Brandeis Center files civil rights complaint against University of Washington for 'hostile' campus toward Jews
The Louis Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has filed a federal complaint against the University of Washington for allowing anti-Semitism to continue unchecked on its campus.
The complaint was filed with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights on Sept. 24.
The Louis Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has filed a federal complaint against the University of Washington for allowing anti-Semitism to continue unchecked on its campus.
The complaint was filed with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights on Sept. 24.
The complaint asserts that Jewish students at the Seattle school have been “subjected to severe and persistent harassment and discrimination on the basis of their shared ancestry and ethnicity, which has created a hostile environment on campus.”
“Jewish students have been threatened with physical harm, excluded and forced out of areas on campus they are entitled to access, and unable to attend class,” the document states. “Vandals have repeatedly covered the campus with anti-Semitic graffiti calling for violence against Zionists.”
Brandeis Center Founder Kenneth Marcus, said that “Jew-hatred” runs rampant at the University of Washington and is “rapidly escalating.”
“It didn’t require any special reading of the tea leaves to see that Jew-hatred was rapidly escalating at the University of Washington and action was required,” Marcus said in an Oct. 1 statement.
“This could have been prevented but left unaddressed, graffiti and threatening messages directed at Jews quickly moved to dangerous bullying, intimidation, physical threats and discrimination,” Marcus continued. “The Administration cannot continue to sit idly by. Jew-hatred will likely continue to spread like wildfire until the university takes concrete steps to address it, as they are required by law.”
A protest last month caused a meeting of the University of Washington’s board of regents to be canceled. The students protested the meeting because the board had recently postponed a vote on whether or not to divest from companies that have financial connections to Israel.
UW Divest for Palestine, the group which organized the demonstration, states in its Instagram biography that it is an “[a]utonomous group of students advocating for divestment from Israel at the University of Washington.”
“Today, the UW Board of Regents was forced to end their meeting early after a group of peaceful protestors autonomously disrupted the meeting by chanting and refusing to leave once public comment ended, based on the Board’s decision to delay voting on the divestment proposal from israel [sic] until March,” the group said about the demonstration.
Campus Reform has contacted the University of Washington for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
