Will President Biden Blink at Antisemitism at NYU?

The Biden administration will face at the end of the month a test. New York University is nearing the end of its monitoring period under its settlement of a federal antisemitism complaint filed during the Trump administration. The Biden administration will be tempted, prematurely, to release the university from federal monitoring. It should not do so.This is no small case. It certainly caught my attention, as head of the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, when then-NYU student Adela Cojab Moadeb told me about the physical assault, harassment, and pervasive hostility that Jewish students faced on her campus.I was not the only one to notice. In December 2019, President Trump invited Adela, a Mexican American Jewish immigrant, onstage at the Israeli American Council’s National Summit to tell her story. President Trump justly lauded this courageous young woman for standing up in the face of hostility and bigotry.In Adela’s telling, this recognition did more than raise public awareness over problems at NYU. It helped to “elevate the voices of Jewish students nationwide, voices that up until now were not sufficiently protected under anti-discrimination laws.” It did even more than that.Three days later, President Trump signed the game-changing Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism. This order, which Ms. Moadeb’s experience no doubt influenced, remains the most important tool available to federal officials in their effort to protect the rights of Jewish and non-Jewish students alike.To its credit, NYU agreed to federal monitoring. Federal oversight has evidently had a salutary effect. In April, NYU’s president, Andrew Hamilton, spoke out against antisemitism on his campus, which he said was “as repugnant as any other form” of bigotry. Other NYU administrators have sent similar messages. Even if such words were intended, as some have suggested, to appease federal regulators, they have helped.The problem is that NYU still has what NYU law student Tal Fortgang has called a “big, fat Jew-hatred problem.” Anti-Jewish conspiracy theory is casually spread at NYU, where the law school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine recently issued a statement criticizing the “Zionist grip on the media.” For good measure, the group went on to smear Ashkenazic Jews as white supremacists.Nor was this incident anomalous. Just a few months before, NYU’s Review of Law and Social Change embraced the antisemitic movement to boycott Israel. NYU’s administration said it was “troubled and disappointed.” Yet it took no apparent action.In part, the problem is that NYU has never done what it promised the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights that it would do. NYU committed to amend its anti-discrimination policy to expressly prohibit antisemitic conduct as defined in the Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism. NYU hasn’t done this. Instead, NYU’s revised policy excerpts some of the Order’s prefatory language without using the Order’s all-important guiding examples. Similarly, NYU fails to describe “the forms of anti-Semitism that can manifest in the University environment” as it promised to do. Nor does NYU’s revised policy show any awareness of the behaviors which prompted Adela Cohab Moadeb’s complaint and the ensuing federal investigation. If this reflects the approach to antisemitism of NYU’s leadership, it is no wonder that ugly incidents recur there.This is not just an NYU problem. These problems reflect a nationwide trend. The Anti-Defamation League’s most recent national audit reported an “all-time high” in documented antisemitic incidents. The Louis D. Brandeis Center’s recent survey shows that even strongly self-identified Jewish students are often afraid to express their Jewish identity, given the hostile environments they frequently face. In response, nearly forty members of Congress warned the Department of Education that “Jewish students need assistance and protection from the growing threat of antisemitism.” For the Biden administration to discontinue monitoring at this time would send the wrong message. It would signal to higher education that the administration is not serious about addressing anti-Jewish bigotry. And it would say to Jewish students that they are on their own. This would be an unacceptable way to treat our college students. NYU and the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights need to finish the job they have just begun.

Will President Biden Blink at Antisemitism at NYU?

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