Penn is creating an office of religious and ethnic inclusion, following concerns about antisemitism on campus

The University of Pennsylvania on Thursday announced it will create an office of religious and ethnic inclusion, following concerns about antisemitism that roiled the Ivy League campus last year.

Penn touted the office, expected to open this fall, as the first of its kind nationally and said it came in response to a recommendation from the school’s 2023 action plan to combat antisemitism, as well as task force and presidential commission reports last May on antisemitism and countering hate.

The office, the university said, will help the school meet its obligations under law and its own policies to protect students, faculty, and staff from discrimination based on religious, ethnic, shared ancestry, or national origin. It also will serve as a hub for training related to those issues.

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It comes following an academic year of turmoil over Penn’s handling of complaints about antisemitism on campus that included the December resignation of former Penn president Liz Magill and former board chair Scott L. Bok, and the formation of a pro-Palestinian encampment in May that eventually was disbanded by Penn and city police.

“During the past year, our campus and our country witnessed a disquieting surge in antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of religious and ethnic intolerance,” interim president J. Larry Jameson said in a statement. “This type of prejudice is simply unacceptable and has no place at Penn.”

The new office, he said, will “confront this deeply troubling trend and ... serve as a stand-alone center for education and complaint resolution. It represents an institutional commitment to address both the short-term and long-term recommendations that we have received.”

The office will be the sole place for receiving and responding to complaints of alleged religious and ethnic discrimination across Penn’s 12 schools, the university said.

Penn, like many other schools since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, was the subject last year of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights into antisemitism allegations. The office told The Inquirer in January that it dropped the investigation because a complaint was filed by two Penn students in federal court with the same allegations as the complaint that was filed with the department.

“The relief sought is the same as would be obtained if OCR were to find a violation regarding the allegation(s),” a department spokesperson said at that time.

The students in their suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, claimed that Penn had become “an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment and discrimination.”

Tensions began to flare at the Philadelphia university a year ago over the Palestine Writes Literature Festival that was held on Penn’s campus and included speakers that critics said had a history of making antisemitic remarks. Problems accelerated after the Israel-Hamas war began, and it was Magill’s testimony before a congressional committee probing the handling of antisemitism on college campuses that prompted a bipartisan backlash and led to her resignation.

Penn intends to search for a leader for the new office, but has appointed two co-leaders in the interim: Steve Ginsburg, an attorney who for a decade was an executive at the Anti-Defamation League, and Majid Alsayegh, a native of Iraq who came to the United States in 1975 and founded Alta Management, LLC, which has worked on criminal justice reform. Alsayegh also serves on the national Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council.