Contemporary Authors

• Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2010
• The Definition of Anti-Semitism Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2015

1. The definition of anti-Semitism https://lccn.loc.gov/2014047350 Marcus, Kenneth L. The definition of anti-Semitism / Kenneth L. Marcus. New York : Oxford University Press, [2015]©2015 xi, 278 pages ; 25 cm DS145 .M237 2015 ISBN: 9780199375646 (hardback : alk. paper) 2. Jewish identity and civil rights in America https://lccn.loc.gov/2010022340 Marcus, Kenneth L. Jewish identity and civil rights in America / Kenneth L. Marcus. New York : Cambridge University Press, 2010. xi, 211 p. ; 24 cm. E184.36.E84 M37 2010 ISBN: 9780521766739 (hardback)9780521127455 (paperback)

• Brandeis Center - http://brandeiscenter.com/?/about/fullbio/kenneth_l_marcus

  Kenneth L. Marcus is President and General Counsel of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and author of The Definition of Anti-Semitism (Oxford University Press: 2015) and Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America (Cambridge University Press: 2010). Marcus founded the Brandeis Center in 2011 to combat the resurgence of anti-Semitism in American higher education. The following year, Marcus was named to the Forward 50, the Jewish Daily Forward’s listing of the “American Jews who made the most significant impact on the news in the past year.” The Forward described its 50 honorees as “the new faces of Jewish power,” predicting that “if Marcus has any say in it, we may witness a new era of Jewish advocacy.” During his public service career, Marcus served as Staff Director at the United States Commission on Civil Rights and was delegated the authority of Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights and Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. Shortly before his departure from the Civil Rights Commission, the Wall Street Journal observed that “the Commission has rarely been better managed,” and that it “deserves a medal for good governance.” Marcus also serves as Associate Editor of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism. Marcus previously held the Lillie and Nathan Ackerman Chair in Equality and Justice in America at the City University of New York’s Bernard M. Baruch College School of Public Affairs (2008-2011). Before entering public service, Mr. Marcus was a litigation partner in two major law firms, where he conducted complex commercial and constitutional litigation. He has published widely in academic journals as well as in more popular venues such as The Jerusalem Post, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and The Christian Science Monitor. Mr. Marcus is a graduate of Williams College, magna cum laude, and the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_L._Marcus

  Kenneth L. Marcus
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  Kenneth L. Marcus
  Kenneth L. Marcus is the Lillie and Nathan Ackerman Chair in Equality and Justice in America at Baruch College of the City University of New York and Founding President of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights under Law. Formerly, he was staff director at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.[1]

  Marcus was credited by the Wall Street Journal with having taken "an agency in disarray" that lacked "basic management controls," and turned it into an agency that "deserves a medal for good governance." [2]

  He was also noted for instituting a policy under which the Department of Justice's Office of Civil Rights would consider civil rights complaints from groups, like Muslims, Jews and Sikhs, that combine religious and ethnic characteristics, who can now sue for discrimination under Title VI because of their ethnic (but not religious) traits. [3][4][5]

  Contents [hide]
  1 Education
  2 Publications
  2.1 Books
  2.2 Articles
  3 References
  Education[edit]
  Kenneth L. Marcus received a Bachelor of Arts, Magna Cum Laude, from Williams College in June 1988. He was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa in June 1987. He received a Juris Doctor from University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, Boalt Hall in 1991.[6]

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• New Republic
  https://newrepublic.com/article/80071/speech-acts
  Word count: 1817

  Speech Acts
  BY NATHAN GLAZER
  December 19, 2010

  Kenneth Marcus has written what are in effect two books, one of them distinctly odd. The first book is the story of Marcus’s efforts over a number of years to have Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 reinterpreted to cover the harassment and ill–treatment of Jewish students, deemed necessary because of the widespread support, among leftist campus activists and Middle Eastern students, of the Palestinian cause. Title VI prohibits discrimination—and can lead to the withholding of federal funds—on grounds of race and national origin. But religion, which is not a permissible basis for discrimination in the other parts of the Civil Rights Act, is not included in the language of Title VI as a prohibited basis of discrimination. The reason apparently was that so many schools and institutions of higher education have religious connections and affiliations that a loophole was provided for them.

