A Message to Our Resilient Jewish Community and Cherished Allies
On November 10, 2021, we submitted a Title VI complaint to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) with the confidence that the evidence we provided met all three criteria to determine a violation based on the hostile environment theory (also known as Hostile Environment Analysis) and demonstrated pervasive hostility toward the Jewish community largely due to curriculum texts as well as administration and faculty conduct and teachings. We maintain that confidence. However, OCR has created a system that protects offending universities and administrators from accountability by creating a convoluted process that allows schools to halt investigations into their conduct. The City University of New York (CUNY), Hunter College, and Silberman School of Social Work (Silberman) - and likely many other schools - have taken advantage of this option. Left unchecked, this arrangement undermines a system that is meant to ensure “equal access to education” and effectively works to perpetuate discrimination against vulnerable students who rely on OCR to act on complaints in good faith and with integrity.
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We appealed to OCR because, after over ten years of appealing to administrators, we no longer believe that Silberman, Hunter College, and CUNY leadership are committed to changing the culture of hostility toward the Jewish community. In fact, due to the lack of reasonable and adequate action on the part of school leadership, we now believe it was never their intention to honestly examine the presence of pervasive antisemitism, work to eliminate its effects, and prevent it from recurring. We are equally convinced that leadership does not even aspire to meet the most basic responsibilities of an accredited learning institution - teaching competency and ethical skills to their students and graduating those who are ready to work as professionals in the helping field.
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We provided OCR with much of the evidence in our open letter - that not only do Silberman and Hunter College have a pattern of dismissing reports of antisemitism and neglecting their responsibility as it relates to Title VI but that they are actively and knowingly teaching antisemitic ideas and modeling discriminatory behaviors towards Jewish people. OCR showed little care by responding to a decade worth of information with a single sentence and ultimately abandoning their investigation. Despite our efforts, OCR deemed it fitting to give another opportunity to a department that neglected their principal responsibility and failed to properly identify witnesses, conduct interviews and determine a hostile environment because if there is nothing to find, then there is nothing to fix.
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Now we are appealing to all of you.
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Write to Silberman and Hunter College administrators as well as CUNY senior leadership including the Chancellor and Board of Trustees. Include the open letter addressed to Dean John Rose and let them know you expect more.
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Write to OCR. Tell them that just as you expect better from school administrators, you expect better from the government-appointed body responsible for ensuring adherence to standing Civil Rights Law. Tell them you will not accept a system, in which they fail to formally declare that administrators are in violation of federal law even when - as is the case with Hunter College and Silberman - it has been determined based on their investigation that the administrators' conduct amounts to a violation. Demand that they protect students who desire equal access to education, not administrators who are willfully denying it.
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Hunter College is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) and Silberman by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). According to MSCHE, their work “ensures institutional accountability” and “assures students and the public of the educational quality.” CSWE pledges quality within the field of social work by “educating students on social work competencies necessary to enter practice” and preparing them “to practice safely, competently, and ethically with all clients, constituents, and the public” in a way that is “consistent with social work values.”
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Write to both accrediting bodies. Tell them that you are emphatically calling into question the continued accreditation of Silberman School of Social Work and Hunter College. Demand that the status of Silberman and Hunter College as accredited schools be revoked until they can prove to us that they are trustworthy gatekeepers of the educational and professional world and that their graduates, who seek to service all of our communities, are proficient in their field and ethical in their practice.
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Help us ensure the standard expected of higher education.