A Temple of Antisemitism?

By Tal Fortgang

Saturday, December 21, 2024

 

A university in Philadelphia has come under scrutiny for its mishandling of antisemitic activity on campus. This time, though, it’s not the University of Pennsylvania, whose former president had to resign in the aftermath of her disastrous attempt to explain to Congress why she had no choice but to tolerate rabid discrimination on her campus. Rather, Temple University, situated just a few miles northeast of Penn in our nation’s birthplace, has been the site of a startling set of antisemitic incidents in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks against Israel.

 

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) catalogued the scandals while also announcing a resolution with the university in early December, closing the government’s investigation. Jewish students, it announced, found swastikas and the word “Jew” graffitied on their property. Students for Justice in Palestine gathered outside the campus Hillel house and used megaphones to harass those inside. AEPi, the Jewish fraternity, had its Israeli flag stolen and “free Palestine” spray-painted on its roof. OCR acknowledged that every one of these discriminatory incidents — some of which are crimes — were perpetrated at least in part by Temple students.

 

So, did the government close its investigation by ensuring that Temple had expelled the perpetrators? Would Temple risk losing all federal funding, as the Civil Rights Act requires, if it continued to respond to discriminatory harassment on the basis of national origin (against Israeli-Americans and Jews) with just a slap on the wrist?

 

Certainly not. OCR’s resolution was typical of the feckless outcomes that have long resulted from its investigations. Temple had to commit to provide more training to its anti-discrimination bureaucracy, some educational programming for students and staff, a survey asking campus community members to assess the campus climate, and increased reporting to OCR. The likely outcome is increased paperwork and administrative staff — probably the very DEI staff OCR mentions as having handled reports of antisemitism with questionable care — and no relief from the actual cause of the hostile environment: viciously anti-Israel students and faculty.

 

OCR has entered into dozens of similar agreements in recent years, and many more national-origin discrimination investigations into post-secondary educational institutions are ongoing — 97 as of this writing. Some are tempted to treat this as proof that the problem is being taken seriously. But that is a grave error. Most of the time, investigations merely allow for the government and college administration to bide their time until the public’s anger subsides before agreeing to an arrangement that has the appearance of addressing the problem, but none of the substance. Universities commit only to pushing paper around and gathering more information while wrongdoers run amok and never suffer the consequence — expulsion — that would actually deter future acts of brazen discrimination.

 

There are incentive structures in place that perpetuate this pattern. For instance, Jewish students often tell administrators that they do not want further help dealing with the discrimination they face. They’d prefer to get back to their classes and friends, and that is taken as proof that the incident is resolved. But the problem is not whether one particular student feels ready to go back to regular life, but whether the campus as a whole is a hostile environment for Jewish students. No doubt, the swastikas, graffiti, and harassment may discourage Jews and Israelis from attending Temple even if one student feels his case no longer needs attention. Unless it is willing to compel universities to expel or fire those responsible for these flagrant civil rights violations and revamp admissions processes to keep bigoted applicants out, OCR is essentially a paper tiger.

 

Yet the Biden OCR has repeatedly submitted to resolutions like the Temple agreement despite exploding campus antisemitism. Specifically, it has repeatedly neglected its responsibility to assess the campus atmosphere broadly, overlooking the long-running trend of universities admitting and retaining students and faculty who regularly engage in antisemitic discrimination. And it refuses to take the dramatic step of holding hearings to revoke colleges’ federal support or recommending lawsuits to the same end.

 

OCR has defanged itself. With such a systematically toothless response, it is no wonder that new antisemitism scandals continue to erupt on campuses that have repeatedly agreed to take their anti-Jewish bigotry problem seriously. Universities know that the government has no appetite to force them to uphold civil rights for all members of the campus community. They rest easy taking only the effort necessary to do PR — that is, to make it look like they are doing the right thing, without taking on the difficult task of actually doing the right thing.

 

Course correction may be on the way, and the Temple resolution may go down as the last time a university gets off so easily. President-elect Trump and his nominees to lead the departments of Education and Justice (and the offices within those departments that handle civil rights) have all indicated that they plan to take the problem of campus antisemitism seriously.

 

The true test of this commitment will not be their rhetoric, though, nor their quickness to open investigations. It will be their willingness to address the problem of antisemite-infested campuses head-on. If the Trump administration is serious about cleaning up our scandal-plagued campuses, it could promulgate executive orders and other rules directing OCR to not consider civil rights investigations “resolved” if there are repeated instances of confirmed but unpunished violations — of the kind Temple got away with — even if the victim of each particular incident declines to further enlist the university’s assistance. And OCR should be led by individuals willing to threaten universities with real consequences and see those threats through if colleges don’t get in line. If our nation’s Temples can’t handle the basic requirements of civil rights law, they will get what they deserve when their federal funding dries up.