Explained | How is U.S. tackling discrimination on campuses?

The story so far: The California Faculty Association this month added caste criteria into its anti-discrimination policies, a move that was subsequently ratified by the Board of Trustees of the California State University system. These include Harvard University, which became the first Ivy League university to recognise caste-based discrimination as an issue of concern, when it ratified, in December 2021, a four-year contract that includes a provision for the addition of caste as a “protected category” for all graduate and undergraduate student workers at the university. That followed action taken by Brandeis University, Massachusetts, in November 2019, when it said that even though caste is not an officially recognised “protected class” within U.S. federal law or state laws, “The university believes that caste identity is so inextricably intertwined with those legally recognised protected characteristics that discrimination based on one’s caste is effectively discrimination based on an amalgamation of legally protected characteristics. Therefore, the university prohibits discrimination and harassment based on caste, effective immediately.” A key organisation spearheading the campaign against caste discrimination in U.S. universities is Equality Labs. Suhag Shukla, the Executive Director of HAF, said in response to the action by the California State University system, “CFA and CSU leadership need to answer why, in the absence of evidence, due diligence, or consultation with some 600 faculty of Indian or South Asian origin who will be directly implicated by this new policy, they added it when existing policies already offer protection for any complaints of caste discrimination under categories such as national origin or ancestry.” However, the argument of Dalit and minority rights activists is that so long as caste is not included in U.S. federal law as a protected category in the context of discrimination, caste discrimination within South Asian communities will proliferate even as such communities at a broad level are sometimes victims of generalised racism.