Occidental School has settled with two nonprofit organizations centered on combating antisemitism over a federal Workplace for Civil Rights criticism that the campus was a hostile setting for Jewish and Israeli college students within the weeks and months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel.
Below the settlement, reached with the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Heart for Human Rights Below Regulation, the school agreed to take sweeping steps to guard Jewish college students, together with, amongst different issues:
- Updating the establishment’s discrimination coverage to stipulate examples of discrimination on the idea of shared ancestry;
- Adopting the Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism for evaluating incidents of harassment and discrimination;
- Implementing new required Title VI trainings for all college students, workers and school;
- Creating new time, place and method insurance policies for when and the place protests might happen;
- Launching two campus local weather surveys, certainly one of which is able to embrace questions on college students’ experiences of antisemitism; and
- Appointing two new roles: an affiliate director of Jewish scholar life and a Muslim scholar life coordinator.
The unique criticism in opposition to Occidental, a personal faculty in Los Angeles, was filed in Could and alleged that the school had not adequately responded to antisemitic incidents on campus, together with Jewish and Israeli college students being referred to as slurs and advised to “return to the gasoline chambers.” A number of Jewish and Israeli college students with on-campus jobs additionally reported that antisemitic harassment and bias pressured them to stop their jobs.
“This settlement demonstrates Occidental School’s dedication to counter all types of up to date antisemitism and underscores their recognition that successfully combatting antisemitism requires understanding the connection between Jewish id, Israel, and Zionism,” Alyza D. Lewin, president of the Brandeis Heart, mentioned in a press launch. “We’re gratified by the varsity’s engagement in significant discussions on the highest ranges of the administration, and we’re heartened that Occidental has dedicated to making a safer setting for Jewish college students. When applied, this settlement will assist be certain that Jewish college students are capable of study and thrive in an setting free from anti-Semitic hate, discrimination, and harassment.”
In a press release on the school’s web site, Occidental president Tom Stritikus, who joined the school in July, wrote, “As I consider this Decision demonstrates, antisemitism is antithetical to the School’s values, and discrimination in opposition to Jewish and Israeli college students ought to be unequivocally rejected in our neighborhood.”
