State Dept. anti-semitism office closes 7/1/2017

MagentaYenta

Sun, Jun 25 2017, 4:25 pm

'...Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Congress in testimony earlier this month that he believed special envoys were counterproductive because they provided an excuse to the rest of the department to ignore the specific issue addressed by the envoy.'...

Well we will see how well that works out.

http://www.jta.org/2017/06/22/.....uly-1

WhatFor

Sun, Jun 25 2017, 6:18 pm

Fox wrote:

Maybe lobby to move the office over to the Department of Education, where the need seems to be more pressing:
Brand Israel Group Study

Yup. Anti semitism is certainly prevalent in the US. Makes one wonder why this office is closing... Not.

Fox

Sun, Jun 25 2017, 6:24 pm

WhatFor wrote:

Yup. Anti semitism is certainly prevalent in the US. Makes one wonder why this office is closing... Not.

Please. Enough with the sarcasm. I don't know if closing this office is a good or bad idea -- I'm not even able to entirely figure out what they do or are supposed to do.

Under any circumstances, the State Department doesn't have much power over what happens on college campuses -- the primary source of anti-Semitism in the U.S. right now. The Department of Education, on the other hand, has a lot of power. Enormous power, in fact. I would be much more in favor of tackling anti-Semitism through the Department of Ed.

marina

Sun, Jun 25 2017, 6:39 pm

Fox wrote:

The DoE can only address discrimination based on nationality or ethnic origin. Title VI. They do not investigate based on religion, so when you file an OCR complaint you have to be VERY careful how you word it so it is not dismissed.

Religion is just not a part of what they enforce- they enforce ADA, title VI, title iX. Religion is part of title IV I think which is under DoJ.

I have personally had these discussions with OCR investigators. Anyone who files a complaint cannot stress religion. Only shared nationality or ethnic origin.

marina

Sun, Jun 25 2017, 6:44 pm

Also, FYI, OCR has been given new directives from the Trump administration relating to stopping investigations of many systemic problems. Some dealing with race and others dealing with s-xual assault on campuses. I was told this personally last week by an investigator on one of our cases and it is also in the news.

So I dk what systemic investigations they will be doing in the future or how this will affect allegations of university anti semitism.

Yay Trump.

Fox

Sun, Jun 25 2017, 6:52 pm

marina wrote:

Interesting -- I thought they tackled anti-Semitism in particular under the "ancestral characteristics" definition of the OCR. Well, that explains a great deal about what's going on.

I guess we should be thankful DoJ has no office combatting anti-Semitism. Given their history, the office would be in basement, right next door to the X-Files folks.

marina

Sun, Jun 25 2017, 6:55 pm

Fox wrote:

So ancestral characteristics is a recent term (maybe 4-5 years?) that is supposed to try and bring anti-semitism under the Title VI umbrella of nationality, race, ethnic origin.

So if you are discriminated against because you are Israeli or have a big nose or dark skin, that is a claim OCR will investigate. If you are discriminated against because of your faith, I.e. your religious beliefs, they have no jurisdiction.

Fox

Sun, Jun 25 2017, 7:02 pm

marina wrote:

It depends on what kinds of "systemic problems" they're investigating. If they were sent to investigate problems that don't really exist, then, yeah, "Yay Trump." If they are being called off investigating legitimate problems, then, "Boo Trump."

But if the status quo is that the OCR is barely allowed to investigate anti-Semitism unless it can somehow be dressed up as an "ethnic" problem, it doesn't sound like there will be any change at all.

Fox

Sun, Jun 25 2017, 7:09 pm

marina wrote:

https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/religion.html

This one was a real eye-opener, especially the PDF about possible Title VI infractions. As you say, anything explicitly connected to religion is kicked over to our friends in the DoJ.

So now I'm curious: what's the history on this that ended up with religion being excluded? One assumption might be as a way of protecting religious-based schools, but completely excluding religion from OCR purview seems an odd way to go about it . . .

marina

Sun, Jun 25 2017, 10:55 pm

Fox wrote:

The section of the law addressing religion ( Title IV of the 1964 civil rights act) and the one addressing race, national origin, ethnicity are completely separate sections ( Title VI of the 1964 civil rights act).

I do not know the history of why one agency was tasked with enforcing one section but not the other, but if I had to guess, the Department of Ed was given race bc that was the issue back then in 1964 - segregation in schools. But I really dk.