This is what MLFA’s Civil Litigation Department head Christina Jump had to say about the revamp. • Harvard’s “FAQ” updates attempt to sidestep the administration’s need to update its full policies.
These FAQ guidance paragraphs fail to acknowledge a single instance where the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights did find failures on Harvard’s part toward its Palestinian, Muslim, Arab and allied students—both in its insufficient actions, and its insufficient existing policies. Yet it has yet to change those policies.
- Most telling, the agreement Harvard signed with the Office for Civil Rights requires an anonymous way for Harvard students to submit complaints of discrimination – but the FAQs try to slyly sidestep that requirement by creating a mechanism only to anonymously submit a “report” and not a complaint – then go on to explain that “reports” don’t require action on the part of Harvard unless administration decides to act.
- Harvard administration hopes no one will read these very closely, or notice that Harvard has yet to update a single word in its deficient policies.
- Until Harvard administrators give equal press to the findings of the Office for Civil Rights of where the University failed its students as it gave to its voluntary settlement of antisemitism lawsuits, via its sole own press release, it cannot claim it now behaves equally. The omission of equal press releases alone shows that to be untrue.
