The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) today announced that Johns Hopkins University in Maryland has entered into a resolution agreement to ensure compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI) when responding to allegations of harassment based on shared ancestry.
OCR’s investigation confirmed many important steps taken by the university to fulfill its Title VI obligations with respect to shared ancestry. Significantly, the university has comprehensive policies addressing its Title VI obligations to the campus community, and the university engaged in proactive outreach to support an inclusive educational environment since Oct. 7, 2023. Nonetheless, OCR identified a Title VI compliance concern that, although the university received 99 complaints of harassment based on shared ancestry from October 2023 through May 2024, the records generally do not reflect university consideration of whether these and other incidents individually and cumulatively created a hostile environment for students.
For example, the university received multiple reports that university professors directed stereotyped slurs toward Arab and Palestinian people, including in a communication one professor sent directly to his students following Oct. 7, 2023, stating, “Those brutal Arabs will, God willing, pay a price like never before.” In another report, a student was asked to remove his keffiyeh while working on campus because it could be interpreted as a “political statement.”
Similarly, university records are replete with reports that Jewish students and university community members were subjected to stereotypes directed at them regarding their shared ancestry, including a characterization of Jewish Zionists as “ugly” Halloween monsters; reports of Sidechat comments about a reductive stereotype about Jewish noses; and that, for example, someone at a campus protest held a sign depicting a swastika with the threat, “Go Hamas, from the river to the sea, finish the job.” The university records produced to date do not reflect that the university assessed whether these incidents created or contributed to a hostile environment such that they impacted students’ access to equal education.
OCR also identified a concern that the university either did not employ the correct legal standard in assessing whether incidents created or contributed to a hostile environment or was inconsistent in its application of the appropriate legal standard. For example, in one reported incident, a student posted numerous derogatory remarks on social media regarding Israel, including comments making light of the Hamas attacks. The university closed the complaint because there was no direct threat, which is not an element of the hostile environment analysis under Title VI.
By contrast, however, in several incidents where students and/or staff were directly targeted, the university took no action. For example, in one incident, students posted and reposted derogatory information regarding staff and students who attended or were invited to attend a trip to Israel. In another, a post of a Jewish student attending the March for Israel was circulated with comments about the student’s appearance. In these reports, students and/or staff were directly targeted, but the university nonetheless closed the complaints on the ground that it could not identify the respondent or because the reporting party did not respond to outreach, even though it had sufficient information to identify the respondents in each.
To resolve the concerns OCR identified, the university agreed to:
- Provide annual training to all employees and staff responsible for investigating complaints and other reports of discrimination, including harassment, based on shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.
- Provide training to all staff and students addressing discrimination based on race, color and national origin, including harassment based on shared ancestry and ethnic characteristics.
- Develop and administer a climate assessment for students and staff in the university to evaluate the climate with respect to shared ancestry and report the results to OCR, subject to OCR approval of further necessary actions to ensure a safe environment for students.
- Review the university’s response to each report of discrimination and/or harassment on the basis of shared ancestry received by the university on or after October 7, 2023, through the end of the 2023-2024 school year. And,
- Provide OCR with the university’s response to all complaints of discrimination, including harassment, on the basis of shared ancestry, for the 2024-2025 school year.
“Johns Hopkins has agreed to take important steps necessary to ensure it adequately addresses discrimination reported to it on the basis of shared ancestry and that all its students are able to learn in an environment free of harassment,” said Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine E. Lhamon.
The resolution letter and resolution agreement are available on the Office for Civil Rights website.