Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission encouraged workers who have experienced antisemitism on college campuses to submit a charge of employment discrimination in a Wednesday news release.
- “Universities are workplaces, too, and large-scale employers,” Acting Chair Andrea Lucas said in the release, noting most news coverage on antisemitism has focused on students. “In addition to Jewish professors on campus, universities employ Jewish staff who work a variety of jobs, all of whom have the right not to be discriminated against or harassed on the basis of religion, national origin, or race.”
- Among severe or pervasive antisemitic conduct includes vandalism, assaults, death threats, violent slogans and symbols, disruptive and violent protests in violation of campus policies, and preventing faculty and staff from accessing their place of work, EEOC said.
Dive Insight:
EEOC’s announcement that the agency would “hold accountable” universities and colleges that have created an antisemitic, hostile-work environment follows other recent announcements that the agency would protect workers from anti-American bias and roll back the previous administration’s “gender identity agenda.”
“In recent years, this agency has remained silent in the face of multiple forms of widespread, overt discrimination,” Lucas said in EEOC’s news release on her appointment as acting chair. She listed her priorities, which align with the several announcements that followed:
- Addressing “unlawful” DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination;
- Protecting American workers from anti-American national origin discrimination;
- Defending the “biological and binary reality of sex and related rights,” including women’s rights to single‑sex spaces at work; and
- Protecting workers from religious bias and harassment, including antisemitism.
Following President Donald Trump’s Jan. 29 executive order on combating antisemitism, EEOC is among several agencies to recently target the issue, particularly in academic settings.
On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education and the General Services Administration jointly announced a “comprehensive review” of Columbia University’s federal contracts and grants in light of inaction “in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students.” And the Department of Justice yesterday announced an investigation into whether the University of California allowed an antisemitic hostile work environment to exist on its campuses.