Jewish identity and civil rights in America

"What does it mean to be Jewish? This ancient question has become a pressing civil rights controversy. Despite a recent resurgence of anti-Semitic incidents on American college campuses, the U.S. Department of Education's powerful Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has been unable to protect Jewish students. This failure has been a problem not of execution but of conceptualization. The OCR has been unable to address anti-Jewish harassment because it lacks a coherent conception of either Jewish identity or anti-Jewish hatred. Given jurisdiction over race and national origin but not religion, federal agents have had to determine whether Jewish Americans constitute a race or national origin group. They have been unable to do so. This has led to enforcement paralysis, as well as explosive internal confrontations and recriminations within the federal government. This book examines the legal and policy issues behind the ambiguity involved with civil rights protections for Jewish students. Written by a former senior government official, this book reveals the extent of this problem and presents a workable legal solution. "--Provided by publisher. ; The conspicuous rise of antisemitic incidents, including anti-Jewish violence, on U.S. campuses in the 2000s has highlighted the fact that those bodies entitled to enforce the law fail to defend Jews against hate speech and other hostile acts because the notions of Jewishness and antisemitism are unsatisfactorily defined. Thus, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights does not protect Jewish students from hostile acts, because Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, criminalizing racism, does not regard Jews as a racial group. Similarly, both the OCR and the administration of the Irvine campus of the University of California dismiss complaints made by Jewish students concerning cases of antisemitism on the pretext that these are not antisemitic acts, but rather acts of political protest against the State of Israel. Marcus, a former Staff Director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, describes his activities, aiming to find a solution to this problem. Describes many anti-Jewish incidents that have taken place on campuses, and reflects on the phenomenon of the new antisemitism. The new antisemitic discourse resorts to "anti-Zionist" rhetoric; its no less characteristic feature is "antisemitism denial" (on some campuses, it is even dangerous to speak about antisemitism), a practice which silences victims of anti-Jewish acts and in fact harms their Jewish identities. Reflects on some measures aimed at "re-racializing" Jews from the viewpoint of the law in the USA, and thus to protect them legally from antisemitism. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)