A legal nonprofit filed a federal civil rights complaint against the College this morning on behalf of an anonymous first-year Orthodox Jewish student. The complaint, filed with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), alleges that the College discriminated against the student due to his religion in violation of Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also known as the Fair Housing Act (FHA).
The student, whose complaint has been filed through the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, alleges that the College failed to provide him with equal access to housing and dining because of his religious practices. According to the complaint, the student cannot access his dorm with an electronic key card during the Sabbath without violating the rules of his religious practice, and the College denied his request for a physical key due to unspecified security concerns. As a result, the student has had to wait outside of his building until another student can open the door for him. The student, who keeps kosher, also alleges that the College has failed to provide him with kosher meals.
The complaint alleges that College representatives discouraged the student from living on campus and told him he should not attend the College if he could not “deal with” the challenges he would face observing his religious practice.
In response to the complaint, the College affirmed its commitment to nondiscrimination. “Williams has no tolerance for antisemitism or discrimination,” Chief Communications Officer Meike Kaan wrote in an email to the Record. “We are devoted to ensuring that all students have access to appropriate living spaces, dining options, and our full range of learning opportunities.”
The College will be willing to work with the student and the Brandeis Center moving forward, according to Kaan. “The college’s leaders and chaplains are strongly committed to working with students and their families to address student concerns,” she wrote. “We welcome the opportunity to continue that dialogue with the student and the Brandeis Center in order to ensure a welcoming and inclusive educational environment.”
Rachel Balaban, the Brandeis Center’s interim director of legal initiatives, told the Record that the Center is not engaging in direct litigation against the College. It is instead urging HUD to investigate the College based on the complaint’s allegations. The complaint also claims that the student is entitled to monetary relief. As a result of its potential investigation, HUD can also decide to bring charges against the College, separate from a potential conciliation process.
“Should [conciliation] fail, we would urge HUD to issue a charge consistent with any investigative finding they have,” Balaban said.
The complaint alleges that the College’s discriminatory practices began before the student arrived at the College. Before accepting his offer of admission, the student and his father met with Dining Services last spring to discuss whether he would be able to keep kosher while living on campus. At the meeting, the College allegedly refused to provide kosher meals per the student’s standards, and instead offered vegan dinners in the dining hall and suggested that the student cook his meals at the Jewish Religious Center (JRC).
According to Director of Jewish Life and College Chaplain Rabbi Seth Wax, the JRC is not operated under Orthodox Rabbinical supervision nor has it claimed to be under his leadership. Rabbi Wax said that he oversees the supervision of kashrut at the JRC, having been ordained in this capacity by the Hebrew College in Newton, Mass.
The claim states that since arriving at the College, the pre-packaged kosher meals available at the JRC have caused the student “to become violently ill on several occasions,” and the kosher vegan dinners provided by Dining Services “were nutritionally inadequate and often so unappealing that [the student] found them inedible.” Because other on-campus dining options did not comply with the student’s religious dietary law, he often ate at restaurants at considerable personal expense, according to the complaint.
The complaint alleges that the student also met with Housing, the Chaplains’ Office, and President Maud S. Mandel to discuss his trouble accessing his dorm. In response, the College instructed the student to find someone in an unnamed campus office building when he needed help being let into his dorm. While waiting for help, the complaint alleges that the student waited for an average of 30 minutes, but sometimes for more than an hour in “inclement and freezing weather.”
The FHA prohibits housing providers from making housing unavailable based on religion and other protected identities, including making discouraging statements that express a preference against providing housing due to protected characteristics.
The Brandeis Center is a nonprofit legal organization that seeks to defend the civil and human rights of Jewish people, according to its website. Since 2021, the Center has taken legal action against Columbia, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and Pomona, among other institutions of higher education, alleging antisemitic discrimination on behalf of Jewish students. According to the Center’s vision statement, its goal is to fight against “the resurgent problem of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism on university campuses.” Today’s complaint is the first the Center has filed under the FHA.
Beyond asking HUD to investigate the claims, the complaint also asks the College to revise its housing policy to provide accommodations to religious students, adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism, and institute antisemitism training for all members of the campus community.
The IHRA definition of antisemitism — adopted federally and by 38 U.S. states — has drawn criticism from those who argue it conflates antisemitism with anti-Zionism and may limit academic freedom. As part of the Brandeis Center’s settlements with Harvard and Pomona over alleged antisemitic discrimination, both schools adopted the IHRA definition.
A press release accompanying the complaint includes a statement from Kenneth Marcus ’88, who founded the Brandeis Center and served as assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education (DOE) from 2018 to 2020. “It saddens me as a proud Williams College alumnus to see my alma mater treat a Jewish student as a lesser member of the community because of his religion, turning him away as he was freezing and hungry,” the statement reads.
In 2019, the College and the DOE resolved a complaint under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that originated from the now-disbanded College Council’s decision to refuse the Williams Initiative for Israel (WIFI) registered student organization status. In the settlement, the College did not admit to violating Title VI, but agreed to treat WIFI with “the same rights and privileges as registered student organizations approved by the College Council.” The 2019 complaint was filed by George Mason University law professor David Bernstein, who is also currently affiliated with the Brandeis Center.
According to Balaban, the Center has pursued advocacy with other governmental agencies in the past, including the DOE, but has not previously filed complaints with HUD. Because this is an unprecedented kind of complaint, the Center remains unsure of what the timeline for remedying the complaint will look like.