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  The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the Department of Education, a large operation that enforces Title VI, had taken the position that Jews are neither a “race” nor definable as a group on the basis of “national origin,” and thus discrimination against Jews (although not necessarily Israelis) was not covered by the Civil Rights Act. Marcus, in his role as Delegated Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights, the highest ranking official in the OCR during the first administration of President George W. Bush, was vexed by this situation. There were many reports from campuses of activist attacks on Israeli policy that skirted close to anti-Semitism. He decided that discrimination against Jews was indeed covered by the Civil Rights Act, on the basis of certain Supreme Court rulings.

  His argument is this. Jews were considered a race at the time of the post-Civil War Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which was passed to provide support for it; and since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was intended to make the previous act and amendment effective, Jews could be a race for purposes of civil rights enforcement, too. Even if this caused discomfort in our post-Hitler era, the complaints of discrimination should nonetheless be covered by OCR.

  Marcus (who now holds the Lillie and Nathan Ackerman Chair in Equality and Justice in America at Baruch College) so advised twenty thousand heads of institutions of education in a letter of guidance in 2004, which he thought established a new and clear policy for OCR. He then left the OCR to become Staff Director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. (Such appointments in the Bush presidency almost certainly meant that he is or was a Republican, or was thought to be one.) In his new role he pushed to have the Commission on Civil Rights examine the campus situation, and a CCR report in 2006 charged that that anti-Semitism had become a “serious” problem on many campuses. It “directed” OCR (can the CCR really “direct” government enforcement agencies?) “to enforce Federal civil rights” and in effect to have OCR stand by the policy letter he that had sent out in 2004. One gathers that he also was involved in informing Congressmen that OCR was not properly responding to complaints of Jewish harassment and institutional policies that do not challenge an atmosphere of discomfort for Jews.

  The oddity of Marcus’s Book #1, which seems to be the story a complicated bureaucratic struggle not at all easy to follow, is that he has not written a directly personal account, and he is somewhat coy in presenting his own role in first creating the policy, and then pushing the CCR and perhaps Congress to push the OCR, in the hands of his successors, to enforce the policy. His name does not appear in the index, but his crucial role is evident from the text and the footnotes.

  The other book in Marcus’s book, much longer, is an extended consideration, from the point of view of American and English law, and of the consciousness of Jews and non-Jews, of the question, just what are the Jews? Only a religion? A race? A group by descent, but not a race? A national group? An ethnic group? And just what is an ethnic group? Here, in Book #2, Marcus covers an enormous literature—I am astonished by how much has been written on this issue—and is very sensible in his conclusions. Jews are clearly a group, whatever the name or category in which we include them, a group with the same meaning as any that might be covered by the “race, creed, color and national origin” mantra of much civil rights legislation, and thus they are entitled to its protection.

  But now to return to Book #1 and what makes the bureaucratic struggle interesting: following on the new guidance Marcus had offered entitling Jews to the protection of the OCR, a lawyer for the Zionist Organization of America made a complaint about conditions affecting Jewish students on the campus of the University of California at Irvine. The activity there against Israeli policy in the occupied territory and on the Palestinian issue was particularly intense. Susan Tuchman, the lawyer for the ZOA, charged Irvine “with fostering a hostile environment for Jewish students in violation of the prohibition on racial and national origin discrimination … in Title VI ... Tuchman detailed that Jewish students had been physically and verbally harassed, threatened, shoved and targeted by rock throwing.” Swastikas defaced Jewish property and a Jewish holocaust memorial was vandalized. “Campus speakers were providing lectures that some Jewish students considered to be anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish, or both.” Many outrageous quotations are given. Whether these were given in classes, or on platforms provided by student or other organizations, is not clear. Irvine’s administration was, Tuchman argued, “silent and passive” in the face of these various incidents.

