WASHINGTON – The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has opened a formal investigation into a complaint alleging two Jewish students at SUNY New Paltz were kicked out of a sexual assault awareness group and then bullied, harassed and threatened over their Jewish and Israeli identities.
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed the complaint on behalf of the students and the group Jewish on Campus.
The students, Cassandra Blotner and Ofek Preis, both members of the group New Paltz Accountability, were kicked out of the group, said Denise Katz-Prober, director of legal initiatives for the Brandeis Human Rights Center.
“These two women, one of whom is Jewish-American and one of them is Jewish-Israeli, Zionism, or the Jewish people’s connection to the land of Israel, is a very important part of what it means to them to be Jewish,” she said. “And when they expressed pride in that aspect of their Jewish identity, which is connected to the Jewish people’s ancient, millennia-old connection to the land of Israel, that’s when they were castigated, that’s when they were discriminated against and harassed.”
Katz-Prober said the Department of Education is investigating anti-Zionist-motivated anti-Semitic discrimination and harassment as a potential violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
SUNY New Paltz denied any anti-Semitic discrimination. “We unequivocally condemn any attacks on SUNY students who are Jewish, and we will not tolerate anti-Semitic harassment and intimidation on campus. We do not comment on pending investigations,” according to a statement from the college.
Katz-Prober said if the Education Department were to find the college had violated the Civil Right Act, it could lose federal funding. Short of that, she said the government could require the school to take “certain concrete steps” to rectify what happened to the two Jewish students.
