These offices ‘do not promote the pursuit of truth, nor do they teach students how to engage in civil discourse,’ one expert said
The University of Pennsylvania will establish a new office devoted to “religious inclusion” following anti-Israel protests that rocked the campus. The office is set to open this fall.
In a news release, Interim Penn President Larry Jameson announced the establishment of the “Office of Religious and Ethnic Inclusion” to address the rise in religious discrimination on campus following the Oct. 7 terror attacks against Israel.
Jameson stated that “the office will be the sole, University-wide point of contact for receiving and responding to reports of alleged violations of our policies against religious and ethnic discrimination, and will be designed to ensure that investigations happen swiftly and thoroughly.”
However, some experts are raising concerns about the potential impact on free speech.
Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Jonathan Butcher told The College Fix in an email statement that Penn’s new office is “very similar to a bias response team.”
“These BRTs on college campuses chill speech, and schools such as the University of Michigan removed their BRT after being challenged in court,” Butcher stated.
“DEI offices support BRTs and even provide oversight in some cases,” he stated.
He also told The Fix that these offices “do not promote the pursuit of truth, nor do they teach students how to engage in civil discourse.”
“Schools do not have a responsibility to protect students from ideas with which they disagree. UPenn will cripple students emotionally and intellectually by bullying individuals into not discussing sensitive political or religious issues,” he stated.
In contrast, Julie Paris, Mid-Atlantic Regional Director of StandWithUs, an international nonprofit focused on Israel education, told The College Fix in an email that the creation of the department as “a step in the right direction.”
She hopes the center will help the school combat bias and discrimination.
Paris also said her organization “would welcome the opportunity to work with the leadership of this office” to make Penn a place where “open dialogue and debate” and “factual accuracy” are valued in classrooms.
The university should enforce policies and laws “swiftly and even-handedly” to prevent a hostile, antisemitic environment from continuing to “fester” on campus, she stated.
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However, not all pro-Jewish activists are on board with the new office.
“@penn thinks meaningless committees and task forces can stop the pervasive radicalism taking hold on campus,” Penn graduate and columnist Eyal Yakoby wrote in a post on X.
“If Penn were serious about stopping antisemitism, they’d start by firing faculty,” he wrote.
Yakoby is involved in a lawsuit against Penn, claiming the university has not sufficiently protected Jewish students from harassment and discrimination.
The College Fix reached out to Penn via email in the last week for comment on the new office, but the school did not respond.
“Over the past year, our campus and our country witnessed a disquieting surge in antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of religious and ethnic intolerance,” Jameson stated. “This type of prejudice is simply unacceptable, and has no place at Penn.”
Majid Alsayegh, chair of the board at the Dialogue Institute and member of the national Muslim Jewish Advisory Council, will lead the office alongside Steve Ginsburg, a national expert on bias and extremism, as the school searches for permanent leadership.
“Under the leadership of Ginsburg and Alsayegh, the Office of Religious and Ethnic Inclusion (Title VI) will work to ensure that Penn takes all reasonable steps to prevent and respond to antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of hate, and in so doing maintain an environment that is welcoming and not hostile to any individual or group based on shared ancestry, ethnicity or religion,” Jameson stated.
The new office was inspired by the university’s 2023 Action Plan to Combat Antisemitism and the May 2024 reports of the University Task Force on Antisemitism, according to the news release.
Jameson stated that the office “is essential to ensuring that Penn can continue to offer its students, faculty and staff the most welcoming, supportive and safe environment possible.”
Penn is no stranger to the national spotlight on the issue of antisemitism.
In May, police swept anti-Israel encampments at the school, leading to 33 arrests, including nine students. Individuals involved in the protests, including faculty, attempted to obstruct police vehicles transporting arrested protesters, as previously reported by The Fix.
Earlier in the spring, protesters shut down a Penn board of trustees meeting, demanding the university divest from Israel. Some waved their hands—painted red to symbolize blood—while chanting, “Endowment transparency now, divest from genocide.”
In addition, the university’s “Center for Africana Studies” presented its MLK Jr. Social Justice Award to Professor Dorothy Roberts in January. Just months earlier, Roberts had signed a letter accusing Israel of “genocide.”
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