{"id":93506,"date":"2026-01-22T11:12:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T11:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/93506\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T11:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T11:12:10","slug":"university-of-pennsylvania-rebuffs-eeoc-demand-for-employee-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/93506\/","title":{"rendered":"University of Pennsylvania rebuffs EEOC demand for employee records"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published on Higher Ed Dive<\/a>. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Higher Ed Dive newsletter<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Dive Brief:\u00a0<\/p>\n

The University of Pennsylvania has rebuffed the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission\u2019s demands for detailed employee records as part of its investigation into whether the institution has a hostile work environment for Jewish employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Penn said it has provided nearly 900 pages of information to the EEOC, including employee complaints of antisemitism, according to Tuesday court documents<\/a>. However, the Ivy League institution has refused to produce lists of employees that would \u201creveal their Jewish faith or ancestry\u201d or their participation in Jewish organizations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The EEOC and other agencies have launched similar probes against other high-profile universities. California State University system leaders complied with a similar record request from the EEOC by handing over contact information for 2,600 employees at the system\u2019s Los Angeles campus \u2014 a move that drew a lawsuit and fierce backlash<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dive Insight:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Penn has requested that the federal judge overseeing the case deny the EEOC\u2019s request to enforce its subpoena for the employee records and other information.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The EEOC has requested that Penn turn over the names of employees who have filed complaints about antisemitism and the membership rosters of the university\u2019s Jewish organizations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The agency has also demanded the names and personal contact information of employees who work in the Jewish Studies Program, along with the staff and faculty who participated in anonymous listening sessions and a survey conducted by the university\u2019s antisemitism task force. The EEOC additionally requested notes from the listening sessions and de-anonymized responses from the survey.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe EEOC insists that Penn produce this information without the consent \u2014 and indeed, over the objections \u2014 of the employees impacted while entirely disregarding the frightening and well-documented history of governmental entities that undertook efforts to identify and assemble information regarding persons of Jewish ancestry,\u201d the university said in the court documents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Penn said it has already given the EEOC information about employee complaints about antisemitism, but it did not hand over the names of the workers who made those complaints and objected to their information being disclosed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The university also gave the agency a list of Jewish organizations, a public directory of employees in the Jewish Studies Program and an anonymized analysis of the feedback from the antisemitism task force\u2019s listening sessions and survey.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Additionally, Penn proposed sending a notice to all of its employees about the EEOC\u2019s desire to hear about their experiences with antisemitism and information about how to contact the agency directly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat comprehensive offer eliminates any possible justification for mandating compilation of the requested lists,\u201d Penn said. \u201cIndeed, it reflects the obvious fact that even employees who are not Jewish may nonetheless have information about acts of antisemitism.\u201d<\/p>\n

In late September, the EEOC moved to enforce the subpoena just hours after the university made that proposal in a meeting with an agency official to enforce the subpoena, according to Tuesday\u2019s court filing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The investigation was opened into Penn in December 2023, during the Biden administration. At the time, Commissioner Andrea Lucas, who was appointed under the first Trump administration, filed a charge and cited a \u201creason to believe\u201d that Penn had engaged in \u201ca pattern or practice\u201d of harassment against Jewish employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has continued the investigation. However, Penn said in Tuesday\u2019s court documents that the EEOC hasn\u2019t made a specific allegation against the university about workplace antisemitism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cRather, premised on the unspecified suspicions of a single Commissioner, it asserts a hostile work environment for Jewish employees based only on unidentified news reports and claims of students about their experiences as students,\u201d the university said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The EEOC, meanwhile, argued in court documents<\/a> Tuesday that it must work with Penn to gain the contact information of \u201clikely victims and witnesses\u201d and that its subpoena for employee records is no different than the information it demands in other investigations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPenn refuses to respond, thereby stalling the EEOC\u2019s investigation,\u201d the agency said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It added that the university\u2019s \u201cproposal to inject itself as a filter between Penn employees and the EEOC\u201d would result in the institution being aware of which workers were participating in the investigation and risk retaliation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Several higher education and campus groups \u2013 including the American Association of University Professors and Penn\u2019s local AAUP chapter, as well as the American Academy for Jewish Research and the Penn Association of Senior and Emeritus Faculty \u2014\u00a0 have filed court documents<\/a> to oppose the subpoena\u2019s enforcement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In filings Tuesday, they suggested that the EEOC could take Penn up on the offer to send a notice to all employees along with EEOC contact information. The agency could also invite submissions through a hotline or \u201crely on the extensive information Penn already has produced,\u201d they said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They further expressed alarm at the EEOC\u2019s demand for information like the home addresses of members of Jewish campus groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSingling out organizations and individuals for such an invasion of privacy based on their actual or presumed religious affiliation would be deeply troubling under any circumstances,\u201d they said. \u201cIt is particularly chilling in light of the persecution that often has followed the compilation of lists of Jews in particular.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recommended Reading <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published on Higher Ed Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16062,45990,43795,43543,45991,45993,45992,6312,45989,28,30,29,4347],"class_list":["post-93506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-antisemitism","tag-contact-information","tag-court-documents","tag-eeoc","tag-employee-complaints","tag-employee-records","tag-hostile-work-environment","tag-jewish-organizations","tag-jewish-studies-program","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-university-of-pennsylvania"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}