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The Education Department has opened a second civil rights investigation into allegations of shared-ancestry discrimination at Harvard University, according to the agency’s updated list of open inquiries.
This latest probe comes in response to a complaint from the Muslim Legal Fund of America that alleges Harvard failed to protect Arab and Muslim students and others who support Palestine from harassment and threats, according to a news release from the Muslim Legal Fund. The department’s Office for Civil Rights is already investigating Harvard’s handling of alleged harassment of Jewish students.
The Muslim Legal Fund applauded the department’s decision to investigate.
“When Harvard students were being harassed and doxxed by their peers and outside parties for months, Harvard officials brushed them to the side and instead met with prominent donors and alumni who encouraged the student harassment and doxxing,” Chelsea Glover, a senior staff attorney with the fund, said in a statement.
Investigations of the University of Michigan, the New School in New York, Indiana University and the University of South Florida also were added to the list this week. The department’s list of colleges, universities and K-12 school districts under investigation doesn’t specify what the investigation is about beyond a possible shared-ancestry violation of the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, which requires federally funded institutions to protect students from discrimination based on race, color or national origin.
So far, the department has opened 44 investigations into potential shared-ancestry violations at colleges and universities since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, which spurred a rise in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents on campuses.
