HOW WORKING TO PREVENT DISCRIMINATION INVOLVING RELIGION AT SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES (2380 hits)
Working to Prevent Discrimination Involving Religion at Schools and Universities
No student – whether Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, or of any other religious background – should experience barriers to learning and success in school because of who the student is or what the student believes.
That’s why last month, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights participated in a community forum in Palo Alto, California, on religious discrimination in schools and universities. This roundtable built on an event in Newark, New Jersey, in March, where the Department of Education joined the Justice Department in announcing the launch of Combating Religious Discrimination Today, a new interagency community engagement initiative designed to promote religious freedom, challenge religious discrimination and enhance enforcement of religion-based hate crimes.
In Palo Alto, we heard about the prevalence of bullying and harassment that students from diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds experience at school. Community leaders expressed support for a wide range of trainings – social-emotional learning, cultural competency, implicit bias, restorative justice, basics of world religions – to improve school and campus climates.
