Title VI

• The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) oversees Title VI enforcement for educational institutions
• For employment-based complaints, enforcement falls under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)

• Title VI addresses race, color, and national origin discrimination (which includes shared ancestry and ethnic characteristics) in federally funded programs
• Title IX covers sex discrimination, including sexual harassment and misconduct

• Failure to address practices or instances that create a hostile environment based on race, color, or national origin
  • Usually this requires only remedial response. The Title IX focus on discipline is less pressing under Title VI, unless a VI remedy requires discipline to end a hostile environment
• Discriminatory policies or programs, such as scholarships, cultural centers, or initiatives that exclude certain races from access or full participation
  • Targeted programs specifying preferred participants/attendees are permissible under Title VI, as long as no one is excluded from participating/attending
• Inequitable disciplinary actions that disproportionately affect certain racial or ethnic groups
• Scholarship inequity
• Whether a program has a sufficient basis to justify affirmative action

• Appoint a designated Title VI Coordinator to oversee compliance and investigations; centralize all reporting, complaint processing, and case management
• Revise policies and procedures to ensure they align with current Title VI expectations
• Provide regular training for administrators, faculty, and staff on discrimination covered by Title VI, free speech/expression, filing a complaint, and the school/institution’s grievance process
• Conduct climate surveys and assessments to monitor Title VI-related discrimination trends
  • TNG designs and administers such surveys

• Executive Orders direct federal agencies, including OCR, to prioritize enforcement in specific areas, such as anti-white bias and anti-Semitism
• They also seek to limit funding for institutions that promote race-based preferences
• Institutions should monitor policy updates and legal challenges that may impact their compliance obligations, but the EO’s themselves cannot require schools to do or not do anything, directly

• Any organization receiving federal financial assistance, including corporations, law enforcement, and nonprofits, must comply with Title VI
• Businesses with federal contracts should assess their hiring, training, and workplace policies to ensure compliance

• Expect increased federal scrutiny of race- and national origin-related issues, especially in higher education and government-funded programs
• Organizations should prepare for policy revisions, litigation risks, and the need for expanded compliance training
• Schools and institutions that fail to comply may lose federal funding or face the risk of civil rights investigations

• Establish clear, centralized reporting processes, similar to Title IX complaint procedures
• Train investigators and decision-makers to manage Title VI cases with procedural consistency
• Consider models that build-in this approach, such as ATIXA’s 1P2P
• Implement grievance procedures, including options for alternative resolution that are compliant with Title VI regulations and federal and state guidance and laws
• Look beyond single incidents to view the totality of the circumstances

• ATIXA has launched Title VI Curriculum Path and is working diligently on expanding resources and membership benefits for the Title VI field
• Schools and institutions can seek legal guidance, OCR resources, and external consultants for policy development

With increased federal scrutiny on civil rights compliance, schools and institutions must be proactive in ensuring a learning and working environment free from discrimination and be prepared to respond to complaints, investigations, and policy challenges. These courses provide:

• Up-to-date legal knowledge and best practices for compliance
• Practical skills for handling civil rights investigations and complaints
• Strategies for balancing free speech/expression rights with school/institutional policies
• Certification to demonstrate expertise in compliance and investigations

What should a board consider with respect to anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-Muslim acts, and conflict? This workshop is available in one-hour, two-hour, and half-day formats. Whether for your whole board or its risk management committee, or both, TNG experts can provide either an overview or a more in-depth treatment, depending on your needs. What should Boards have their eyes on right now? What should they anticipate? How can they head off problems before they become inflamed or intractable?

This consultation is aimed at helping administrators anticipate and prepare for the conflict in the Middle East (and other forms of sectarian violence, conflict, and strife) to come to campus. TNG experts will help you to help your community manage risks related to outside agitators, address demands related to BDS, set effective boundaries and guardrails, and implement techniques that help manage conflicts without violence, escalation, or property damage. In addition to addressing strategic protest-related risk, TNG’s facilitators will drive an exploration of more than 40 thoughtful, clever, and innovative approaches taken by other campuses around the country in response to protests and conflict. We’ll explore each, discussing merits and demerits, and whether these strategies could help your campus proactively prevent or defuse conflicts related to speech, protest, and political activism. Various formats are offered for this consultation, including workshops, policy work, and training.

This consultation offers techniques to address protests and other conflicts related to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. TNG experts can provide training to a variety of campus and school staff members and administrators, including a menu of ideas for policy and procedure updates, conflict management, de-escalation, and defusing techniques. Various formats are offered for this consultation, including workshops, policy work, and training. If conflict has come to your school or college, this workshop on response will help guide institutional strategy and decision-making for public statements, intervention, and conflict management.

• Should the police be called? When?
• Should permits be enforced? How?
• Should policies be enforced? When, how, and on whom, by whom?
• Is intervention safe?
• Are protestors unsafe?
• Is the protest impeding access?
• Is the protest creating a hostile environment?

This consultation can take place in half-day, single day, or multi-day formats for a variety of offices/audiences, many of whom share response duties, and many of whom have differing response obligations. The focus can be on de-escalation techniques and strategies, intervention options, postvention needs, and addressing the various protestor involvement by students, faculty, staff/administrators, and external third parties.

