The Education Department’s Inexcusable Inaction in Confronting Antisemitism

By Tal Fortgang

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

 

Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the umbrella anti-Israel organization comprising dozens of campus groups and responsible for occupying university buildings this past spring, marked the anniversary of October 7 as only it could: by apologizing — for its previous condemnation of one of its leaders’ calls for violence against Zionists on campus and beyond. CUAD clarified its position on violence: “We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance. . . . Violence is the only path forward.”

 

At demonstrations marking the anniversary, students at Columbia were photographed holding signs depicting paragliders, a reference to the Hamas operatives who infiltrated Israel’s south and massacred, tortured, and raped Israeli civilians. “Long live the Al-Aqsa Flood,” read one, using Hamas’s name for the atrocities. Throngs of chanting students called for more violence against Israelis and the dismantling of the Jewish state.

 

Of course, this sentiment prevails far beyond the Columbia campus in Morningside Heights. Swarthmore’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) wished their followers a “Happy October 7th,” calling it a “glorious day.” Stanford’s SJP celebrated “Gaza’s historic uprising” and lauded “the axis of resistance in Iran, Yemen and Lebanon,” an apparent reference to the launching of missiles at Israeli cities by Tehran and its proxies, the Houthis and Hezbollah. On campuses across the country, students and faculty wave the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah, both designated by the State Department as terrorist groups, and call for violence against Israelis — a national-origin group protected under U.S. anti-discrimination laws.

 

Some of these abhorrent expressions may technically be protected speech. But that does not mean the federal government, which disburses billions in grants and other funding to these well-heeled schools, must continue subsidizing them as they devolve into terrorism-indoctrination facilities.

 

The U.S. Department of Education, which regulates higher education by dangling funding before university administrators to lead them where the DOE thinks they ought to go, has several simple and powerful tools at its disposal to address this debacle. The department has already faced pressure, in the form of heated congressional hearings and public outcry, to take definitive steps to strip radical-infested campuses of federal support. But it has thus far dragged its feet, making excuses about budget constraints that do not hold up when considered against the slate of regulatory options available.

 

Here’s one weird trick the DOE could do: send university administrators — who will hate this — a clear and direct statement warning that if their school does not take a particular necessary action, it will face swift and severe consequences. To be more specific, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona could easily issue guidance to universities like Columbia, reminding the people in charge that federal funding comes with strings attached — strings currently under tension from campus groups calling for violence. Chief among the conditions on funding is adherence to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on national origin in any program receiving federal financial assistance. Columbia, along with several other universities, is already under investigation for failing to address antisemitic harassment, and Secretary Cardona has said that “if an institution refuses to follow the law to protect students, we would withhold dollars.” One informal guidance letter — indicating that if Columbia fails to expel all students who celebrated and called for violence as part of October 7 events on campus, the department will rule against the university and revoke federal support — would push recalcitrant administrators to solve the problem.

 

But Cardona need not rely on civil-rights law, which often gets tangled up in complicated legal definitions, to justify cracking down on universities that fail to afford all students equal protection of their rules. The DOE could also use universities’ own anti-discrimination rules against them. Right now, it is not clear what function these rules serve: If these student-group statements are not violations, it is hard to imagine what would be. Columbia’s policy, for instance, prohibits “acts that denigrate or show hostility or aversion toward one or more actual or perceived members or associates of a Protected Class,” including “verbal abuse; epithets or slurs; . . . insulting or obscene comments or gestures; calls for genocide and/or violence; and the display or circulation of written or graphic material in any form, including but not limited to social media.” Yet its students unabashedly do all of the above — culminating in the use of graphic material on social media to call for violence while using epithets abusive to Jews and Israelis — and Columbia has done nothing about it.

 

Cardona could threaten Columbia and its peer institutions that failure to immediately apply their own anti-discrimination rules without fear or favor toward any group will cause their federal funding to dry up. Again, all it takes is one letter.

 

There is plenty for legislators to do to put a halt to the spread of extremism on campus, including writing more explicit legislation authorizing investigations and prosecutions of those who support designated terror groups. (Other executive agencies, especially the Department of Justice, should also be springing to action.) But at the very least, if the secretary of education continues to dither, Congress should haul him in for more hearings. When Cardona went before Congress in May, he repeated the line that his agency lacked the funding to deal with the avalanche of civil-rights complaints. But all that does is highlight the department’s failure to exercise its power; it is certainly no excuse for its failure to pressure universities to clean up their messes. Lawmakers should demand answers about why the department has failed to use its power in even low-cost ways to address obvious and dangerous extremism on campuses.

 

We have become accustomed to federal agencies sitting on their hands when faced with politically inconvenient situations. The DOE has become like a parent reluctant to discipline his misbehaving child, threatening to act on the count of three and then counting “two . . . two and a half . . . two and three-quarters . . .” never to reach a breaking point. For all its gentle reminders that discrimination and harassment are unacceptable, it still won’t take the uncomfortable step of doing what needs to be done. Inaction is a choice, especially when there is a readily available remedy. If that is a choice the Department of Education will continue to make, even in light of the shameful displays we’ve recently witnessed, the American people deserve to know before Election Day.