The Trump administration announced on Thursday it would nominate Kenneth L. Marcus, founder and president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, to be assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education. The announcement follows months of vacancies in key positions across the administration, including in the department.
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The Trump administration announced on Thursday it would nominate Kenneth L. Marcus, founder and president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, to be assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education. The announcement follows months of vacancies in key positions across the administration, including in the department.
Kenneth L. Marcus, founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, has been nominated as assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education.Courtesy of Baruch College
Mr. Marcus, who is also a visiting professor of equality and justice at Baruch College of the City University of New York, served under President George W. Bush as acting assistant secretary for civil rights, leading the Office for Civil Rights, or OCR. Since leaving the department, Mr. Marcus has been an outspoken critic of anti-Semitism on campuses. He previously served as director of the Initiative on Anti-Semitism at the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, in San Francisco.
Over the past year, more white supremacists have been recruiting on college campuses — often with postings that include racist caricatures of Jewish, black, and Hispanic students. And in August, supporters of white dominance marched with torches at the University of Virginia and chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”
“The fact is that very, very few incidents of anti-Semitism in American higher education are exclusively religious,” Mr. Marcus said in a 2010 interview with The Chronicle. “They almost always have some ethnic or ancestral component to them.”
The Education Department at the time signaled that it would ramp up efforts to protect Jewish students under Title VI, the federal law preventing colleges from discriminating against students based on national origin or ethnicity. Mr. Marcus said then that he hoped the department would consider as anti-Semitic any criticisms of Israel if they were based on anti-Jewish stereotypes. The European Union’s advisory agency on human rights and freedoms has already adopted that definition.
“The key question,” Mr. Marcus said, “is whether OCR will take its own policy seriously and enforce Title VI except in those rare instances where someone faces purely theological bias.”
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In 2013, Mr. Marcus criticized the department for reaching the so-called Montana Agreement, which he argued was an overreach because it could violate individuals’ First Amendment rights in compelling colleges and universities to police sexual harassment. (Read more about that agreement.)
In the first nine months of the Trump administration, the Office for Civil Rights has focused on Title IX and sexual assault on campuses. Candice E. Jackson, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, has led the office during that time, amid calls for her removal by Senate Democrats. If Mr. Marcus is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Ms. Jackson will continue to serve in the department as deputy assistant secretary for strategic operations and outreach.
Adam Harris, a staff writer at The Atlantic, was previously a reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education and covered federal education policy and historically Black colleges and universities. He also worked at ProPublica.
