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The U.S. Department of Education launched an investigation into Brooklyn College over claims of severe anti-Semitic harassment of students by professors and fellow students.
"Fighting bigotry should not be a competition between minority groups; it’s not a zero-sum game," Denise Katz-Prober, director of legal initiatives at the Brandeis Center, told the Jewish News Syndicate. "Yet, 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. This runs completely counter to Jewish history."
The Brandeis Center submitted the complaint on behalf of Jewish students in the school’s Mental Health Counseling master’s program, JNS reported. The Department of Education’s Civil Rights Office is conducting the investigation.
"We can confirm that the Office for Civil Rights has opened an investigation at Brooklyn College. But, as a policy, OCR does not discuss the details of its ongoing cases," an Education Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital on Thursday.
Brooklyn College campus. (iStock/U.S. Department of Education)
Examples of harassment against Jewish students include an instance where a person in a WhatsApp student group chat allegedly said they wanted to strangle a Jewish student and received supportive messages from other students. A person attempted to defend the victim, but was told by the person who made the threat that Jewish people are "part of the dominant culture" of "white people" who "continue to perpetuate power structures."
"By advancing the racist and ethnic stereotype that all Jews are ‘white’ and ‘privileged’—and therefore oppress people of color—faculty members, students and course assignments in the [Mental Health Counseling] program invoke the classical anti-Semitic trope that Jews possess disproportionate power and influence in society, which they use for nefarious purposes against non-Jews, while also subjecting them to racial stereotypes about ‘whites,’" the complaint states.
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The complaint also alleged that a Jewish student tried to tell an administrator that they shouldn’t have to identify as white, but the administrator shut the person down saying the matter wasn’t up for debate.
"I’m a Hispanic person of color. And yet even I was told by faculty and administrators in the program that because I am Jewish, I enjoy the privileges of whiteness and that my skin color would not save me. My identity as a Jewish person of color was invalidated and erased in this program," a student, who wished to remain anonymous, told JNS. "I was then vilified and harassed for an identity that was imposed on me by others—that of a privileged white oppressor of people of color."
Brooklyn College said in a statement to Fox News that it "unequivocally denounces antisemitism in any form and does not tolerate it on its campus."
"While the College cannot comment on ongoing investigations, it is committed to working cooperatively and fully with the U.S. Department of Education. The College appreciates the important role Jewish Americans have played in the rich history of the country, the city, and the campus."
The school is one of 11 senior colleges a part of The City University of New York system.
New York, USA - September 7, 2015: A hybrid NYPD patrol car on street, evidencing an increase in use of vehicles that make use of alternative fuels with the aim to help curb pollution in Manhattan. (iStock)
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Hate crimes in New York City rose by nearly 100% in 2021, according to NYPD data. Reports of anti-Semitic attacks accounted for 38% of the crimes, while anti-Asian crimes accounted for 25% of the hate crimes reported.
