Temple University resolves federal civil-rights probe for alleged anti-Jewish bias

(JNS) The U.S. Department of Education announced on Monday that it has entered an agreement with Temple University, a public school in Philadelphia, to resolve an investigation into potential violations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Among the complaints against Temple from 2022 to 2024 were “at least 50 reports of shared ancestry discrimination and harassment, including incidents of antisemitic, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian conduct,” the department stated.

John Fry, the university president, said on Monday that the investigation was about Temple’s “handling of reported incidents of harassment based on national origin (shared Jewish ancestry) under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.”

“More than 100 colleges and universities have undergone or are currently undergoing such a review,” he wrote, according to Temple News, a student publication.

“Today, I am pleased to share that Temple has resolved the investigation through a voluntary resolution agreement” with the Education Department, Fry added. “Importantly, this agreement includes no findings of noncompliance or wrongdoing by the university. This resolution allows us to focus on our essential work in addressing all complaints of discrimination and harassment, including antisemitic, anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim and all unlawful discriminatory incidents that create a hostile environment for members of our community.”

The Education Department cited Temple’s “proactive and responsive” efforts to address harassment based on “shared ancestry” and said it has “robust processes for addressing reports of discrimination and harassment.”

It also noted that Temple created a 2022 “Blue Ribbon Commission on Antisemitism and University Responses to address what it deemed a pattern of rising antisemitism in American society and on college campuses nationwide, and in December 2022, it hired a special adviser on antisemitism to assist the university with addressing reports of antisemitism, discrimination or harassment based on shared Jewish ancestry.”

The Education Department stated that despite those efforts, it “identified Title VI compliance concerns because the university’s actions did not consistently include taking steps to assess whether incidents of which it had notice individually or cumulatively created a hostile environment for students, faculty or staff and did not take steps reasonably calculated to end the hostile environment as required by Title VI.”

The federal government “also identified concerns with the university’s handling of these reports because they were addressed in isolation by multiple campus departments and offices with little to no information sharing among them,” it stated. “This, in turn, resulted in an apparent failure to assess whether the incidents cumulatively created a hostile environment for university students, faculty and staff.”

Marcia Bronstein, Philadelphia/Southern NJ director for the American Jewish Committee, stated that “this agreement will hopefully ensure that Jewish students, faculty and staff no longer feel isolated and silenced on campus. There needs to be a stronger connection between Temple creating the necessary policies to address antisemitic conduct and then following through by effectively investigating such incidents, which increased dramatically following the Hamas massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.”

She said her organization “has heard from Jewish students at Temple who say they often feel targeted because they are Jewish or support Israel. This is unacceptable. Just like every other student, they deserve an education and campus free from harassment and intimidation.”

As part of the agreement, Temple will commit to reviewing complaints from the past two years and “take remedial actions, if required,” to share complaints about discrimination based on shared ancestry for the current and next academic year with the Education Department and provide relevant faculty and staff training.