate cases” in which “anti-Semitic or anti-Israel conduct has risen to a level where it deprives a student of access to … opportunities at the school,” or when “the school has accepted, tolerated or failed to correct a hostile environment of which it had notice.”
However, it also warned against relying on Title VI as a cure-all that could undermine academic freedom and alienate both Jewish and non-Jewish students from the larger Jewish community by seeming to endorse censorship. — jta