ZOA Accuses Rutgers U. of Hostility toward Jews; Files Anti-Semitic Complaint with US Office of Ed.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency website reports today (July 27, 2011) that the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has filed a complaint against Rutgers University, alleging that the school in New Jersey fostered a hostile environment toward Jewish students.

The complaint requests that the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights investigates Rutgers for violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

ZOA's President, Morton Klein, and Susan Tuchman -- the director of ZOA's Center for Law and Justice -- in a statement said the complaint was filed "only after numerous serious efforts were made to get the university to respond to a long pattern of anti-Semitic hostility on campus, and the administration refused to do so."

The brief names a number of examples -- including one in which Jewish students allegedly were charged admission to a free event -- as well as citing an alleged anti-Israel bias in the university's Middle East studies program.

Rutgers denied the allegations in a statement, calling them "factually inaccurate and significantly distorted."