Title VI

What should a board be considering 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 be anticipating? How can they head off problems before they become inflamed or intractable?

This consultation is aimed toward helping administrators to anticipate and be prepared 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, setting effective boundaries and guardrails, and techniques that help to 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 being taken by other campuses around the country in response to protests and conflict. We’ll explore each, discussing merit and demerits, and whether they could help your campus proactively to 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. Focus can be on de-escalation techniques and strategies, intervention options, postvention needs, 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 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.

Navigating competing rights and interests in a politicized environment related to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. This workshop 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 includes 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.

Viewing conflict related to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia through a Title VI lens, including discipline, complaint processing, OCR complaint avoidance, and OCR complaint response. A review of recent OCR Title VI decisions can be provided. This training can also involve development of policies and procedures to ensure compliance. This training can be done as an overview to various groups, or as a deep-dive that is provided through a one-day or two-day ATIXA certification. If you are building 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, the certification courses will ensure your administrators have professional and competent understandings of what Title VI is, how it differs from other civil rights laws, what are the industry standard compliance expectations, and what best practices can create an exemplary 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 can 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 to 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.