The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law (Brandeis Center) announced they filed a complaint with the U.S. Dept of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against Occidental College in a May 9 press release. The complaint claims that Occidental violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by permitting antisemitism on campus.
Title VI prohibits programs that receive federal financial assistance from excluding, discriminating or denying benefits on the basis of race, color or national origin. According to the U.S. Dept of Justice Civil Rights Division, private colleges receive federal financial assistance in myriad ways, including federally-subsidized student loans.
According to the email sent by complainants from the ADL and the Brandeis Center to the OCR, the complaint was filed April 18.
“Over the past six months, Jewish students at Occidental College have experienced discrimination, disparate treatment and harassment on the basis of their shared ancestry,” the complainants said.
In their press release, the ADL claimed that Occidental has enforced policies against Jewish students while ignoring antisemitic declarations and violations on campus.
The reasons listed by complainants for filing a Title VI complaint against Occidental include Jewish and Israeli students being accosted and harassed by protesters on-campus as well as being “unable to carry out” their on-campus jobs as a result of antisemitic conduct.
The complaint states that the students discussed prefer to remain anonymous, “but are willing and able to provide testimony” to the OCR regarding “the hostile environment that has developed for Jewish and Israeli students at Occidental.”
Of the four student testimonies in the complaint, two are redacted. In one of the two visible testimonies, an anonymous student states that she had to quit working at the Green Bean, Occidental’s coffee shop, because their supervisor intimidated them and a friend.
“Student 4 was present when the coffee shop supervisor approached a friend of Student 4’s at the shop and asked if it was true that the friend is a Zionist. The friend felt compelled to lie and say ‘no,’” the complaint states. “The supervisor then told the friend that she had better start showing up to SJP’s events or risk having students believe that she is a Zionist and she would not ‘want people thinking that.’”
The complaint alleges that Occidental faculty “engaged in hateful rhetoric that emboldened the student protestors.”
“On the first day of class following October 7, a professor told her students that she felt ‘invigorated’ from Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack and encouraged students to share their excitement,” the complaint states. “Students clapped and snapped in response to their professor while an Israeli student watched in horror.”
Under California’s Leonard Law, “no private postsecondary educational institution shall make or enforce a rule subjecting a student to disciplinary sanctions solely on the basis of conduct that is speech or other communication that, when engaged in outside the campus or facility of a private postsecondary institution, is protected from governmental restriction by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution or Section 2 of Article I of the California Constitution.”
Occidental’s Vice President for Marketing and Communications Rod Leveque said via email that recognizing the professor’s speech as protected under the Leonard Law or similar legislation would require “a more detailed review of the facts” which he is “not able to make at this time.”
The announcement of this complaint follows a recent agreement between the Occidental administration and Occidental Students for Justice in Palestine and Occidental Jewish Voice for Peace (Oxy SJP and Oxy JVP) to end their eight-day encampment on the Academic Quad in exchange for the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees to consider Oxy SJP’s divestment demands in a special session.
According to Leveque, the OCR is not currently investigating Occidental.
“If [the] OCR decides to open an investigation related to this complaint, we will of course cooperate and answer any questions that they may raise,” Leveque said via email. “As Inside Higher Ed has reported, [the] OCR has approximately 145 open cases relating to similar complaints tied to shared ancestry.”
Leveque said via email that once a complaint has been filed, the OCR typically assigns it a case number.
“If [the] OCR decides to open a complaint for investigation, it will notify the recipient of the allegations and subsequent procedures,” Leveque said. “You will find more information here about OCR procedures.”
Leveque said via email that Occidental’s administration has “consistently shown our commitment to proactively creating an environment free of antisemitism and actively investigating concerns when they are reported regarding discrimination based on protected categories.” According to Leveque, the college required students to participate in an anti-bias training program during the Spring semester, and has a required program on preventing antisemitism planned for the Fall semester.
The ADL complaint alleges that professors had “moved their classes online or to locations near the [AGC building] to enable students to attend class while participating in the occupation” and have “granted extensions to assignments expressly to encourage participation in the occupation.”
Leveque said via email that in December 2023, the College shared a letter by President Harry Elam with ADL Los Angeles Regional Director Jeffery I. Abrams. In the letter, Elam wrote that with his full support and authority, the Task Force on Promoting Community and Safety established by Elam in November 2023 instructed faculty “that they may not impose their political affiliations on students in the form of canceled (and not rescheduled) classes.”
According to Leveque, the “top priority” of Occidental administrators is “to ensure a climate where our students and the entire College community can thrive and engage in dialogue on complex, sometimes painful, issues.”
This story is ongoing and The Occidental will continue to report online.
Contact Ava LaLonde at lalonde@oxy.edu and Jimmy Miller at jmiller4@oxy.edu
