The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently announced that it will investigate a complaint alleging that Jewish students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have faced an alarming increase of anti-Semitic harassment and anti-Zionism.
The complaint was originally submitted on behalf of UIUC’s Jewish students on Oct. 23, 2020. According to the complaint, Jewish students have faced a hostile environment which the campus has permitted, violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“By 2010, you had both a Republican administration and Democratic administration recognizing that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act protects religious groups like Muslims, Sikhs, and Jews if they’re being targeted on the basis of their shared ancestry and ethnicity,” said Alyza D. Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
Anti-Semitism today in college campuses and beyond occurs in the traditional and contemporary forms of anti-Semitic behavior, both of “which look to demonize and blame the Jew,” Lewin said. These behaviors also vary somewhat by generation, Lewin noted.
In the complaint, some students at UIUC say the anti-Semitism has targeted both Jewish and pro-Israel students in the past five years. More specifically, they “are peppered with swastikas by white supremacists on the extreme right while being labeled white supremacists by the extreme left,” which is noted in the letter.
The summary of the letter includes an abbreviated list of incidents that briefly explain how Jewish students have been marginalized. For example, in 2015 and 2016, the letter shows a car with a swastika on it that was parked not too far from UIUC’s Cohen Hillel Center for Jewish Life. Most recently, the letter explains how in September of 2019, “a man stood on the Main Quad with a sign declaring that the Holocaust was a hoax.”
