Through a public records request, WOSU has found more details on a complaint that sparked an ongoing U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights investigation into whether The Ohio State University failed to respond to anti-Semitic acts on campus.
The Office for Civil Rights looks into discrimination involving shared ancestry and complaints under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The agency opened the investigation into Ohio State on Jan. 16.
A complaint claims OSU’s Students for Justice in Palestine, or SJP, was designated as a hate group, but the university allowed the group to march on campus “calling for Jewish genocide and annihilation of the Jewish people during the school day.”
The complaint also refers to a Nov. 29 Students for Justice in Palestine protest, where students were allegedly allowed to lay in the student union and "pretend they were dead Palestinians."
The complaint alleges that faculty were allowed to teach “one-sided hate rhetoric aimed at riling up students and instilling hate against Jews on campus” during the fall semester.
It goes on to mention that two Jewish students were assaulted near campus, sending one to a hospital, in early November, and that OSU Hillel, a Jewish student organization, was vandalized.
“We are told these groups are allowed to express free speech. These groups are not expressing free speech. They are expressing hate speech, which are fighting words,” the complaint stated. It ultimately asks the university to ban SJP and stop faculty from expressing political views.
The identity of the person who filed the complaint was redacted in documents from the U.S. Department of Education. The complainant indicated that she or he did not try to resolve the issue with Ohio State before going to the Office of Civil Rights.
SJP is a national student political group. A statement from Big Ten SJP on the OSU chapter’s social media reads, “We reject racism and bigotry in all forms, and as such, we reject the misappropriation of anti-Semitism as a weapon to silence pro-Palestinian voices.”
At a Feb. 8 protest in the Ohio Union for National Student Day of Action, SJP asked the university to recognize attacks against students opposed to the war. Photos from The Lantern, Ohio State's student newspaper, show students carrying banners reading "Open Letter to Our University" and "OSU has blood on its hands."
OSU spokesman Ben Johnson said in a statement, “Ohio State has never – and will never – tolerate discrimination or harassment of anyone based on their religious beliefs, nationality, or identity. The university supports the right of our students, faculty, and staff to peacefully express their views and to speak out about issues that are important to them.”
A letter from the U.S. Department of Education to Ohio State President Ted Carter stresses that the opening of an investigation does not mean the Office of Civil Rights has made a decision about the complaint.
The letter asked Carter to provide a copy of the university’s notice of nondiscrimination, the names of university staff assigned to investigate incidents of discrimination and documentation of any formal complaints concerning alleged harassment or discrimination.
