Eastern Washington University, Whitman College deny allowing antisemitic activity

Two Eastern Washington colleges were threatened on March 10 with potential enforcement actions by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights over alleged antisemitic discrimination and harassment.

Both Eastern Washington University and Walla Walla-based Whitman College condemned antisemitism and stressed their institution’s commitments to providing environments free of discrimination, in written statements to The Spokesman-Review.

Two EWU professors who helped moderate panels in 2023 and 2024 on the Israel-Gaza war, which reignited this week after Israel broke a January ceasefire agreement, expressed “bewilderment” at the federal government’s targeting of their institution.

In all, 60 institutions of higher education received letters from the Office of Civil Rights on March 10 regarding accusations of antisemitism on their campuses. In Washington, the University of Washington’s Seattle campus and Pacific Lutheran University also received letters.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to initiate the dismantling of the Department of Education. It’s not immediately clear what effect this action will have on the ongoing investigations.

Though the investigations into Whitman and Eastern Washington were publicized earlier this month by the Trump administration, both cases were initiated prior to this year.

The March 10 letter to Whitman College did not specify any incidents, said Gina Zandy Ohnstad, the college’s vice president for communications. The college was notified in  December 2023 that the Office of Civil Rights was investigating a complaint that the college had allegedly “failed to respond to incidents of harassment on campus based on national origin (shared Jewish ancestry),” according to the December 2023 letter. 

“Since that time Whitman has cooperated fully with the investigation, but has not yet been informed of its outcome,” Zandy Ohnstad wrote, relating to the 2023 allegation.

When the investigation was first reported more than a year ago, Whitman officials said they were not aware of the specific allegations or incidents referenced in the complaint. On Wednesday, Ohnstad declined to divulge that information, saying it would “not be appropriate to comment on ongoing investigations.”

Eastern Washington University provided The Spokesman-Review with both the specific incidents in question and the letters it received from the Office of Civil Rights, including a letter dated March 12, 2024, initially notifying the college of the investigation and the significantly more pointed March 10 letter.

“The previous administration failed to meet the moment,” the March 10 letter stated, adding the Department of Education was “conducting a comprehensive inventory of existing complaints alleging antisemitic harassment and violence.”

“Rather than direct the United States Department of Education’s (Department) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to investigate the institutions that tolerated this contemptible antisemitic harassment and violence, the prior administration remained tepid, either reaching toothless resolution agreements with schools or allowing complaints to accumulate,” wrote Craig Trainor, Department of Education acting assistant secretary for civil rights. “That state of affairs ended on January 20, 2025.”

Specifically, the investigation into Eastern Washington University points not to campus protests, but to two college-sanctioned panels on the Israel-Gaza conflict. On Oct. 19, 2023, just weeks after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel, a panel was held titled “The Bloodletting in Gaza: A Discussion on the Perspectives of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the Role the US has Assumed.”

A second panel was held on Feb. 26, 2024, titled, “The Massacre in Gaza: Security or Genocide?”

Majid Sharifi, a political science professor and the school’s director of international affairs, and Sean Taudin Chabot, sociology professor, were moderators for both discussions. In a joint interview with The Spokesman-Review, they expressed confusion that the panels had been pointed to as evidence of antisemitism on campus.

“I have to say this statement vigorously, strongly, with the most, I don’t know, strongest word I can find: none of these panels were antisemitic,” Sharifi said.

He added that the “environment was very hot” at the February panel, but that the moderators worked to cool down tensions.

“There were only, unfortunately, three of the attendants who were Jewish, and they were Zionist, and they didn’t like the content of the presentation, and when one of them actually went to the idea of blaming the Palestinians for it, the crowd didn’t like it,” Sharifi said.

But the moderators stepped in to make sure the students could speak, Sharifi argued.

In likely the most heated moment of that panel, one attendee questioned the panel’s focus on Israel’s military actions in Gaza and the lack of condemnation of Palestinian violence in the region and, more broadly, “extremist Islam.”

“Violence is a problem all around the Arab world; the most violent countries in the world are Muslim countries,” the speaker said, as captured on video from the event. “If people talk about living in one big Palestinian state where people are going to be equal, please name one Muslim country that has Democratic values.”

Other audience members began to shout at the speaker, at which point Sharifi spoke up.

“No, no, I think we should let him speak,” he said. “The speaker is speaking a truth, a certain truth, that is really big in mainstream media.”

After a moment, Sharifi lectured the speaker for his “Islamaphobic projections” and added that “what you say, if I said it about Israel and Jews, it would be called antisemitic, and it really would be.”

“We don’t blame Jews for what is happening with the right wing, fascist behavior, racist, apartheid Netanyahu government,” Sharifi added. “They do not represent all Jews.”

Sharifi and Chabot believe there has been a conflation of criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism.

“From both of our perspectives, not being able to challenge a nation-state is exactly what allows antisemitism to happen, or any kind of discrimination against particular groups,” Chabot said.

Editor’s note: This article was changed on March 21, 2025, to correct information about the March 10 letter to Whitman College. The letter from the Department of Education did not specify any incidents, according to Gina Zandy Ohnstad, the college’s vice president for communications.