US universities to improve protest policies after Gaza probes

The Biden administration has reached its first formal resolution of complaints about student protests over Gaza, ordering better protection for both Jewish and Muslim students at the University of Michigan and the City University of New York.

The Department of Education’s investigations of Michigan and CUNY ended with fairly typical commitments to corrective actions after an especially tumultuous moment that included more than 2,500 arrests across more than 50 US campuses.

Yet the cases also showed the Biden administration as willing to find problems on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, as compared to congressional Republicans, who have characterised Jewish students almost exclusively as the victims in the months of often-angry campus demonstrations.

Examples identified by the administration included the case of Carin Ehrenberg, a longtime donor to Michigan and a member of the advisory board of the university’s School of Information, who yelled at pro-Palestinian student protesters in November, suggesting they had terrorist alliances. Michigan rejected a call from more than 100 students, staff, faculty and alumni for Ms Ehrenberg’s removal from the board, deciding instead to arrange a conversational forum known as a “restorative circle”.

In another case, at CUNY’s Hunter College in 2021, department investigators described faculty and students at two different sessions of a required course “commandeering” the discussion time to demand an end to Israel’s control over Palestinian territories and telling Jewish students to listen and not speak.

They were among multiple instances at both Michigan and CUNY, going back well before the resumption of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians this past October, that the Department of Education described as falling well short of an appropriate response.

“Hate has no place on our college campuses – ever,” the US secretary of education, Miguel Cardona, said in announcing the findings. “Sadly, we have witnessed a series of deeply concerning incidents in recent months.”

The Department of Education gets its investigative authority through Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which requires institutions using federal funding to provide a learning environment free of discrimination. The Michigan investigation covered 75 complaints that university received since the 2022-23 academic year, while CUNY’s involved nine complaints dating back to 2019-20.

The Department of Education offered harsh assessments of both institutions, but especially Michigan, saying its investigators “found no evidence that the university complied with its Title VI requirements”. Michigan’s president, Santa Ono, promised to do better. “Since 7 October,” Professor Ono said in a response, “we have been deeply troubled by the statements and actions of some members of our community.”

Both Michigan and CUNY – as often happens in such cases – agreed to take corrective steps that include initiating or reopening investigations into the complaints, providing employee training, and conducting campus climate surveys among students.

The investigations were carried out by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which is handling dozens of complaints at other US campuses arising from the student protests over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

House Republicans, meanwhile, have persisted with their efforts to portray problems with student intolerance as largely if not entirely a matter of antisemitic behaviour, in line with their wider insistence that US higher education is excessively attuned to left-wing policy priorities. As the Department of Education issued its findings, the chair of the education committee in the US House of Representatives, Virginia Foxx, complained that Columbia University administrators exchanged disparaging text messages downplaying antisemitism during a campus panel discussion on the topic, and demanded that she be provided copies of them.

Republicans have repeatedly demanded more aggressive investigations of universities over antisemitic activity, while Democrats have accused Republicans of failing to appropriately fund the Office for Civil Rights at a moment of rising caseloads.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com