  The complaint was made to the San Francisco office of the OCR, whose regional director, Arthur Zeidman, was, oddity of oddities, “an adherent to the Lubavitcher school of ultra-Orthodox Judaism … [who] had just left military service.” He was also, surprisingly (or perhaps not, if one considers the Lubavitcher willingness to live among non-Jews) “insensitive to the problem of anti-Semitism.” He and his office’s top lawyer, also Jewish, were inclined to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction. They asked for guidance from Washington, where Marcus was still “on the lookout for cases of this nature.” I assume he urged them to proceed (there is no clear statement in the book that he did).

  The course of the case is difficult to follow in the book, which then moves into the larger discussion of the character of the Jewish group in law and perception and consciousness. (It can be followed more clearly in an article by Marcus that appeared in Commentary last September.) The upshot was, Marcus charges in the book, that “although OCR’s career staff determined that a hostile environment had formed at Irvine, they were overruled by political appointees within the second George W. Bush administration.” Does this suggest that Marcus was not a political appointee?

  But this is not the end of the case. In the last few pages we learn that Arthur Zeidman “has sued the OCR for employment discrimination, arguing that he was adversely treated as a Jew because of the manner in which he attempted to pursue the case.” He is supported in his charge by the (Jewish) Regional Counsel. His charge was against his superiors, Deputy Assistant Secretary David Black and Assistant Secretary Stephanie Monroe, who one presumes are not Jews, but the case is now inherited by their Obama-appointed successor, Russlynn Ali.

  Despite the full account of the case up to the time of publication, there are aspects of the situation that are left curiously unexplored. Just what was the situation at the Irvine campus? Who was sponsoring the objectionable lectures and speeches? Student organizations, university bodies, faculty? Who was paying for them? Did Jewish students who had been harassed and attacked identify those who had harassed and attacked them, and what action did the university take in response, if any? What should the OCR have done if it had accepted the conclusion of the Regional Office of OCR that there was an uncomfortable situation for Jews as a result of anti-Israeli activities on the Irvine campus? And what good would it have done if the campus administration had undertaken whatever action the OCR proposed?

  One feels the need, in sum, for much more detail. One Jewish student did write to the chancellor that she felt “scared to walk around personally as a Jewish person … terrified for anyone to find out … [felt] threatened that if students knew that I am Jewish and support a Jewish state, I would be attacked physically.” The response was to recommend the student seek professional counseling at the university’s counseling center.

  If this student’s feelings were common among Jewish students, the situation was certainly bad. But were such feelings common? Many Jewish students on campuses are not involved in the defense of Israel, and some support its critics, even its strident critics. Most students are not politically active on any campus, and the active ones have only limited effects on its atmosphere. And how hard is it to ignore whatever political activities exist, including anti-Israeli ones?

  What the OCR might have recommended or required of the Irvine administration if it had agreed that such was the situation is also not clear. In some similar situations affecting black students—a denigrating picture on their door, or harassing e-mails in their computers—the heads of the affected institutions have issued strong denunciations of such actions, and held campus-wide meetings to condemn them. Should Irvine have been required to do something of the sort? Then we might have had Book # 3: if one finds such a situation, what is the institution to do? There is no question that Marcus has nailed the case, certainly to my satisfaction, that Jews are covered under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. What is more doubtful was whether what was happening at Irvine and at other campuses was discrimination against Jews, if simply and directly understood, and what should or could have been done about it.

  Nathan Glazer is professor emeritus of sociology at Harvard University. His most recent book, on modernist architecture, is From a Cause to a Style.

• HNet
  https://networks.h-net.org/node/2645/discussions/118356/book-review-definition-anti-semitism-kenneth-l-marcus-reviewed
  Word count: 14

  Review is a PDF and cannot be copied.
  Justice, winter, 2015-2016

• Middle East Forum
  http://www.meforum.org/3011/jewish-identity-and-civil-rights-in-america
  Word count: 1719

  Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America

  Reviewed by Asaf Romirowsky
  Jewish Political Studies Review
  Spring 2011

  by Kenneth L. Marcus
  Cambridge University Press, 2010, 225 pp.

  Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America

  by Kenneth L. Marcus
  Cambridge University Press, 2010, 225 pp.

  Reviewed by Asaf Romirowsky
  Jewish Political Studies Review
  Spring 2011
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  Why has the position of Jews at American universities deteriorated in the past decade and what can be done about it? Understanding the history of this dilemma requires going back a number of years. In 2003 the social commentator Stanley Kurtz testified before the House Subcommittee on Select Education. The hearing was convened to examine charges of bias in international studies programs funded under Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965, including the academic study of the Middle East and other areas of the world. Kurtz, in conjunction with other critics such as the Middle East scholars Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer, highlighted the bias existing in Title VI-funded Middle East centers.

  This bias correlated with the influence of the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said. Said was a leading figure in the creation of the ruling intellectual paradigm in academic area studies (especially Middle East studies), which is called postcolonial theory. In that context, Said equated academics who support American foreign policy with the nineteenth-century European intellectuals who allegedly propped up racist colonial empires. A core premise of postcolonial theory is that it is immoral for a scholar to put his knowledge of foreign languages and cultures at the service of American power. Said's major work, Orientalism, blamed all of the troubles of the Middle East on the West, stemming from a "trifecta of evils" - imperialism, racism, and Zionism. While Orientalism often ignored evidence that ran counter to its thesis, it is still the canonical text in the field of Middle Eastern studies.

  Martin Kramer in his book, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, details the pervasive influence of Said's postcolonial theory on the discipline of Middle East studies throughout North America. These ideas, which became institutionalized over the past decades, form the backdrop to the treatment of Jews and Israel on American campuses.

  Harassment: A Problem of Definition

  During the first term of President George W. Bush, Kenneth Marcus served as delegated assistant secretary of education for civil rights in the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR). In Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America, he details his efforts in that capacity to have Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 apply to the ill-treatment of Jewish students. Marcus was responding to the fostering by pro-Palestinian groups of a new wave of anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish and pro-Israeli students on American campuses. Title VI prohibits discrimination on grounds of race and national origin, and proven examples of discrimination can lead to the withholding of federal funds from educational institutions.

  There was, however, a loophole. Religion was not included as a permissible basis for alleging discrimination in the other parts of the Civil Rights Act and was omitted from the provisions of Title VI as a prohibited basis of discrimination. Moreover, the drafters of this legislation still are reluctant to protect Jewish students because Judaism is deemed only a religion rather than an ethnic group, and Congress has not authorized probes of religious bias. Furthermore, the OCR does not want to be seen as singling out American Jews as a separate "race" or "nation." Marcus, however, argues that the increase in anti-Israelism among North American campuses has reached the level of anti-Semitism and that discrimination against Jews is indeed covered by the Civil Rights Act.

  This new situation has demonstrated the need for a clear and inclusive definition of anti-Semitism and an answer to the question of whether anti-Israelism constitutes anti-Semitism. The apparent dilemma has been that anti-Israelism itself is not blatantly or even necessarily anti-Semitic but rather may appear merely critical of "Zionist policies," thus distinguishing between Jews and Zionists. This well-worn distinction has enabled the anti-Israeli camp to pose as critics who are in good faith. What has actually emerged, in effect, is a new form of anti-Semitism, because the state of Israel acts as a proxy for Jews at large. To the extent that it becomes harder to make a case for Israel on campus and in the Jewish community in general, the environment has become increasingly hostile to the pro-Israeli community.

  John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy presents an additional challenge as it focuses on the U.S.-Israeli partnership. The authors contend that there is no sound justification for America's support for Israel, to which they refer as a "strategic burden." They argue further that the pro-Israeli camp has "hijacked" U.S. foreign policy to the detriment of America's interests. Mearsheimer and Walt actually claim that AIPAC's pressure bought about the war in Iraq.

