Establishing an Office of Religious and Ethnic Inclusion (Title VI) at Penn

A Message from Interim President J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD
September 5, 2024

I am very pleased to be able to share with the entire Penn community that today we are announcing the creation of an Office of Religious and Ethnic Inclusion (Title VI). This will be the first of its kind nationally, and is being formed in response to recommendations from the fall 2023 Action Plan to Combat Antisemitism, and the May 2024 reports of the University Task Force on Antisemitism and the Presidential Commission on Countering Hate and Building Community. The establishment of this new Office ensures that Penn can continue to fulfill its obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and under Penn’s own policies, to protect students, faculty and staff from discrimination based on their religion, ethnicity, shared ancestry, or national origin, and provides us with a critical central point of contact for Title VI training and compliance related to religion, shared national ancestry, and ethnicity.

Over the past year, our campus and our country witnessed a disquieting surge in antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of religious and ethnic intolerance. This type of prejudice is simply unacceptable, and has no place at Penn. The Office of Religious and Ethnic Inclusion (Title VI) is being formed to confront this deeply troubling trend, and to serve as a stand-alone center for education and complaint resolution. It represents an institutional commitment to address both the short-term and long-term recommendations that we have received.

We expect the office to open later this fall, and we will soon launch a search for ongoing leadership. In the interim, the office will be co-led by two distinguished professionals who have broad experience in confronting religious and ethnic intolerance: Majid Alsayegh and Steve Ginsburg.

Steve Ginsburg is a national expert at addressing incidents and resolving crises involving bias and extremism. Over a decade as an executive at the Anti-Defamation League, he collaborated with a diverse group of experts to counter hate and deliver anti-bias education programs on topics including antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and racism. An experienced attorney, Steve helped create Connecticut's statewide Hate Crimes Advisory Council and was appointed a founding member by Gov. Lamont. He was also a member of the state’s racial profiling and police accountability task forces and led advocacy efforts resulting in legislation requiring Holocaust and genocide education, strengthening hate crimes enforcement, and outlawing doxing and cyber-harassment. In the 1990s, Steve lived in Sarajevo as an American Bar Association Rule of Law Liaison working with Bosnians of all ethnicities to reform the legal system.

Majid Alsayegh was born and raised in Mosul, Iraq, and immigrated to the US in 1975. He is the founder of Alta Management, LLC, a project management firm, which has overseen management of large complex projects, including those that assisted clients with criminal justice reform. Majid chairs the Board of the Dialogue Institute, a nonprofit that teaches leadership, dialogue skills and critical thinking. He serves on the national Muslim Jewish Advisory Council, a bipartisan group of business, political and religious leaders who have worked together to address hate crimes and protect religious freedom. He also serves on the board of Abrahamic House in Washington, D.C. and is a co-founder and chairman emeritus of Intercultural Journeys, a Philadelphia based nonprofit that connects diverse communities through music and the arts.

Under the leadership of Ginsburg and Alsayegh, the Office of Religious and Ethnic Inclusion (Title VI) will work to ensure that Penn takes all reasonable steps to prevent and respond to antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of hate, and in so doing maintain an environment that is welcoming and not hostile to any individual or group based on shared ancestry, ethnicity or religion. Working in partnership with the Offices of the President, Provost, the Office of the Chaplain and Spiritual and Religious Life Center (SPARC), and Institutional Research as well as the Divisions of Human Resources, and Public Safety, the Office will assist in identifying and supplementing the development of new programs and strategies to support an educated, respectful, diverse community on our campus.

To ensure a uniform response across all our Schools and to be certain that complaints from (and about) different stakeholders (i.e., students, faculty, staff and postdocs) are treated seriously and sensitively, investigated, resolved or referred, and recorded, the Office will be the sole, University-wide point of contact for receiving and responding to reports of alleged violations of our policies against religious and ethnic discrimination, and will be designed to ensure that investigations happen swiftly and thoroughly.

We believe the establishment of this office is essential to ensuring that Penn can continue to offer its students, faculty and staff the most welcoming, supportive and safe environment possible. Its creation reflects Penn’s unwavering determination to confront antisemitism and Islamophobia and establishes our University as a national leader in this critical effort.

Further information about the Office, its activities and programs, procedures and contact information, will be forthcoming. Prior to the formal opening of the Office, individuals may continue to report concerns about having been treated in a biased or discriminatory manner by completing a Bias Incident Reporting form or file a complaint with OAA-EOP. To file a report, please visit this page: https://diversity.upenn.edu/diversity-at-penn/forms or file a complaint by contacting the Office of Affirmative Action or completing the form that can be found here: https://upenn.app.box.com/s/l31ml76rpao0ffmeo7vf4xl7povg47tc.