The Colorado Advisory Committee of the US Commission on Civil Rights, a nearly 70-year-old independent, bipartisan fact-finding federal agency, plans to hold three events about Jew-hatred in the state in July and August.
“We are committed to ensuring that our institutions of higher learning are places where all students feel safe, respected and free to fully participate in academic life,” stated Alvina Earnhart, chair of the commission’s Colorado committee.
On July 16, the committee is scheduled to hold a two-hour online panel about Jew-hatred on Denver’s Auraria Campus.
The event will feature testimony from legal scholar and blogger Eugene Volokh; ADL regional leader Jeremy Shaver; and Kenneth L. Marcus, chair of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law, and a former US assistant secretary of education for civil rights.
The commission also intends to hold a two-hour panel on college and university administrators and a one-hour community forum on Aug. 20.
The Colorado committee voted unanimously to launch a year-long probe of the “presence or absence of anti-Semitism at Colorado universities and colleges, specifically at the Auraria Campus in Denver,” CBS News Colorado reported in May.
For a period of time during October, 2023 and November, 2023, the Golda Meir House Museum, housed on Auraria, was forced to close in the wake of anti-Israel protests. That also meant that the campus’ Chabad, which at the time held its activities in the museum, were forced off campus. At an Oct. 25, 2023 demonstration, Jews were called “scum” and “Nazis,” the IJN reported at the time.
According to museum’s executive director, Lena Fishman, the museum’s closure made “the logistics of Jewish life activities extremely difficult.”
In April, 2024, SDS, which organized the demonstrations outside of the Golda Meir House Musuem, set up an anti-Israel encampment on the Auraria campus for 23 days.
The campus initially arrested many of the protestors who, through the encampment, were in violation of the campus’ code of conduct. The campus later backtracked, citing freedom of expression.
According to CBS, eight of those arrested later sued.
