Ingersoll Hall at Brooklyn College in Brooklyn, New York. Photo: Beyond My Ken / Wikimedia Commons

The US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) is formally investigating a complaint alleging antisemitic harassment of Jewish students at Brooklyn College, a legal advocacy group announced Thursday.

Filed in February 2021 by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the complaint said that several Jewish students enrolled in the college’s Mental Health Counseling (MCH) program were repeatedly pressured into saying that Jews are white and should thus be excluded from discussions about social justice.

“The severe and persistent harassment of Jewish students in the MHC program on the basis of their race and ethnicity has created a hostile climate,” the complaint said, thereby denying them an educational opportunity in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination at institutions receiving federal funding.

“I witnessed a Jewish student get told by the professor in front of our whole class to get her whiteness in check,” a Jewish student and witness to the events described in the complaint told The Algemeiner, speaking anonymously due to fears of retaliation. “The professor basically said, you can’t be a part of this kind of conversation because you’re white and you don’t understand oppression.”

The badgering of Jewish students, they said, became so intense that one student said in a WhatsApp group chat that she wanted to “strangle” a Jewish classmate.

“This happened after the student was told by the professor that she should get her whiteness in check,” they continued. “I stood up for her because I didn’t feel it was correct to say anyone was going to get strangled and I thought that was extreme. So, I tried to stick up for her, and because I did I was told that I’m just white privileged and should be quiet.”

The complaint alleges that when Jewish students complained to Brooklyn College administrators about the conduct of both students and of professors — some of whom distributed articles supporting the argument that Jews are white — they were told to “keep your head down.”

“I was told to accept the status quo,” the student told The Algemeiner. “I was very upset and I wanted to understand why. And what really bothered me is that I watched the administration express its support for other minority groups but then they would just leave out Jewish students that were in the program. I just felt that no one had my back.”

Another MCH student, a Jewish Hispanic woman of color, also complained to the administration and said she received a response to the effect of, “don’t think that your skin color or your not being white is going to save you in this regard. This is the narrative right now and you need to just to go with it.”

“I was shocked,” the student, also speaking anonymously, told The Algemeiner. “This is one of the directors of the program. Aren’t we taught in class to come to someone’s aid, to respect their personal experience? That was the beginning and it got way worse.”

Speaking to The Algemeiner, Brandeis Center attorney Denise Katz-Prober argued that “Jews should not be relegated to a category of white, privileged oppressors.”

“I think the problem is that the college is setting up a zero-sum game in the fight against bigotry and discrimination,” Katz-Prober said. “We can’t allow administrators to pit one group against the other and suggest that calling out discrimination against some means tolerating it against others. That’s unfair and impermissible under the law.”

“The first thing the college needs to do is acknowledge what has happened” she continued. “The administrators have known about it for some time but have not taken any steps to correct it. There also needs to be education for students and faculty administrators about the different forms of antisemitism and how the adverse racial stereotyping of Jews foments classic antisemitic tropes.”

In a statement Thursday, Katz-Prober noted further that the students’ complaint follows another filed against Stanford University in October, over the placing of Jewish faculty and staff in “segregated ‘whiteness accountability'” discussion groups, against their objections.

“Once again, in a university program for mental health professionals, Jews are told they must identify as white, are called privileged, and are accused of being oppressors,” she said. “This runs completely counter to Jewish history. It utterly ignores centuries of Jewish discrimination and murder, which we are frighteningly seeing resurface, and it promotes age-old antisemitic tropes concerning Jewish power, conspiracy and control. Training mental health professionals to oppose racism is a laudatory and important endeavor, but you can’t erase, let alone promote, antisemitism in the process.”

In a statement to The Algemeiner on Thursday, Brooklyn College spokesman Rich Pietras said the college could not comment on an active investigation but that it is “committed to working cooperatively and fully with the US Department of Education.”

“Brooklyn College unequivocally denounces antisemitism in any form and does not tolerate it on its campus,” Pietras continued. “The College appreciates the important role Jewish Americans have played in the rich history of the country, the city, and the campus. The College’s ‘We Stand Against Hate’ initiative features lectures, workshops, concerts, programs, and other events that reflect the school’s ongoing commitment to celebrate the voices that make up our diverse campus community.”