Learn how to shift your campus culture to proactively engage in constructive dialogue related to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and other sectarian conflicts. If various groups don’t feel they have a voice, that their voices are not heard, that their institution opposes them, or that it favors them, or that they are unsafe on campus, their potential to escalate increases exponentially. This consultation, usually offered in half-day or full-day workshop format, engages stakeholders in the question of what within the current culture of the institution is fomenting or likely to foment conflict, and what can be done to shift the culture toward productive dialogue, constructive conflict, better understanding, and potential bridge-building.

This workshop addresses navigating competing rights and interests in a politicized environment related to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. It focuses on policy development, assessment of legal risks, robust exploration of neutrality v. taking a stand, and questions related to what limits on free speech are worth respecting and what may be worth contesting through potential litigation. This consultation can be offered in two-hour, half-day, and full-day formats and features a key exploration of topics, including the incendiary/controversial speaker, the Heckler’s Veto, how time, place, and manner matter, the concepts of prior restraints and chilling effects, relevant case law, the value of the court order, understanding what creates a hostile environment, and how that impacts on and is impacted by free speech.

This training focuses on addressing conflicts related to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia through a Title VI lens. It covers areas such as discipline, complaint processing, and strategies for avoiding and responding to OCR complaints. Participants can also review recent OCR Title VI decisions. The training includes developing policies and procedures to ensure compliance.

It can be presented as a general overview for various groups or as an in-depth one- or two-day ATIXA certification course. If your institution is forming a bias team, a Title VI team, implementing a campus climate task force, standing up a Title VI office, or adding a Title VI coordinator, these certification courses will equip your administrators with a professional and nuanced understanding of Title VI. They will learn how it differs from other civil rights laws, understand industry-standard compliance expectations, and discover best practices to create a model Title VI program.

This consultancy is not designed around a single campus visit or virtual training but is instead offered long-term as a relationship between your campus and TNG to support you as you implement a Title VI infrastructure that will effectively support your compliance efforts. TNG consultants will help your team to identify the crucial ingredients needed to stand up a Title VI office (even if that’s not what it is called), understand how Title VI may create obligations despite state crackdowns on DEI efforts, and process how to manage intersecting compliance obligations that may include Title IX, Title VII, etc. Many schools want Title IX coordinators to also serve as Title VI coordinators. We’ll explore if this makes sense, how to manage bandwidth concerns, and whether the coordinator roles should be dovetailed or separated. How similar or different should our Title VI teams and offices be from our offices and teams that address Title VII and Title IX?

Step-by-step guides to response ensure that each key office, department, division, and employee is aware of their role in helping to address and manage Title VI-related incidents. This consultation is an off-site interaction between TNG experts and your key administrators to refine TNG’s class-leading protocols to fit your specific and particular campus needs. The deliverable is a protocol or set of protocols that is customized to suit the needs of each office, department, or division with respect to prevention, response, training, intervention, and enforcement.

TNG can perform Title VI investigations (including through The FAIR Center) or train your team on how to do so. TNG offers 30+ skilled investigators who are familiar with investigating allegations related to race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, shared ancestry, ethnic characteristics, and caste. We can conduct investigations for you (at hourly or flat-fee rates), case manage your investigations to keep them on track and consistent, collaborate with your campus-based investigators to offer a deeper bench as needed, mentor campus investigators through a shared investigation coaching model, or through ATIXA, we can certify and train your internal investigators for Title VI investigations in one-day or two-day formats.

Whether you use a hearing model or another approach to decision-making, TNG offers trained, sensitive, inclusive, and seasoned hearing officers or decision-makers to your school or campus. Or, we can train your decision-makers. Through The FAIR Center, we have been helping many campuses manage student conduct caseloads related to dozens or hundreds of students who have been cited for various policy violations related to protests and disruptions. If you need our services to help case manage, facilitate hearings, or decide complaints/appeals, please call on us.

Title VI complaint response is an evolving area of concern for schools. We’ll share our lessons learned from working with schools on complaint response or help to manage your response if you receive an OCR complaint and are notified of an investigation.

Our Interim Title VI Coordinators offer comprehensive services that help protect students and employees against discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in higher education and K-12 settings. In addition to maintaining the day-to-day responsiveness to reports and complaints, we often identify and tackle other challenges. These may include developing and updating policies to ensure compliance, auditing prior cases for potential violations of Title VI requirements, and collaborating efficiently with partners on critical issues like balancing protests and free speech with the rights of students to be free from hostile environments.

Don’t risk a Title VI Coordinator gap. If you don’t have time to find or onboard a new employee, let us step in until you can. Delayed onboarding may result in non-compliance. When you enlist the services of our team for interim work, you receive professional consulting, not just case management. You can engage us for interim work on one case, an entire caseload, or a full-time placement. The added benefit is that you are not just hiring one consultant but our whole team – a brain trust behind each consultant. Your interim consultant will be clever, collaborative, creative, wise, and respectful of your culture. All our consultants are former administrators, attorneys, or both, and we only hire A-level talent. Employing the best consultants ensures only the best for you.