Civil Rights complaint says Middlebury College is a 'hostile environment' for Jewish students
On Feb. 15, the StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights concerning instances of anti-Semitic behavior at Middlebury College.
The complaint blames the administration for failing to protect Jewish students and points to potential violations of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Instances of anti-Semitic behavior at Middlebury College in Vermont have led a Jewish organization to submit a formal complaint to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
“The hostile environment at Middlebury College and the administration’s failure to act to correct it are unacceptable,” Carly Gammill, director of legal strategy of the StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice, said in a press release on Feb. 16.
The complaint, filed to the Education Department on Feb. 15, notes that Middlebury, in its statement regarding Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack against Israel, “did not condemn the terror attacks committed against Israeli civilians” and that “[t]here was no mention of the actual terrorist acts that resulted in the largest number of Jewish people killed in a single day since the Holocaust.”
The complaint alleges that the college administration “displayed discriminatory and disparate treatment” toward Jewish students who were attempting “to host a campus vigil for the victims of Hamas terrorism.” The administration, according to the complaint, “immediately attempted to hamper” the efforts of the Jewish students to organize the vigil.
The document also contends that Middlebury administrators focused on “marginalizing and discriminating” against Jewish students on campus by asking them “to hide their religious, ethnic and national identities.” Specifically, the complaint asserts that the Middlebury administration asked “Jewish and Israeli students” not to display “any Israeli flags during the event.”
Additionally, students reported that they were forced to “remove the word ‘Jewish’” from all event materials.
Despite an increase in anti-Semitic threats to Jewish students “in the wake of the Hamas attacks,” the complaint alleges that the administration “repeatedly attempted to prevent and then to limit the Jewish students’ request for a police presence.”
The complaint submits that several incidents on Middlebury’s campus could constitute violations of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin.
One such incident involves a resident assistant in a Middlebury dorm posting a sign with the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” on the outside of his dorm room. The complaint states that a Jewish student who lived in the dorm reported the sign to the president of Middlebury, Laurie Patton, but that the administration did not investigate the issue.
Instead, the complaint alleges, the university administration “downplayed the incident.”
The document also states that “antisemitic signs” were placed throughout Middlebury’s campus. These signs included flyers with “from the river to the sea” and “our taxes fund genocide” printed on them.
The complaint concludes with various suggested “remedies” for Middlebury, including recognizing Chabad as an official campus group, adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Anti-Semitism, and an official statement recognizing the importance of Zionism to the identities of many Jewish students.
StandWithUs describes itself as “an international, non-partisan education organization that supports Israel and fights antisemitism.” Its goals include “[countering] antisemitism” and “[making] it possible to have reasonable, informed conversations about Israel’s history, policies, and humanitarian aid on campuses and in communities around the world.”
Campus Reform has contacted StandWithUs and Middlebury College for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
