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Millions in cuts to federal funding. Letters from the highest education official in the country expressing disappointment. Enforcement directives to immediately address a “backlog” of antisemitism complaints.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has taken sudden and unprecedented actions in the past month highlighting its desire to protect Jewish students from discrimination. At the same time, no such imperative has been evident in investigations into or statements on Islamophobia on school or campus grounds.
“This administration appears to be focused solely on responses to antisemitic incidents on campus,” said Jackie Gharapour Wernz, an education civil rights attorney who worked at OCR under the Obama and the first Trump administrations. “But schools need to be focused on both.”
‘Lip service’ to protecting all as Muslim students are targeted
The same civil rights law that protects Jewish students from antisemitism — Title VI of the Civil Rights Act — also protects Muslim students from Islamophobia.
Under the Biden administration, and especially in light of the Israel-Hamas war protests after Oct. 7, 2023, the Education Department repeatedly expressed to schools that they must protect Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian and Israeli students equally.
“Jewish students, Israeli students, Muslim students, Arab students, Palestinian students, and all other students who reside within our school communities have the right to learn in our nation’s schools free from discrimination,” Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights for the Education Department under the Biden administration, warned in a Dear Colleague letter in November 2023.
The Biden administration issued the letter amid what it called an “alarming rise” in both antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents at schools.
Conversely, the Trump Education Department has made at least five announcements related to ending antisemitism in schools — none of which also expressed protections for students of Muslim, Arab or Palestinian backgrounds.
“They are centering Jewish students or others who are experiencing antisemitic behaviors, and they’re very clearly going after Palestinian and or Muslim students, as in the example at Columbia [University],” said Brett Sokolow, a Title VI and Title IX education civil rights expert who often works with school district administrators seeking to comply with federal regulations. “So while there’s some lip service to protecting all, I think the [Title VI] enforcement tool is going to be used primarily to the benefit of those who are experiencing antisemitism.”
Last week, the Trump administration cut $400 million in funding to Columbia University over what it called “inaction” in harassment of Jewish students, and warned of more cancellations to follow. Referring to anti-Israel protests that erupted on campuses over the Israel-Hamas war, the Education Department said “any college or university that allows illegal protests and repeatedly fails to protect students from anti-Semitic harassment on campus will be subject to the loss of federal funding.”
“This is only the beginning,” said Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights and head of the federal Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, in a joint March 7 statement with the Education Department.
Just a few days later, Trump vehemently supported Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s arrest of prominent Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, saying the move was the first of “many to come.” Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States and recent Columbia graduate, helped lead campus protests opposing the war in Gaza.
Addressing a ‘backlog’ of antisemitism complaints
Israel-Hamas war protests erupted on higher education and K-12 campuses under the Biden administration.
As part of its broader effort to crack down on Title VI after Oct. 7, 2023, the Education Department’s OCR opened civil rights investigations into complaints of both Islamophobia and antisemitism. Its caseload had gotten so unwieldy that Lhamon and then-Education Secretary Miguel Cardona pleaded at the time with Congress for more funding to support investigative staff and address the high number of complaints.
In one high-profile example in 2023, the department opened an investigation into New York City Public Schools, the nation’s largest school system, for allegedly failing to protect students from a hostile environment resulting from both antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Toward the tail end of Biden’s presidency, the administration had begun resolving the influx of Title VI complaints raised after the latest Israel-Hamas war.
But the Trump administration, in a March 7 statement, has referred to this OCR’s Title VI caseload as a “backlog of Biden Administration-era complaints alleging antisemitism” and said the resolution agreements under Biden were “toothless” and continue to provide “little to no remedy for Jewish students.”
While curtailing awareness around Islamophobia and Muslim students’ protections, the new administration has also reopened Title VI investigations into many of the same institutions that had already reached settlement agreements over alleged antisemitism with OCR under Biden, said Harold Jordan, nationwide education equity coordinator at the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania who has often worked with OCR.
However, quantifying the Education Department’s efforts to resolve both Islamophobia and antisemitism cases under the Trump administration is difficult. Although the administration has been publicly lighting a fire under schools for their handling of alleged antisemitism incidents, it has not updated its website to reflect any pending civil rights investigations since Jan. 14, 2025 — the Tuesday before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. Prior to the inauguration, OCR updated its pending and settled investigations every Tuesday for the sake of public transparency.
“The Office for Civil Rights should not be picking and choosing whose rights are important,” said Lhamon, who cracked down on Title VI violations following Oct. 7 while at OCR. “So you know, it’s very disturbing to me to hear only about some kinds of harm in the press releases and the public announcements of the department now.”
The Education Department did not respond to K-12 Dive’s multiple requests for comment on whether it intends to protect Muslim students and students from Muslim-majority countries as it is protecting Jewish and Israeli students, or on the status of complaints involving alleged Islamophobia especially in light of increased incidents following Oct. 7.
Backdrop of rising Islamophobia
As the Trump administration is seemingly sidelining Muslim and Arab students, incidents of Islamophobia on school grounds rise.
In 2024, education discrimination was among the most common types of complaints filed with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights advocacy organization, according to the group’s annual report released March 11. That’s in addition to complaints of bullying of Muslim students, the CAIR report said.
CAIR is expecting Muslim students’ Title VI civil rights complaints to only increase under the current administration and is urging the Trump administration to oppose both antisemitism and Islamophobia, along with all forms of bigotry.
The ACLU agrees. “We want every allegation of discrimination that falls within the purview of that department — you know, race, gender, national origin, etc. — to be taken seriously,” said Jordan.
“That includes students who have complained that they are being mistreated because they are Muslim. And that does not appear to be happening in the current administration at this moment.”
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Naaz Modan
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