On February 16, 2024, StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice (SCLJ ) filed a Title VI federal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, detailing how Middlebury College showed deliberate indifference to its Jewish students’ complaints of a hostile, antisemitic campus environment. In the days since, the College has posted and reposted variations of a lengthy response on its website. Astonishingly, in these posts, Middlebury conceded many of the allegations in SCLJ’s Title VI complaint. Read more below.
Read our Title VI Middlebury press release HERE and complaint HERE . Take action HERE . See more info about this Middlebury Title VI campaign HERE .
Middlebury College Tries to Cover Up its Disturbing Response to Antisemitism Charges in StandWithUs’ Title VI Filing
(Middlebury, Vermont — February 21, 2024) On February 16, 2024, StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice (SCLJ ) filed a Title VI federal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, detailing how Middlebury College showed deliberate indifference to its Jewish students’ complaints of a hostile, antisemitic campus environment. Later that day, the College posted a lengthy response on its website titled, “How Middlebury is Handling the Tensions Surrounding the Israel/Gaza War.” Astonishingly, in that post, Middlebury conceded many of the allegations in SCLJ’s Title VI complaint.
Three days later, on February 19, 2024, Middlebury stealth-deleted portions of its response in an apparent attempt to cover up some of its more incriminating admissions. Later that day, Middlebury deleted the webpage entirely. Then, on February 20, 2024, Middlebury reposted an even more sanitized version as, “Middlebury’s Educational Approaches to the War in Israel and Gaza.” SCLJ has screenshotted all versions. Admissions in Middlebury’s posts include:
However, Middlebury forgot to stealth-edit those brief remarks before asserting this claim. Unfortunately for Middlebury, they are still available online and make no mention either of Hamas or a pledge of support. Rather, they condemned the “ deeply painful, destructive, and unacceptable violence we have seen in Israel and Gaza,” blurring all distinction between Hamas’ barbaric atrocities on October 7 and the Jewish state’s military response to those atrocities.
Middlebury tried to hide this inequity by changing its descriptions of its involvement in both vigils to mirror each other in its latest post. Its February 20, 2024, description of its involvement with the Jewish Unity Vigil elides Middlebury’s efforts to prevent the Jewish vigil and removes any specific mention of Chabad, stating that “Student Affairs, Public Safety, and the Events offices worked with Jewish organizations to support a vigil for Jewish unity in October.”
“Even the updated version of Middlebury’s response to SCLJ’s allegations of antisemitism was mendacious. It is no wonder that by the morning of February 20, 2024, Middlebury took its statement down from its website entirely and replaced it with an even more misleading post,” said Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs. “Middlebury can no longer hide from its legal and moral duty to provide a campus environment for its Jewish students free from discrimination and harassment.”
Read our Title VI Middlebury press release HERE and complaint HERE . Take action HERE .
About the StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice
The StandWithUs Center For Legal Justice (SCLJ) is a tax-exempt membership organization that partners with StandWithUs, a nonprofit education organization dedicated to supporting Israel and combating antisemitism. Comprised of students, professors, and community members, SCLJ enhances StandWithUs’ mission through impact litigation and other legal actions. www.swulegaljustice.org .
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