Palestine Legal Files Title VI Complaint Against University of Illinois Chicago for Discriminating Against Palestinian Students at Israel Study Abroad Event
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PATHWAY ON THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO CAMPUS. SOURCE: FLICKR
CONTACT: Danya Zituni, Palestine Legal | media@palestinelegal.org | (312) 547-0766
September 13, Chicago, IL – On Tuesday, Palestine Legal filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), demanding an investigation into the University of Illinois Chicago’s (UIC) discriminatory treatment of Palestinian students, including barring Palestinian students from attending a January 2023 informational session on a university sponsored Israel study abroad program and threatening legal action against them for speaking about their experiences of discrimination.
The complaint explains that UIC faculty and staff singled out and excluded students with Arab-sounding names in order to prevent them from voicing concerns about Israel’s discrimination against Palestinians, only admitting students with non-Arab sounding or ethnically ambiguous names. Partway through the information session, three Palestinian students renamed themselves and were then promptly admitted, while UIC staff excluded those who had not hidden their Palestinian identities.
Palestine Legal is representing six Palestinian UIC students who were excluded from the session and one Jewish UIC student who was censored during the session. The complaint demands that the Department of Education investigate UIC’s violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d, which protects students from discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin.
“I planned to attend the information session to voice my concerns about how a study abroad program in Israel discriminates against me as a Palestinian student,” said Jenin Alharithi, one of the seven UIC students represented by Palestine Legal. “Instead of listening to our concerns about Israel’s discrimination and racism against Palestinians, UIC staff blocked us from entering the meeting, leaving us feeling humiliated and unsafe. UIC has a responsibility to ensure all students can speak freely about our experiences of discrimination—that includes Palestinian students speaking up about how the Israeli government denies our basic rights and freedoms.”
A public records request revealed that in the run up to the study abroad informational session, UIC faculty and staff reached out to an outside consultant and discussed plans to deny admission to students who were likely to raise questions about the program’s impact on Palestinian students, after finding that two students who registered to attend had criticized the Israeli government’s human rights violations on social media. Palestinian students filed a complaint describing the discrimination and censorship they experienced, but were told by the university's Office of Access and Equity that it had found “no actionable allegations under the University Nondiscrimination Policy Statement.”
“It’s clear UIC faculty and staff intentionally discriminated against Palestinian students, censoring their speech and threatening them with legal action for exercising their First Amendment rights,” said Zoha Khalili, a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal. “There is simply no justification for UIC’s disparate treatment of Palestinian students, who had every right to voice their concerns about UIC’s Israel study abroad program. By excluding one group from educational opportunities—Palestinians—UIC’s actions plainly violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
Since 2014, Palestine Legal has responded to over 2200 incidents of suppression of Palestinian rights advocacy, many involving harassment and censorship attempts by university administrations and right-wing organizations aimed at intimidating Palestinians and their supporters into silence and inaction.
Contact us if you are interested in reporting about this investigation. For more information, see our case page, here.