The federal government announced on Wednesday that it opened an investigation into alleged civil rights violations at Haverford College related to the college’s failure to adequately respond to incidents of discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students.
A press release from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights states that the school has been the subject of numerous “credible” complaints that arose after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on Israel and subsequent anti-Israel protests on campus.
The DOE reported that Jewish students were targeted by bullying and harassment without an institutional response.
The release says that “senior leadership at Haverford allegedly told Jewish students that they should be ‘brave’ in the face of anti-Semitic harassment, and not expect to be ‘safe,’ and even blamed ‘the wind’ for the vandalism and removal of hostage posters and posters advertising Jewish life events,” which they later admitted was due to antisemitic acts during a congressional hearing.
A spokesperson for the school told Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, “We have received a copy of the OCR complaint and are reviewing.”
This comes after Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), who serves on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, sent a letter to Wendy Raymond, the president of Haverford College, in July asking for more information on how the college, located a little more than a dozen miles northwest of Philadelphia, is handling increased antisemitism on its campus.
Haverford responded to the letter, but that response is not publicly available.
In May, Raymond testified to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce about antisemitism on college campuses. In the letter, Walberg said that “among other things, despite repeated requests, you failed to share any data, even in the aggregate, on faculty and student disciplinary actions taken in response to antisemitic incidents on your campus.”
At that hearing, Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R-Pa.), who represents Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District, told Raymond that the federal government’s willingness to fund Haverford College “may be in jeopardy, because if you will not provide transparency and accountability like your other colleagues here, it calls into question your actions on your campus.”
Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in the release that it is a priority of the office to protect Jewish students on campus.
“Like many other institutions of higher education, Haverford College is alleged to have ignored anti-Semitic harassment on its campus, contravening federal civil rights law and its own anti-discrimination policies,” he said. “The Trump Administration will not allow Jewish life to be pushed into the shadows because college leaders are too craven to respond appropriately to unlawful anti-Semitic incidents on campus.”
In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism.” The investigation by the Office for Civil Rights is focused on alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which states that colleges that receive federal funding must maintain a safe learning environment for all.
The Deborah Project, a group that defends the civil rights of Jews experiencing antisemitism on campus, filed the complaint on behalf of a group called “Jews at Haverford.”
