\n<\/p>\n
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the University of Pennsylvania to hand over records about Jewish employees on campus to a federal agency as part of an investigation into antisemitic discrimination but said it did not have to reveal any employee\u2019s affiliation with a specific group.<\/p>\n
US district judge Gerald Pappert said employees can refuse to take part in the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) investigation but the agency \u201cneeds the opportunity to talk to them directly to learn if they have evidence of discrimination\u201d.<\/p>\n
He mostly upheld a subpoena but said Penn does not have to disclose any worker\u2019s affiliation with a Jewish-related organization nor must it provide information about three Jewish-affiliated groups.<\/p>\n
A university spokesperson said in an emailed response that the school was committed to confronting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination and had \u201ctaken multiple steps to prevent and address these despicable events\u201d. Penn plans to appeal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we acknowledge the important role of the EEOC to investigate discrimination, we also have an obligation to protect the rights of our employees. We continue to believe that requiring Penn to create lists of Jewish faculty and staff, and to provide personal contact information, raises serious privacy and First Amendment concerns. The University does not maintain employee lists by religion,\u201d the university\u2019s statement read.<\/p>\n
It is not unusual for federal investigators looking into employment discrimination to request identities of employees of a particular religion, to facilitate outreach to people who may have been victims, according to a former federal official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation.<\/p>\n
Pappert wrote that the university and others who joined the litigation \u201csignificantly raised the dispute\u2019s temperature by impliedly and even expressly comparing the EEOC\u2019s efforts to protect Jewish employees from antisemitism to the Holocaust and the Nazis\u2019 compilation of \u2018lists of Jews\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n
The judge called that \u201cunfortunate and inappropriate\u201d.<\/p>\n
Pappert wrote that Penn and the others who opposed the subpoena were primarily concerned about linking employees to Jewish groups, saying: \u201cThe EEOC no longer seeks any employee\u2019s specific affiliation with a particular Jewish-related organization on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation was prompted in part by a series of incidents, including that someone had shouted antisemitic obscenities and destroyed property at a Jewish student life center, a Nazi swastika was painted on an academic building and \u201chateful graffiti\u201d was left outside a fraternity.<\/p>\n
The investigation has also focused on actions related to protests over the war in Gaza, and Penn\u2019s response to that and other incidents.<\/p>\n
The EEOC claimed in a November filing that Penn\u2019s \u201cworkplace is replete with antisemitism\u201d, and it told the judge that investigators think \u201cidentification of those who have witnessed and\/or been subjected to the environment is essential for determining whether the work environment was both objectively and subjectively hostile\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the University of Pennsylvania to hand over records about Jewish employees on campus to a federal agency as part of an investigation into antisemitic discrimination but said it did not have to reveal any employee\u2019s affiliation with a specific group. US district judge Gerald Pappert said employees can refuse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[2239,319,5437,675,1861,957,4205,10196,489,781],"class_list":{"0":"post-47717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-agency","9":"tag-federal","10":"tag-jews","11":"tag-judge","12":"tag-list","13":"tag-orders","14":"tag-pennsylvania","15":"tag-provide","16":"tag-universities","17":"tag-university"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}