Newark, NJ | www.adc.org | April 23, 2024 – The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations today filed a Title VI complaint against Rutgers University for its pattern and practice of anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim bigotry at the Newark law school and New Brunswick undergraduate campuses, especially since October 2023.
The complaint also alleges a lack of appropriate urgency from Rutgers University administrators concerning Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students’ physical safety and overall well-being on university campuses.
“Despite being placed on notice repeatedly, [Rutgers] University has failed to respond or take any steps to protect its students, denying them an education free from harassment and discrimination, a right enshrined under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” the complaint says. “Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims have become defacto second-class students on their own campuses by denying them the benefits they are entitled to through the University. Rutgers must engage in proactive assertions of protection, not reactive remedies.”
ADC Staff Attorney Chris Godshall-Bennett said, “College campuses should be a place where students feel free to be themselves and express their identities. Their power and voice should be protected and uplifted, and university administrators have a duty to ensure that the campus environment fosters that strength.
Instead, Rutgers University has allowed a patently hostile and unsafe climate to relegate its Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students to second-class status, denying them their right to an education free of harassment and discrimination. We expect the Department of Education to take these claims seriously and fully investigate this pattern and practice of discrimination.”
CAIR-NJ Executive Director Selaedin Maksut said, “That college campuses across the country have become an increasingly hostile environment to Muslim and Palestinian students and their allies – especially in the wake of Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza – is no secret.
University administrations have effectively enabled this climate of hostility and unsafe environment when they repeatedly refused to act and respond with appropriate urgency to Muslim and Palestinian students’ concerns.
We call on the Department of Education to thoroughly investigate students’ claims and to uphold and protect their civil rights as they pertain to the Civil Rights Act especially.”