A US federal judge recently found that the Trump administration was within its rights to demand that the University of Pennsylvania turn over information about Jews on campus as part of a federal investigation into discrimination at the school.
For background, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (E.E.O.C.) has been pursuing an inquiry into potential workplace discrimination against Jewish faculty and staff at Penn, an Ivy League school in Philadelphia, since 2023.
While university officials said they welcomed the investigation, they balked last year after the government issued a subpoena seeking, among other records, names and phone numbers of employees who were members of Jewish groups on campus as well as Jewish students enrolled at the school.
The university and Jewish groups on campus warned that the demands could chill religious life at Penn, discouraging membership in various groups. Many on campus drew parallels between the government’s approach and methods deployed in Nazi Germany. In addition, the university claimed that they do not have a record of the religious preferences of students as it is illegal in the US to request such data.
The concern is understandable, and Jewish history clearly would not be in support of creating a register of Jews, regardless of the supposed altruistic intent of the request.
Concerns for Jewish communities
I recall that 45 years ago, when I was still living in Chicago, there was a Jewish community in the far south suburbs of the city looking for a way to connect the few thousand Jews spread out across a relatively wide area of suburbia. The community leadership decided to publish a directory of Jews to make it easier to reach people and connect with them.
The specific details no longer seem available, but my recollection is that there was a rabbi of one congregation in the area who vehemently opposed the idea. He was a Holocaust survivor and put out a clear statement saying that it is forbidden to make lists of Jews so as not to make it easy for potential oppressors to find them.
I should note here that it is also generally accepted practice not to count Jews as well. When determining if there is a quorum of 10 for prayers, for example, usually a sentence with 10 words would be recited with each word assigned to an attendee. If one reached the end of the sentence, it would be clear that 10 were present. Sometimes the count was by the number, but not directly, such as not one, not two, not three, etc.
Clearly the rabbi was reacting to his European experience, which he wanted to make sure would not be repeated in America. To that end, he saw creating a listing of Jews with their contact information, for whatever purpose, as something that could ultimately be used against the community. His objections were sufficiently weighty, resulting in the project being abandoned and the directory not published.
Protecting Jewish employees and students
In the Penn case, the university responded to the judge’s ruling saying it would appeal the decision and that it was “committed to confronting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination.”
“While we acknowledge the important role of the E.E.O.C. to investigate discrimination, we also have an obligation to protect the rights of our employees and students,” the university said. “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.”
Federal Judge Gerald Pappert wrote in his 32-page opinion: “Though ineptly worded, the request had an understandable purpose – to obtain in a narrowly tailored way, as opposed to seeking information on all university employees, information on individuals in Penn’s Jewish community who could have experienced or witnessed antisemitism in the workplace.”
Of course, it would be unreasonable to expect a judge who graduated from Villanova University as well as a law degree from the University of Notre Dame to have any strong visceral sensitivity about the Jewish experience in Europe from the Middle Ages through the Holocaust. Nevertheless, the gut reaction of Jews who are asked to be tallied and inventoried is certainly understandable.
Such feelings run deep and can surface at the strangest time. US comedienne Judy Gold tells the story that from time to time she has become close with some non-Jewish friends. She relates that when she mentions this to her mother, a typical Jewish New York mother, one question immediately comes to her mother’s lips: “You say she is your friend? Would she hide you if ‘they’ came for you?” The Holocaust reference never being far under the surface.
It is a shame that 80 years after the end of World War II, the battle for equality for Jews in America still has to be fought on a regular basis. Imagine if there was a request of any university by the federal government to provide a list of African-American staff, faculty, or students? The response would be earth-shattering, yet when it comes to the Jews, the guardrails disintegrate.
Judge Pappert may have ruled correctly on the legal issue, but oftentimes the emotional issue is strong enough to encourage a softening of legal interpretation. Too bad he was not able to do so in this case and that the defendants were not sufficiently persuasive.
The writer, a 42-year resident of Jerusalem, is a former national president of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, a past chairperson of the board of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, and a board member of the Israel-America Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM).