Campus Protest Investigations Hang Over Schools as New Academic Year Begins

With a new academic year well underway, more than 60 colleges and universities are still under federal investigation over antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents during the campus protests that swept the United States after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, according to the Department of Education. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has opened inquiries into dozens of schools over the past year, checking for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on ethnicity or race. Documents released by the department show that around 80 percent of the Oct. 7-related investigations it undertook stemmed from complaints about antisemitism, and that many of those complaints came to the department through conservative and pro-Jewish legal advocacy groups, including several founded by high-ranking former Education Department officials.