Dive Brief:
- The University of Pennsylvania has rebuffed the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s demands for detailed employee records as part of its investigation into whether the institution has a hostile work environment for Jewish employees.
- Penn said it has provided nearly 900 pages of information to the EEOC, including employee complaints of antisemitism, according to Tuesday court documents. However, the Ivy League institution has refused to produce lists of employees that would “reveal their Jewish faith or ancestry” or their participation in Jewish organizations.
- 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’s Los Angeles campus — a move that drew a lawsuit and fierce backlash.
Dive Insight:
Penn has requested that the federal judge overseeing the case deny the EEOC’s request to enforce its subpoena for the employee records and other information.
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’s Jewish organizations.
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’s antisemitism task force. The EEOC additionally requested notes from the listening sessions and de-anonymized responses from the survey.
“The EEOC insists that Penn produce this information without the consent — and indeed, over the objections — 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,” the university said in the court documents.
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.
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’s listening sessions and survey.
Additionally, Penn proposed sending a notice to all of its employees about the EEOC’s desire to hear about their experiences with antisemitism and information about how to contact the agency directly.
“That comprehensive offer eliminates any possible justification for mandating compilation of the requested lists,” Penn said. “Indeed, it reflects the obvious fact that even employees who are not Jewish may nonetheless have information about acts of antisemitism.”
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’s court filing.
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 “reason to believe” that Penn had engaged in “a pattern or practice” of harassment against Jewish employees.
The Trump administration has continued the investigation. However, Penn said in Tuesday’s court documents that the EEOC hasn’t made a specific allegation against the university about workplace antisemitism.
“Rather, 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,” the university said.
The EEOC, meanwhile, argued in court documents Tuesday that it must work with Penn to gain the contact information of “likely victims and witnesses” and that its subpoena for employee records is no different than the information it demands in other investigations.
“Penn refuses to respond, thereby stalling the EEOC’s investigation,” the agency said.
It added that the university’s “proposal to inject itself as a filter between Penn employees and the EEOC” would result in the institution being aware of which workers were participating in the investigation and risk retaliation.
Several higher education and campus groups – including the American Association of University Professors and Penn’s local AAUP chapter, as well as the American Academy for Jewish Research and the Penn Association of Senior and Emeritus Faculty — have filed court documents to oppose the subpoena’s enforcement.
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 “rely on the extensive information Penn already has produced,” they said.
They further expressed alarm at the EEOC’s demand for information like the home addresses of members of Jewish campus groups.
“Singling 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,” they said. “It is particularly chilling in light of the persecution that often has followed the compilation of lists of Jews in particular.”
