Written by Don Byrd
Earlier this year, the Department of Justice announced a new initiative called “Combating Religious Discrimination Today,” an interagency partnership to address problems of religious discrimination and harassment in a variety of settings, including public schools. In a recent blog post, the Department of Education discussed its efforts through the Office of Civil Rights to increase dialogue on this issue.
Here is an excerpt, discussing a recent forum on the subject in Palo Alto:
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.
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Last year, OCR received more than 10,000 complaints, 21 percent of which involved race or national origin discrimination and more than 450 of which involved racial or national origin harassment, including some relating to national origin discrimination involving religion. We evaluated every complaint we received for possible civil rights violations.
Kudos to the Department of Education and other federal agencies involved in this effort. Religious discrimination laws should be enforced to reflect our national commitment to religious liberty for all. But even better would be a reduction in religious discrimination, harassment, and bullying in the first place. An increase in dialogue and awareness is an essential step in that process.
