Rutgers is latest university to settle Dept. of Education antisemitism investigation
Agreement includes anti-harassment training following hundreds of discrimination complaints from Jewish, Arab and Muslim students
A hedge outside Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, July 30, 2016. (Tomwsulcer via Creative Commons)
By Louis Keene January 2, 2025
Rutgers University said it would implement campuswide anti-harassment training to settle a Department of Education investigation into student complaints of antisemitism and discrimination.
The department’s Office of Civil Rights said Rutgers had received more than 400 complaints of discrimination based on shared ancestry or national origin between July 2023 and June 2024. Of those, 293 came from Jews and Israelis on campus, and 147 from Palestinian, Arab, South Asian and Muslim students.
Announcing the settlement Thursday, the department said it had “identified compliance concerns” with Rutgers’ handling of the complaints, which included a swastika drawn on a student’s door, a social media post encouraging violence against an Israeli student, and eggs thrown at the Jewish studies building and members of AEPi, a historically Jewish fraternity.
Rutgers is the latest of several universities to settle Title VI complaints, which Jewish students, faculty and off-campus organizations have filed against scores of universities since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. The education department reached similar agreements with five University of California campuses last month.
Jonathan Holloway, president of Rutgers, was among several university leaders called to testify before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce last year as protests and debates over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict roiled college campuses. Speaking ahead of his testimony, Jewish members of Rutgers’ faculty said the environment on campus had become “chaotic and intimidating.”
Arab and Muslim students had parallel complaints. The education department announcement says that pro-Palestinian students were doxxed and that a Palestinian memorial was removed from a public display area when other flyers were not.
David Greenberg, a Rutgers history professor who helps coordinate a group of Jewish faculty, said the settlement did not make clear enough the status of university investigations into allegations that its code of conduct had been violated.
“It’s a good thing that the university is acknowledging that since Oct. 7 it’s been a tremendously difficult experience for Jews on campus,” Greenberg, who is a member of the Forward’s governing board, said in an interview, Of the complaints, he added, “it seems that there should be much more public disclosure of how they were resolved.”
The Rutgers chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine did not respond to a request for comment.
