The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is opening an investigation into antisemitism complaints filed last year by The Louis D. Brandeis Center against American University, three other colleges and a Georgia school district, the Brandeis Center announced in a press release Thursday.
The Brandeis Center and the group Jewish on Campus filed their original complaint against the University in January 2024 which alleged that the University had created a “hostile environment” for Jewish and Israeli students on campus. In Thursday’s press release, the Brandeis Center said the University has taken retaliatory action against Jewish students, following complaints of antisemitism in dorms and shared classroom spaces.
Alongside AU, Yale University, The University of Massachusetts Amherst, Scripps College and Georgia’s Fulton County School System are all under investigation.
Denise Katz-Prober, Brandeis Center’s director of legal initiatives, who oversaw the original complaints, said in an interview with The Eagle that these investigations are often resolved through a resolution agreement between the University and the Department of Education.
“If the University doesn’t agree to come into compliance by taking those steps that the Department requires it to, then the Department does have at its disposal the ability to remove federal funding from an institution like American,” Katz-Prober said.
The Office of Civil Rights is investigating specific incidents over the past two years on the University’s campus, including a swastika drawn on a students door in Letts Hall, the vandalization of a Jewish student’s poster in Katzen Hall last fall and posters that were taken down that included the names of the Oct. 7 hostages.
The University did not immediately respond to The Eagle’s request for comment, but when the complaint was originally filed, Matt Bennett, AU’s vice president of communications and chief communications officer, said the University has “taken decisive action to address antisemitism.”
“We take these issues and any concerns in AU’s Jewish community seriously, and we review and address them,” Bennett wrote in a January 2024 statement to The Eagle. “We will cooperate with any inquiries regarding our work to combat antisemitism.”
“I think that American University needs to recognize, not just through words, but through action, that harassment and discrimination that targets Zionists is harassment and discrimination that targets Jews,” Katz-Prober said.
Katz-Prober went on to say that Jewish students are “being marginalized and excluded from spaces because of their identity as Jews and because of their Zionist identity as Jews, and therefore the University has an obligation to address and protect Jewish students from harassment and discrimination.”
The Brandeis Center announced the investigations less than an hour after President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at dismantling the Department of Education.
The Department of Education has yet to release a statement on the status of the investigations.
Warning letters were sent to 60 universities, including AU, last week. The letters threatened enforcement actions including the removal of federal funding for institutions that “do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus.”
Julia Jassey, the CEO and co-founder of Jewish on Campus, said that the Brandeis Center is taking into account how the shutdown of the Department of Education may affect the enforcement of these policies.
“We also echo the call from students that with impending changes and restructuring to the Department of Education, the federal government must continue to protect the rights of and access to educational opportunities for students from all protected backgrounds,” Jassey said in the press release.
The University relies on federal funding for student loans, federal work study jobs, research grants, pell grants and other programs.
Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman of the Brandeis Center and the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights, applauded the Department of Education’s swift action and funding threats.
“We are pleased to see the Department continuing to move forward rapidly on Title VI complaints, and in some cases, they are well exceeding historical norms for prompt action,” Marcus said in the press release.
Threats of lost federal funding turned into a reality for Columbia University, which is set to lose $400 million in funding and grants following encampments protesting the Israel-Hamas war last spring.
In light of the letters and the announcement of Columbia’s funding loss, American University has responded by announcing its support for Jewish students, both on and off of AU’s campus.
In a statement to NBC4 Washington published last week, American University said it has updated its policies to enforce stricter discipline for conduct violations and include conversations about antisemitism in its American University Experience classes for freshmen.
But despite these efforts, investigations against the University and other universities could continue.
“While the Anti-Semitism Task Force is investigating ten campuses and [the Office of Civil Rights] has warned sixty of them, the federal government has the bandwidth and the will to expand its investigations well past the initial campuses — and they are clearly just getting started,” Marcus said.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
This article was edited by Owen Auston-Babcock, Tyler Davis and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks.
