
In another alleged incident in September 2020, a professor reportedly “instructed students to discuss and rank their identities.” Doe 1 shared with fellow students they felt a strong affinity with Jewish identity and did not feel an affinity with white identity, and therefore ranked Jewish identity first and white identity last. In one described incident in August 2020, Doe 2 attended a class where the professor allegedly stated, “In sum and substance, that Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated to America have become part of the oppressors in this country.” (Names of professors have been redacted in the version of the complaint made public by the Brandeis Center.) The complaint describes a number of alleged incidents during the fall 2020 semester centering around questions of Jewishness, whiteness and privilege. “When someone would say for example, ‘I’m Jewish,’ professors would say, ‘No, you’re not, you’re white, and you don’t understand oppression and you need to sit down and you need to be quiet and you need to let the Black people in the program speak about their experiences’ and wouldn’t allow us to speak about ours,” the student said.
Stanford Admits to Anti-Jewish Admissions Bias in ’50s. College GOP President Resigns Over Hateful Instagram Posts.
CUNY Partners With Hillel International on Antisemitism Initiative. The complaint, which comes at a time of rising anti-Semitism on American college campuses, alleges that Jewish students who pushed back or expressed distress “were met with further harassment and intimidation from faculty and administrators, who told students to ‘get your whiteness in check’ and to ‘keep your head down’ rather than challenge the status quo.” The complaint, filed on behalf of two Jewish students in the master’s program, alleges that professors in the program “have maligned Jews on the basis of race and ethnic identity by advancing the narrative that all Jews are white and privileged and therefore contribute to the systemic oppression of people of color.” It also alleges that Jewish students have “been bullied in class discussions and on social media by student peers who target Jewish students using the same ethnic stereotypes, antisemitic tropes and divisive concepts that faculty members promote in their courses.” The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating a complaint alleging that Jewish students enrolled in Brooklyn College’s graduate mental health counseling program have been subjected to anti-Semitic harassment from professors and peers.