Jewish students at Rutgers are accusing the Biden administration of cutting what they see as a sweetheart deal with the university that lets it off the hook for allowing a continuing culture of anti-Semitism.
The settlement, announced by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights on Jan. 2, requires Rutgers to take a series of actions to combat discrimination on campus after 400 reports of hate incidents on campus were filed between July 2023 and June 2024. nearly three-quarters of which alleged discrimination and harassment against Jews or Israelis.
In one such incident, a student wrote an inflammatory post on social media encouraging violence against an Israeli attending the university with information on how to find them. In another report, a Jewish student’s dorm room was found to have been vandalized with a Swastika painted outside their dorm and their mezuzah broken. Members of a Jewish fraternity claimed they were threatened because of their faith in another report.
As part of the settlement, Rutgers has agreed to issue a statement to students and employees saying discrimination is not tolerated on campus and to review previous reports of discrimination to determine whether further action needs to be taken in order to comply with Title IX.
However, many students at Rutgers feel the agreement falls far short of what is needed to protect them from the relentless onslaught of anti-Semitism unleashed on campus since Oct. 7.
Camilla Vaynberg, Vice President of Rutgers Students for Israel, tells Fox News Digital that the measures agreed to by Rutgers are unlikely to stem the tide of anti-Semitism on campus and may not even end up being implemented after current president Jonathan Holloway open the steps. down.
“I personally think the university is being let off the hook, it’s a promise we had before.” Weinberg said.
“Will they reach agreements between [Holloway] and his faculty and Department of Education remain the same, no matter who takes his place?”
“Much of what Rutgers agreed to involves ‘statements’ and ‘revisions,’ but they’ve been stating and revising things left and right since October 7th, and yet the rate of anti-Semitic incidents at Rutgers continues to rise,” Ben Stern, 20 years old. A sophomore at the school majoring in Political Science told Fox News Digital.
“The DOE sat on over 400 discrimination reports in one year, and on the way out the door signed another toothless agreement that does literally nothing to protect anyone. It is official; this administration has completely failed the American Jewish community,” said National Jewish Advocacy Center director Mark Goldfeder.
“I think this solution is a long way from what needs to happen to address the issues of anti-Semitism at Rutgers,” Stern lamented.
Some critics claim the agreement was an attempt by the Biden administration to prevent the incoming Trump administration from taking much more punitive action against the university.
“It’s shameful that in the final days of the Biden-Harris administration, universities, including Rutgers, are being left out…” House Education Workforce Committee Chairman Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) said in a statement on Thursday.
Trump vowed that his administration would strip colleges of federal accreditation and support unless they stop teaching “anti-Semitic propaganda” at the Anti-Semitism Conference in Washington DC in September.
“The Biden administration has proven once again that it does not give a damn about anti-Semitism in America. It is no coincidence that [they] issued these long-awaited decisions just 2 weeks before leaving office,” said former Rutgers Hillel Director Andrew Getraer.
“It’s a poor deal,” Rutgers junior Joe Gindi told Fox News Digital.
“I am extremely disappointed in the Biden administration for terminating this agreement with Rutgers. This agreement is far from ending the hatred in our state university,” said Gindi.
Jewish students have sounded the alarm about continued anti-Semitism at the university in the year since Hamas launched its genocidal attacks on October 7, in which the terror group killed more than 1,200 and kidnapped hundreds more.
LGBTQ Orthodox Jewish student Rivka Schafer sued the school after their face appeared on an anti-Israel flyer plastered outside their dorm.
“The message to Schafer and other Jewish students was clear: ‘Don’t support Israel, we know where you sleep,'” their complaint said.
New Jersey attorney Rajeh A. Saadeh, a fellow at Rutgers University’s Center on Security, Race and Rights, routinely shared sickening videos of Hamas terrorists killing IDF soldiers on his Instagram, calling it declared it “hunting season” in the caption, New York Post. reported.
Rutgers, the Biden White House and the Department of Education did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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