The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today sent a letter to the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce urging lawmakers to reject the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and to oppose the criminalization of constitutionally protected student advocacy for Palestinian human rights.
CLICK HERE: READ CAIR’S LETTER
The letter was submitted in advance of today’s committee hearing titled “Examining the Policies and Priorities of the Department of Education,” featuring Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. Addressed to Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI) and Ranking Member Bobby Scott (D-VA), CAIR’s letter warns that eliminating OCR would have a devastating impact on Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and Jewish students by stripping away one of the last remaining federal protections against discrimination, harassment, and censorship on campus.
Sent by CAIR Government Affairs Department Director Robert S. McCaw, the letter urged the Committee to:
- Enact legislation to protect and fully fund the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), ensuring it remains empowered to defend students from discrimination, censorship, and retaliation;
- Defend the civil rights of all students, including Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and Jewish students, by empowering OCR to address incidents of Islamophobia, antisemitism, anti-Arab racism, and campus censorship;
- Condemn the politicized misuse of antisemitism allegations to silence constitutionally protected, pro-Palestinian speech and peaceful anti-genocide advocacy;
- Hold oversight hearings to investigate the alarming rise in campus repression, including the suspension, arrest, and blacklisting of students peacefully protesting the genocide in Gaza.
The letter cites CAIR’s 2024 Civil Rights Report, which documented 8,658 complaints – the highest ever recorded in the organization’s 30-year history- alongside its Hostile report identifying 22 campuses as hostile environments for Palestinian rights advocates. The letter also cited CAIR’s landmark report titled “Hostile: How Universities Target Anti Genocide Protesters While Enabling Anti-Palestinian Racism and Islamophobia.”
The report documented widespread institutional repression of student protesters and the failure of university administrations to protect their civil rights. To date, we have officially designated 22 U.S. campuses as “hostile environments” for Palestinian rights advocates due to repeated violations of students’ rights, biased administrative policies, and tolerance for anti-Muslim and anti-Arab rhetoric.
Washington, D.C., based CAIR also condemned the Trump administration’s escalating efforts to criminalize peaceful pro-Palestinian student protests through executive orders, visa revocations, and vague immigration statutes. The letter highlights recent cases of student activists detained or threatened with deportation under Cold War-era legal provisions for simply expressing dissent against Israel’s war on Gaza.
CAIR is calling on all members of Congress to restore and protect the Office for Civil Rights, reject attempts to equate peaceful protest with extremism, and safeguard the rights of all students to engage in moral and political advocacy without fear of punishment or deportation.
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CONTACT: CAIR Government Affairs Director Robert McCaw, 202-742-6448, rmccaw@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, ihooper@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Manager Ismail Allison, 202-770-6280, iallison@cair.com