  Marcus also underscores the fact that an integral part of anti-Israelism is the adaptation of Holocaust rhetoric to the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic, by equating the Palestinian Nakba ("catastrophe") with the Holocaust. This has engendered statements that, for example, Israelis are doing to Palestinians what was done to Jews during World War II and that the security fence is Israel's method of "ghettoizing" the Palestinians. Such abusive rhetoric poses yet another hurdle for the pro-Israeli community, which has to counter demands to recognize a nonexistent Palestinian "Holocaust." This task becomes increasingly difficult as the media consistently promotes the Palestinian grievance.

  The fact is that, despite the recent resurgence of anti-Semitic incidents on American college campuses, the OCR has been incapable of protecting Jewish students. This fiasco has resulted from a problem of definition. Because it lacks a working understanding of either Jewish identity or anti-Jewish hatred, the OCR has been unable to address the problem of anti-Jewish harassment.

  The late Gary A. Tobin, who coauthored The UnCivil University, wrote that

  while anti-Israelism, in itself, encourages anti-Semitic sentiment, it also invites participation by traditional anti-Semites who tailor their bigotry to focus on Israel in order to be acceptable on campus. The use of offensive imagery, such as the swastika to portray Jews, the rejection of opinion based on ethnicity, and demonization to the point where physical threats seem justified, is not part of civil discourse and legitimate critique. They are attempts to intimidate, alienate and silence Jews and others who support Israel.[1]

  It is also worth noting that the U.S. State Department considered the European Monitoring Centre for Racism and Xenophobia's (EUMC) definition of anti-Semitism to be a good working definition for the current environment. The EUMC stated "anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities."

  Proactive Steps Needed

  For the purpose of Marcus's case, the use of the word manifestations was key to illustrating that anti-Israeli incidents do fall under the rubric defined by Title VI. Although much work still needs to be done, there is no doubt that Marcus's campaign struck a significant chord that consequently allowed groups such as the Zionist Organization of America to file a complaint against the University of California, Irvine (UCI), on grounds of anti-Semitic harassment. These allegations are now being probed by the U.S. Department of Education.

  Furthermore, Marcus's work enabled the California district attorney's office to press criminal charges against a group of Muslim students for infringing the freedom of speech of Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren at UCI. During an address there in February last year, Oren was repeatedly interrupted by this group of Muslim students. Instead of waiting to express their dissent during the scheduled question-and-answer session, they took turns standing up and shouting epithets at Oren such as "mass murderer" and "war criminal." As a result, Oren's ability to make his points was significantly impaired.

  Consequently, Orange County's district attorney Tony Rackauckas has filed misdemeanor charges against the students - known as the Irvine 11 - accusing them of an "organized attempt to squelch the speaker." He also said the students "meant to stop this speech and stop anyone else from hearing [Oren's] ideas, and they did so by disrupting a lawful meeting."[2]

  It is, however, quite indicative of the academy's attitude of impunity that whatever is said in a classroom, academic or not, is deemed protected by "academic freedom." Only sexual harassment appears exempt from this blanket protection. Gradually the entire American campus has become an "academic freedom" zone where protests and other activities now qualify as academic "speech." The freedom to critique is, predictably, directed mostly at the two Satans: Israel and America, while efforts to curtail speech that academics find uncongenial have long taken the form of "speech codes" and restrictions on "hate speech." Clearly, the exercise of academic freedom is a one-way street; only those having the correct opinions may claim it.

  Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America presents clear evidence of the lack of balance in academia, where so-called scholarship consistently fails to examine, much less condemn, terrorism or jihadism. Such an atmosphere enables intolerable ideas to become accepted as the norm. This situation must be challenged by all those concerned about the health of academia, as well as the continued well-being of Israel. It is to be hoped that Marcus's efforts will prove effective and that this book will serve as a wakeup call for the Jewish community at large and encourage proactive steps on these critical issues.

  Asaf Romirowsky is a Philadelphia-based Middle East analyst, a lecturer in history at Pennsylvania State University, and an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Forum.

  * * *

  Notes

  [1] Gary A. Tobin, Aryeh K.Weinberg, and Jenna Ferer, The Uncivil University (San Francisco: Institute for Jewish and Community Research, 2005), 4.

  [2] "Free speech, too, for Israel's advocates," editorial, Jerusalem Post, 10 March 2011.

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