May 7 (UPI) — The White House announced on Tuesday that it will take additional steps to tackle anti-Semitism.
The Education Department’s Civil Rights Office issued new guidance to school districts and colleges on examples of anti-Semitism and other forms of hate and what could lead to an investigation by the department.
In November, the Education Department announced 51 colleges and school districts, were being investigated for discrimination based on shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics, including five complaints alleging anti-Semitic harassment and two that alleged anti-Muslim harassment.
The Department of Homeland Security will create an online campus safety resource guide to provide a range of financial, educational and technical assistance. DHS will also develop best practices for community-based violence and terrorism prevention to reduce assaults and attacks.
The State Department’s Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat anti-Semitism will bring together tech firms to identify best practices to address anti-Semitic content on the Internet, along with symbols and themes associated with violent extremism.
The White House said it was taking the action because of the rise of anti-Semitic violence on campuses across the country and the world. It said those incidents have played out on college campuses in the United States at times.
“Today’s new actions build on the work of the president’s National Strategy to Counter anti-Semitism, the first-ever such strategy, which was released one year ago this month,” the White House said. “The strategy represents the most comprehensive and ambitious U.S. government effort to counter anti-Semitism in American history.
The announcement comes on Holocaust Remembrance Day and President Joe Biden will deliver the keynote address at a commemoration hosted by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum at 11:30 a.m.
The White House cited “an alarming rise of anti-Semitic incidents across the country and throughout the world” including most recently “instances of violence and hate during some protests at college campuses” throughout the United States.
Biden last week weighed in on the protests, organized largely to call on institutions to divest funding from Israel due to its war in Gaza and the impact on Palestinians.
During an address from the White House, that came amid scores of arrests on campuses as university officials aimed to dismantle encampments set up by protesters, Biden said that students had the right to demonstrate as long as those acts remain peaceful and stressed that violence during protests are not protected.
The president added that the National Guard should not be used in response to the campus protests and that the protests had not impacted his stance on policies regarding the Gaza war or general tensions in the region.
