by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

Southern California’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization, The Council on American-Islamic Relations, has decried the December 10 settlement of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights’ Title VI investigation of alleged antisemitism at Pomona College.

CAIR California Executive Director Hussam Ayloush’s December 17 letter to Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr, which is excerpted here, names several areas of disagreement and lays out the group’s suggestions for addressing its perceived shortfalls. The complete text of Ayloush’s letter to Starr is viewable at ca.cair.com, search “Pomona College.”

“CAIR agrees with—and strongly supports—the principle that all Pomona students, including Jewish and Muslim students, must be free from targeted harassment and discrimination. As indicated in the settlement, Jewish students should not be harassed, discriminated against, or blamed based on their actual or perceived shared ancestry or identity for actions taken by the State of Israel. Those protections are both appropriate and legally sound. However, the scope, framing, and implementation mechanisms of the settlement extend well beyond those legitimate protections and raise serious concerns under California law, federal civil-rights principles, and Pomona’s own commitments to free expression and academic freedom.”

CAIR asserts the settlement is overbroad and improperly conflates identity and political ideology.

“The settlement’s expansive incorporation of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, including its integration into investigative standards, training materials, FAQs, and institutional messaging, improperly conflates political ideology with protected identity,” Ayloush wrote. “By effectively treating Zionism as a proxy for national origin or shared ancestry, the settlement expands legal protections beyond their lawful scope and risks suppressing protected speech.”

“The IHRA definition has been widely criticized for its misuse in academic settings. Notably, Kenneth Stern, the definition’s original drafter, has publicly cautioned against its use as a disciplinary or speech-regulating tool on college campuses, warning that such use threatens academic freedom and free expression. The settlement adopts precisely the application Stern warned against.”

“This concern is compounded by internal contradictions within the settlement itself. For example, Section III (Training) and Section V (Programming) explicitly frame Jewish identity, Israel, and Zionism as intrinsically connected, including through required lectures and workshops on the connections between Jews, Israel, and Zionism. This framing erases the many Jews—religious and secular—who do not identify with Zionism and reinforces the harmful and inaccurate association of American Jews with the actions of a foreign nation-state and a political movement. That association is precisely what civil-rights law seeks to prevent and which the settlement purports to prevent.”

“Zionism is a political movement, not a religion, ethnicity, or nationality. It is embraced and opposed by individuals across religious, ethnic, and national lines, including non-Jewish Zionists and Jewish anti-Zionists – in fact, the majority of self-identified American Zionists are Evangelical Christians. Opposition to Zionism therefore constitutes political expression, not discrimination based on religion or ancestry. Treating criticism of Zionism as presumptively discriminatory misapplies civil-rights frameworks and impermissibly chills speech.”

“As drafted, the settlement creates substantial ambiguity regarding what speech and actions may trigger investigation or discipline. Reasonable students and faculty are left to question whether their protected activities could be deemed violations, for example:

• Would a Palestinian student describing how the political movement of Zionism resulted in the displacement of their family off their ancestral homeland and the greater diaspora of

Palestinians be a violation of the agreement?

• Would a Jewish student vocally opposing Zionism on moral, religious, or political grounds be in violation of the agreement?

• Would a faculty member publishing scholarship or commentary documenting Israeli war crimes or genocide, as recognized by international bodies and human-rights organizations be

in violation of the agreement?

• Would students advocating for lawful boycotts of companies supporting Israeli’s genocide against the Palestinian people be in violation of the agreement?”

“The settlement’s structure leaves these categories of speech vulnerable to investigation based on perceived ‘singling out’ of Israel, thereby chilling core political expression and academic inquiry.”

“In light of the foregoing, CAIR-LA requests that Pomona College:

1. Issue clarifying public statements affirming that criticism of Israel or Zionism constitutes protected speech;
2. Incorporate mandatory training on Islamophobia, anti-Muslim bias, and anti-Palestinian discrimination alongside antisemitism and the various training protocols outlined in the settlement;
3. Explicitly include Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian hate within the mandate of the Civil Rights and/or Title VI Coordinator and all related trainings and resource development; and
4. Engage CAIR-LA as a partner in developing and delivering these trainings.”

“CAIR-LA stands ready to work constructively with Pomona College to ensure compliance with civil-rights law while safeguarding free expression and academic freedom for all students and faculty. We respectfully request a meeting to discuss these issues further.”

The full text of Ayloush’s letter to Starr is viewable at ca.cair.com, search “Pomona College.”