Drexel faulted in U.S. Department of Education investigation into its handling of antisemitism

Drexel University has entered into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to improve its handling of antisemitism complaints, though the office found no evidence of antisemitism in the case that sparked the probe or problems with the university’s handling of that one case.

The department, which launched an investigation into Drexel in December amid a flurry of new investigations at colleges nationwide following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, did, however, find that the university “generally failed to fulfill its obligations to assess whether the incidents of shared ancestry discrimination and harassment reported to it created a hostile environment.”

And when the university did review matters, “it misapplied the legal standard,” the department found.

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Drexel under the agreement has promised to reassess its handling of complaints previously reported, provide training for faculty, staff and students and conduct an assessment of the campus for its attitudes on shared ancestry, among other remedies.

Some other colleges, including Lafayette in Easton, have also entered into consent agreements. Cases remain open at Rutgers, Princeton, Lehigh, Swarthmore, Muhlenberg and Temple.

“Drexel has voluntarily agreed to continue its ongoing and proactive efforts both to prevent discrimination and harassment and to clarify and strengthen our policies and procedures for responding to all complaints of discrimination and harassment,” Drexel president John A. Fry said in a message to the campus Friday. “That applies to antisemitic and anti-Muslim behavior, as well as to all unlawful discrimination and conduct on or off campus that creates a hostile environment for any member of our community based on race, color, or national origin.”

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He said Drexel already had taken steps to address concerns cited by the civil rights office.

“We hope this resolution ensures the university complies with Title VI protections for its Jewish students and the entire student body,” said the American Jewish Committee in a statement.

The investigation was launched in response to a complaint over the arson of a door on a suite at the Race Street Residence Hall last Oct. 10. The complainant alleged that the university discriminated against students on the basis of shared Jewish ancestry by failing to respond to the incident.

The university told the Office of Civil Rights it found no evidence of a hate crime, according to the report, though one of the four students who had been living in the suite was Jewish and had ties to Israel. While it was initially reported that the door had Jewish decorations on it, they were actually Halloween-related, the university told the department.

The civil rights office agreed that the incident “did not involve antisemitic discrimination” or any evidence that the university failed to follow proper procedure investigating it, the report said.

Fry in his campus message said the complaint had been filed by the Defense of Freedom Institute, an organization that is not affiliated with Drexel.

But the civil rights office also reviewed 35 other alleged harassment incidents on the basis of shared Jewish ancestry reported to Drexel from October 2022 through January 2024 and cited concerns with Drexel’s handling of some of them.

“In several cases, the university simply offered supportive resources and outreach to the reporting student, without any assessment or determination regarding whether the underlying conduct created or contributed to a hostile environment,” the department said.

In one incident, offensive comments, including jokes about Hitler and Nazis, were made in a group chat.

The university ruled that the remarks “did not meet the threshold for a policy violation because only one individual was presented as a potential complainant and the content reported did not relate to any particular individual.

“However, harassing conduct need not always be targeted at a particular person in order to create a hostile environment for a student or group of students,” the report said.

Another case reported in October still hadn’t been resolved as of July 18, the department said. It also noted a “repeated notice of a growing, pervasive hostile environment” at Drexel over the past 18 months.

“And yet, in response to almost all of the incidents reported to it, the university’s actions were limited to addressing each incident on an individual basis, instead of responding to the accumulation of evidence of a hostile environment that necessitated more effective responsive action,” the department said.

“F— the Jews” with a swastika was written in a women’s bathroom at a university academic building on Oct. 13, six days after Hamas’ attack, the report said. On Nov. 13, several students reported the mezuzahs on their dormitory door were removed. On April 2, a group of masked individuals removed several letters on the brick marquee backdrop of the Raymond G. Perelman Center for Jewish Life.

Others included: A student who drew a swastika on a whiteboard during a student brainstorming session; a Jewish student who said she no longer felt safe in the learning environment after hearing classmates say: “Jews are stupid. They have no right to be upset about what is happening in [Israel/Palestine];” another student reported that at an off-campus house party, someone did a Nazi salute with his hand several times and then repeated the N-word at least 10 times.

In another incident, parents complained to Fry that a professor had encouraged her students to attend a pro-Palestinian demonstration and ended class early so they could. The university offered to meet with the parents and provide support and held a conversation with the professor, then closed the matter. A student also had complained about that same professor that she “made comments throughout the quarter that were racist, ableist, homophobic and antisemitic, as well as one that condoned sexual harassment,” according to the report, which did not name the professor. Following another conversation with administrators, that professor agreed to enroll in the Drexel Institute for Inclusive and Equitable Teaching.

The office gave a nod to Drexel’s “proactive responsiveness” in some incidents. In the fall, Drexel launched educational programming to combat antisemitism and in March, it commissioned an external review of its policies and procedures related to nondiscrimination, free speech and campus activism. The university in May sent police in to remove a pro-Palestinian encampment, though protesters already had begun to leave on their own.

But the office said that none of the new training materials created after Oct. 7 “explicitly address national origin discrimination and harassment, including shared ancestry discrimination and harassment, responsive to the incidents reported to the university that prompted the generation of these new materials.”

Since March, however, there has been antisemitism training for staff, the department was told.