As previously reported, in November 2023 the Department of Education issued a "Dear Colleague" letter in response to rising levels of antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents at schools and colleges since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the Israeli response. The letter clarifies that even though Title VI does not specifically cover religious discrimination, many types of antisemitic and Islamophobic attacks fall under other types of discrimination covered by Title VI. The Forward yesterday reported that it has tracked 48 Title VI investigations by DOE's Office of Civil Rights filed since November charging higher education institutions with antisemitism, Islamophobia or similar discrimination, as well as ten lawsuits filed by private parties making similar contentions filed since then. It has published a detailed listing of all the investigations and cases it has tracked. The Forward explains:
When Ken Marcus took over the department’s civil rights office during the George W. Bush administration, he started looking for test cases for a new category of “shared ancestry” that would allow officials to investigate cases that touched on religion. He found one when a Sikh child in New Jersey was beaten by classmates who saw his turban and taunted him as “Osama,” a reference to the infamous Muslim terrorist.
Marcus believed that the discrimination wasn’t strictly religious in nature because the bullies weren’t intending to go after the boy’s Sikh identity. And it wasn’t obviously racial, either, since it was the turban that had drawn the bullies’ attention.
He authorized the department to investigate these types of cases under its authority to prohibit discrimination based on race or national origin, creating a new category called “shared ancestry.” Every subsequent administration has agreed that these cases fall under the department’s purview.
More controversial is the question of what, exactly, constitutes discrimination against Jews based on their shared ancestry. Marcus and many Jewish advocacy groups have taken the position that anti-Zionism — opposition to a Jewish state in Israel — is often antisemitic because many Jews identify with Israel as part of their shared ancestry.
