The competition for the worst move in Joe Biden’s pardon-spree is fierce. There is, of course, the sweeping pardon he granted to his son, Hunter. Then there are those who received questionable clemency, such as the judge who took bribes to send minors to prison and the executive in prison for defrauding nursing homes.
To this list, however, we should add another recipient of undue clemency: the universities.
Schools are seeking to settle the Title VI civil-rights claims brought against them before Biden leaves office. School officials’ assumption is that the Trump Department of Education will be less forgiving toward the schools’ rampant anti-Jewish discrimination than the outgoing administration. It’s a safe bet—universities are getting mere wrist slaps from the Biden Office of Civil Rights in what amounts to a preemptive pardon for their misbehavior.
Such clemency is unearned.
“We’re seeing what appears to be a rush to issue weak resolution agreements at a time when stronger treatment might be at hand,” Kenneth Marcus, whose Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law is representing some of the student claimants, told Jewish Insider.
The Brandeis Center, Marcus said, has been “hearing from a lot of colleges and universities that are much more motivated to discuss settlement than they had been before the election.”
It’s no mystery why.
The first Title VI cases to be settled after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks—which initiated an explosion of campus anti-Semitic harassment under the permissive eye of “elite” university presidents—concerned the City University of New York and the University of Michigan. When I wrote about the CUNY settlement back in June, I focused on the false equivalence between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the reporting on the case. In short, Jewish students had faced violent threats and Muslim students were offended that Jews were bothered by these threats. Ergo, the school “failed to adequately protect both Jewish and Muslim students,” as the Washington Post had worded it.
But the other relevant fact about these Title VI settlements is what they actually require the schools to do in order to remedy their violations of students’ civil rights.
CUNY, a public system of 25 schools with one of the worst anti-Semitism problems in the country, was ordered to remedy its sins by: investigating Jewish and Arab/Muslim complaints, telling the Education Department what CUNY found and what they’re doing about it, and training employees in nondiscrimination.
In other words, practically nothing.
Has that changed since last year? Not at all. A couple weeks ago, Rutgers University (my alma mater) followed the same path. Pro-Hamas mobs on campus threatened Jewish students and called for violence against Jews worldwide, but the school “admitted” it failed both Jewish and Palestinian students, because academia refuses to address anti-Semitism without saying “and Islamophobia.”
Rutgers, a state school with one of the largest populations of Jewish students in the country, was directed to make amends by: reviewing its policies, stating it won’t tolerate discrimination, providing training, etc. etc.
Can more be done? Mark Yudof, former president of the University of California system, told Jewish Insider that federal funding cuts should be on the table. Trump himself threatened colleges with the possibility of losing accreditation, should they ignore calls to clean up their acts.
A Trump Office of Civil Rights should also make clear that taking anti-Semitism seriously means being capable of addressing it without legitimizing the standard anti-Zionist response. The playbook is as follows: Jewish students make a civil-rights complaint and Arab/Muslim students treat that civil-rights complaint as a violation of their own civil rights. This makes a mockery of the entire concept of civil-rights protections in public institutions. It is, in fact, intended to do nothing more than torpedo the application of civil-rights law to Jews. The Hamas fanboys on campus and their supporters believe that the purpose of having a civil-rights regime is to make sure it is two-tiered.
Universities love this trick, but they are probably correct in assuming that just because Biden fell for it doesn’t mean future presidents will. Which is why they’re rushing to deliver the fatal blows to Title VI while they still can.