The Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education opened a Title VI Shared Ancestry investigation into Brown on Jan. 9, according to the OCR’s website. The investigation follows a complaint filed by Zachary Marschall, editor-in-chief of conservative campus news site Campus Reform, which alleged the University discriminated against its students. Marschall has no affiliation with the University.
Brown joins a list of dozens of universities currently under investigation by the OCR for alleged discrimination on the basis of shared ancestry under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. A spokesperson for the Department of Education declined to comment further on the specifics of the investigation in an email to The Herald.
Marschall and his spokesperson Christine Goss did not share a copy of the complaint upon multiple requests by The Herald. Instead, Marshall’s spokesperson said he “aggregated news stories, which report the specific problems on the campus” in the complaint.
A list of news articles aggregated by the complaint and provided by Goss includes coverage of on-campus groups’ responses to the start of the Israel-Palestine war on Oct. 7, both at Brown and at universities across the country.
According to University Spokesperson Brian Clark, the University was notified of the investigation in a letter from the OCR on Jan. 9 and received no communication from Marschall.
“The letter characterizes the investigation as fact-finding, requests information from Brown and states clearly that ‘opening the complaint for investigation in no way implies that OCR has made a determination on the merits of the complaint,’” Clark wrote in an email to The Herald, quoting the OCR letter.
“We remain resolved in our cross-campus efforts to ensure a community where … no instance of antisemitism, Islamophobia or bias based on religious, cultural or ethnic differences is tolerated,” Clark wrote. “We will provide additional details directly in our response to OCR.”
In a statement to The Herald, Marschall wrote he was “encouraged” by the Department of Education’s decision to investigate Brown’s alleged failure to protect Jewish students under Title VI.
Anisha Kumar is a section editor covering University Hall. She is a sophomore from Menlo Park, California concentrating in English and Political Science who loves speed-crosswording and rewatching sitcoms.
