The education department is investigating six more colleges for discrimination on campus

The Department of Education on Tuesday announced investigations into six more colleges and universities, adding to a growing list of institutions the agency is investigating following complaints of campus discrimination.

The schools appointed by the department were Stanford, the University of California-Los Angeles, the University of California-San Diego, the University of Washington-Seattle, Rutgers University in New Jersey and Whitman College in Washington state.

The new investigations into some of the West Coast’s most prominent institutions come weeks after the department opened similar investigations into a number of elite schools on the East Coast, including Harvard, Cornell, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania.

below Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964the Ministry of Education routinely investigates complaints against universities reporting discrimination based on shared origins or ethnic characteristics.

The office regularly investigates a variety of Title VI complaints against both smaller public school districts and large research universities, but clashes on college campuses since the outbreak of violence in Israel and Gaza have prompted a flurry of new investigations since October.

This week, 21 of the 29 investigations the department has opened this year into post-secondary schools have arisen since Hamas’s first attack on October 7.

In a press release about the previous round of investigations announced in November, the department described its efforts as part of a larger directive to “take aggressive action to address the alarming nationwide increase in reports of anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and other forms of discrimination and intimidation on college campuses and primary schools since the October 7 Israel-Hamas conflict.”

As with other recent investigations, it was not immediately clear which incident sparked the complaints to the department that prompted the department to take action. An agency spokesperson declined to comment Wednesday on the nature of the complaints, citing a policy against discussing ongoing investigations.

But since Oct. 7, a number of campus incidents and disputes have roiled many of the schools involved.

In November, University of California President Michael V. Drake, along with ten chancellors from the university network, released a letter attacking anti-Semitic and Islamophobic rhetoric during campus protests.

“We write today to condemn the alarming, deeply disappointing acts of bigotry, bigotry and intimidation we have seen on our campuses in recent weeks,” the letter said.

Shortly thereafter, hundreds of faculty and students from the University of California wrote a letter He called on Richard Leib, the chairman of the university network’s Board of Regents, to resign over social media posts that the letter’s authors described as “dangerously one-sided” and alienating Arab students and Palestinian activist groups.

At Stanford, more than 2,000 alumni have done so signed an open letter to university leaders accusing them of failing to stop “the growing expressions of hatred and persecution” against the university’s Jewish community.

Dee Mostofi, a spokeswoman for Stanford, said the university planned to “cooperate with the Office for Civil Rights in investigating this complaint.”

Last week, Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey, said sent a letter to the president of Rutgers who criticizes a campus event for ‘providing a platform’ for ‘known anti-Semites’.

Rutgers also briefly suspended the Newark chapter of the fraternity Rutgers Law School in November after the association sought to oust an Orthodox Jewish member. And on Monday, the university suspended the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter from the New Brunswick campus, a group that has been suspended at other schools. including Columbiaabout what student leaders said were “vague and unsubstantiated complaints” and an “attempt to confuse protected speech activities with violence.”

A Rutgers spokeswoman said Wednesday that the school was notified this week that the Department of Education had opened an investigation into “alleged incidents of harassment in October and November 2023 of students based on their national origin (shared Jewish ancestry and/ or Israel).”

The spokeswoman, Dory Devlin, said the school would “certainly cooperate fully.”

Rutgers has the second largest Jewish population of every American public university after the University of Florida, according to Hillel International, the world’s largest Jewish campus organization.

“I have spoken to Jewish students who feel unsafe,” said Gary L. Francione, a professor at the Board of Governors at Rutgers Law School.