The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) today announced that Temple University has entered into a resolution agreement to ensure its compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI) when responding to allegations of harassment based on shared ancestry.
During the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 academic years, the university received at least 50 reports of shared ancestry discrimination and harassment, including incidents of antisemitic, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian conduct. The conduct reported included incidents at on-campus protests, vandalism and graffiti, and posts on social media. For example, the university received reports that a Jewish professor experienced harassment based on his shared ancestry, that an Israeli student’s art was vandalized because she is Israeli, and that a university professor called Muslim students “terrorists.”
OCR’s investigation found that the university has consistently taken proactive and responsive steps to address instances of harassment based on shared ancestry that affected the university community and to support an inclusive and nondiscriminatory campus environment. The university’s harassment and discrimination policies offer robust processes for addressing reports of discrimination and harassment. In many instances when reports were made, the university took steps to offer the reporting party supportive measures, and university leadership issued statements to the university community reaffirming its commitment to free speech, as well as to maintaining a campus that is free from harassment and discrimination.
In addition, beginning in the spring of 2022, the university established a Blue Ribbon Commission on Antisemitism and University Responses to address what it deemed a pattern of rising antisemitism in American society and on college campuses nationwide, and in December 2022, it hired a Special Advisor on Antisemitism to assist the university with addressing reports of antisemitism, discrimination or harassment based on shared Jewish ancestry.
Despite these efforts by the university, however, OCR identified Title VI compliance concerns because the university’s actions did not consistently include taking steps to assess whether incidents of which it had notice individually or cumulatively created a hostile environment for students, faculty, or staff and did not take steps reasonably calculated to end the hostile environment as required by Title VI. OCR also identified concerns with the university’s handling of these reports because they were addressed in isolation by multiple campus departments and offices with little to no information sharing among them. This in turn resulted in an apparent failure to assess whether the incidents cumulatively created a hostile environment for university students, faculty, and staff.
The university entered into a resolution agreement with OCR in order to resolve the concerns OCR identified regarding the university’s response to alleged harassing conduct based on shared ancestry. Under the resolution agreement, the university agreed to:
- Review the university’s response to complaints and reports of shared ancestry discrimination during the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 academic years, and take remedial actions, if required.
- Provide OCR with information regarding any complaints alleging discrimination, including harassment, on the basis of shared ancestry during the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 school years, and address OCR’s feedback, if any.
- Develop and administer a climate assessment for students and staff to evaluate the climate with respect to shared ancestry and the extent to which students and/or staff are subjected to, or witness discrimination, including harassment, based on race, color, and/or national origin. The university will also analyze the results of the climate survey and create an action plan, subject to OCR approval, in response to its climate survey.
- Provide training to all employees and staff responsible for investigating complaints and other reports of discrimination, including harassment, based on shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics. And,
- Conduct annual training on discrimination based on race, color, and national origin, including harassment based on shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics, for all faculty, staff, and students.
“Today’s resolution with Temple University is designed to improve university practices to ensure full compliance with federal civil rights protections against discrimination,” said Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine E. Lhamon. “OCR looks forward to working with Temple throughout its implementation of the resolution agreement to ensure Temple students, faculty, and staff are able to learn and work in an environment free from harassment and discrimination.”
The letter of resolution and the resolution agreement are available on OCR’s website.