BALTIMORE — The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, announces it has designated Johns Hopkins University (JHU) as a ‘Hostile Campus’ for allegedly fostering a climate of fear, retaliation, and repression targeting students “who speak out against occupation, apartheid, and genocide.”
“No university that suppresses, injures, or threatens students for peacefully opposing genocide can claim to be inclusive,” said Zainab Chaudry, Director of CAIR’s Maryland office. “Johns Hopkins has repeatedly chosen repression over dialogue, militarism over justice, and silence over accountability.”
From Oct. 2023 through May 2024, JHU received 99 complaints of antisemitic and anti-Arab or anti-Muslim during an uptick in campus protests. Palestinian and Jewish students reported to JHU officials that they were subjected to stereotyped slurs and offensive signs, according to Inside Higher Ed. In one instance, a professor wrote to students, “Those brutal Arabs will, God willing, pay a price like never before.”
The complaints led to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights into whether JHU violated Title IVI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects students from discrimination based on shared ancestry. The office flagged concerns that the university either did not employ the correct legal standards or was inconsistent in its application of the appropriate legal standard when assessing the incidents it did review. In the instance involving a professor, the investigation determined the university didn’t assess whether the professor’s comments impacted students’ ability to access their education.
More recently, CAIR says JHU failed to defend over a dozen graduate students and alumni whose visas were revoked by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
On May 8, students set up a Gaza solidarity encampment on Keyser Quad, which CAIR also alleges was “met with a violent crackdown by armed JHU and Baltimore police.” According to a press release from CAIR, eyewitnesses said two students were injured as officers tore down tents and canopies “despite the protest being entirely nonviolent.”
Since August, CAIR has designated over 20 colleges and universities as hostile “due to their creation of a thoroughly hostile and dangerous environment for anti-genocide students.” The list can be found here.
