On Tuesday’s broadcast of “CNN This Morning,” Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) stated that there should be an increase in investigations by the Department of Education into antisemitism and the Biden administration should focus on antisemitism instead of trying to “both-sides” the issue.
After discussing calling out antisemitism, Auchincloss said, “I also want to see actions though, particularly the resourcing and the political support for civil rights investigations under the Department of Education for universities failing to uphold their Title VI responsibilities. I was on Harvard’s campus last week meeting with Jewish and Israeli students, they described a pattern of ostracism and harassment that is clearly disparate treatment and is clearly an unsuitable learning environment for them. And for that, Harvard Corporation and Harvard’s president [are] liable.”
He added, “The protests are a crystallizing moment for much of the antisemitism that’s been bubbling up on these campuses. And, to be clear, the anti-Zionism has oftentimes morphed into antisemitism. There’s this trick where people are recycling age-old antisemitic tropes and replacing the word ‘Jew’ with the word ‘Zionist.’ Yeah, we’re onto that. That’s still antisemitic. You can absolutely criticize the Israeli government. You can absolutely protest Netanyahu or any actions that you want of the Israeli government, fair game. But you can’t say all Zionists are murderers and not expect people to think that’s also antisemitic as well. There’s a different experience, I think, for Jews and for Israelis on these campuses. The Jewish students have to code their Zionism to work in progressive spaces. If you’re a Jewish student and you want to be active in LGBT issues, if you want to be active in democracy issues, you can’t also be Zionist. They have to now suppress that [part of] their identity. Israeli students are just downright harassed on campus. For them, it is — they cannot participate in most of the academic and social settings on many of these universities.”
Auchincloss further stated, “I’ve been working with my colleagues on, I believe, at least 300 million extra dollars for the Office of Civil Rights. These are a bunch of hardworking lawyers within the Department of Education, chronically under-resourced with the investigations that, unfortunately, are surging through their door right now. So, they’re going to need more attorneys and more resources to move around the country. I also want to hear and see the president and his administration not try to both-sides this issue, and instead really forcefully say, we have an antisemitism problem right now, here’s what we’re doing about antisemitism…there’s clearly a need for a specified surge in OCR investigations related to antisemitism.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
