Five groups affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania have filed a motion to intervene in a federal lawsuit seeking lists of Jewish organizations on campus and their members.<\/p>\n
Since July, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has pressed Penn for this information as part of its probe into antisemitism on Penn’s campus. The EEOC requested, among other things, a list of the school’s Jewish clubs and rosters of their members. It also sought a list of employees in the Jewish Studies program and their personal emails, phone numbers and mailing addresses. After Penn refused to furnish the information, the EEOC\u00a0sued Penn in November<\/a>\u00a0to compel the university to honor the subpoena.\u00a0<\/p>\n MORE:\u00a0Helicopters that crashed in South Jersey were flying closely together, NTSB report says<\/a><\/p>\n Now, more parties are trying to join the lawsuit and, in doing so, block what they call a “centralized registry of UPenn’s Jewish students, faculty, and staff.”<\/p>\n “Such compelled disclosure will be experienced as a visceral\u00a0threat to the safety of those who would find themselves so identified because compiling\u00a0and turning over to the government ‘lists of Jews’ conjures a terrifying history,” the court documents read.<\/p>\n The ACLU of Pennsylvania and other civil rights lawyers filed the motion on behalf of the five groups. They include two Jewish organizations \u2014 the\u00a0American Academy of Jewish Research and the Jewish Law Students Association of the University of Pennsylvania Carey, Law School \u2014 as well as the\u00a0Penn Association of Senior and Emeritus Faculty, the\u00a0American Association of University Professors and the AAUP’s Penn chapter.<\/p>\n “It doesn’t matter what the stated intent is,”\u00a0Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said in a\u00a0statement<\/a>.\u00a0“The moment our government begins compiling lists of people based on their religion or ethnicity \u2014 especially when those groups have historically faced persecution and worse \u2014 we cross a dangerous line.\u00a0These types of registries don’t remain benign; they create a user-friendly tool for discrimination, and history shows us that actors with malicious goals can easily weaponize them.”<\/p>\n The EEOC has argued it needs this information to contact people who may have experienced antisemitism at Penn. The college and other schools came under<\/a> intense federal scrutiny<\/a> beginning in 2023 for student and faculty response to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Former university President Liz Magill resigned<\/a> after providing congressional testimony on the school’s response to antisemitism.<\/p>\n If the Penn groups’ motion is granted, the five organizations will join the university in the EEOC lawsuit.<\/p>\n Follow Kristin & PhillyVoice on Twitter: @kristin_hunt
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