Rutgers University task force recommends including caste as protected category in non-discrimination policy

NEW DELHI: A task force has recommended that Rutgers University, New Jersey, “add caste as a protected category to its nondiscrimination policy”, promote its current policy and upcoming changes, offer educational programmes to raise awareness about caste, and collect data on caste-based discrimination on campus.

In a report released earlier this month, the task force has demonstrated the need for the policy and outlined its likely impact on members of the Rutgers community. It has also highlighted the consequences of allowing caste-based discrimination to continue unchecked. The task force has collected testimonies featuring individual cases “where caste prejudices and caste-based discrimination negatively impacted members of the Rutgers community”.

Founded in 1766, Rutgers University is a public research university located in New Jersey and one of the oldest universities in the United States. The state university has three campuses – New Brunswick, Newark and Camden. It has 9,000 international students and scholars from over 125 countries; 26.9% of international students are from Asian countries.

Also read ‘Caste is a problem among South Asian students everywhere’; US universities are recognising it

Last year, the university administration established a task force on caste discrimination after Rutgers University unit of American Association of University Professor-American Federation of Teachers or Rutgers AAUP-AFT demanded inclusion of caste as a protected category in university’s non-discrimination policy.

The task force was co-chaired by Corinne Castro, senior director for faculty diversity and institutional transformation within Rutgers University Equity and Inclusion Office, and Audrey Truschke, professor of History at Rutgers University Newark. The task force included research scholars and faculties from the university.

Caste-based discrimination at Rutgers

The task force was created to examine issues of caste discrimination impacting students and members; the inclusion of “caste” as a protected category in the university’s policies on prohibited discrimination and harassment; and identify best practices to address caste discrimination.

There are over 6 million South Asian Americans, the vast majority of them Indian-American. Every year, lakhs of Indians pick the US to study abroad. A total of 2.68 lakh Indians were enrolled in US institutions in 2022-23 – 35% increase from 1.99 lakh in 2021-22.

The task force found that “caste-based discrimination is a problem at Rutgers that limits the potential and opportunities of some in our university community”. It said that “the caste-oppressed often go to great lengths to try to hide their caste, in the hopes of avoiding social stigma, ostracization, or lost opportunities”.

“One can hide one’s caste at times, although this rarely works forever… Ultimately, there is no escape from caste since it constitutes an inherited identity within a socially enforced system,” the task force said.

The report highlighted following consequences of caste-based discrimination,

• Shame and fear around their caste being “outed”
• Being ostracised in educational settings as students, especially by peers
• Poor treatment and opportunities in the workplace as employees and coworkers
• Being denied service in local businesses or places of worship
• Discrimination in interpersonal relationships
• Verbal and physical attacks

Caste-based discrimination: Testimonies

The task force has collected testimonies that identify caste as operating in social contexts, classrooms, and even in housing.

“In class discussion, a student stated that they were Brahmin and that their parents would never let them marry a Dalit.. I felt powerless to educate my students about the harms of casteism , even as I witnessed exclusion in a Rutgers classroom,” a professor at Rutgers said in the testimony.

In one testimony, a Dalit undergraduate student speaks of hiding her low-caste status repeatedly when interacting with others. “My family always told me it’s better not to tell people what caste I belong to. I always feel afraid to tell this to Indians because every time they find this out, they start treating me differently,” she told the task force.

However, the testimonies are anecdotal and “not representative sample data”, notes the report. “This limitation partly fuels our recommendation that Rutgers spearhead more systematic collection of data on caste-based discrimination on campus,” the task force said in its report.

The task force has recommended that the Office of Employment Equity (OEE) at Rutgers include caste as a protected category in its policy prohibiting discrimination and harassment.

“A review of OEE’s records showed no complaints that pertained to caste specifically. This absence of data is inconsistent with the testimonies about casteism and caste-based discrimination at Rutgers. This underscores the report’s recommendations to enhance Rutgers policies against caste-based discrimination and provide education to all members of the Rutgers community on the harms of casteism,” it said.

US Universities: Caste in protected categories

The task force has identified 14 United States institutions of higher education or university systems – more than 40 campuses in total – that have explicitly enacted policies against caste-based discrimination in recent years. Since 2019, eight private colleges and universities and six public universities in the US have included protections against caste based discrimination in their policies.

Brandeis was the first US university to add caste as a protected category in December 2019.

“In making caste an explicitly protected category, Rutgers will follow more than a dozen other American universities and university systems,” the task force said.

The task force called for awareness among the Rutgers community about caste and the common forms of caste-based discrimination.

Rutgers University: Action plans to ban caste-discrimination

The plan to address caste discrimination and implement the recommendations of the report have been divided into short-term (six months), medium-term (one year) and long-term goals (more than a year).

Short term goals include the following:

• Formal announcement by Rutgers University banning caste-based discrimination
• Mention that caste-based discrimination is unacceptable in all relevant Rutgers handbooks, along with a basic definition of caste.
• Begin an educational marketing campaign around the operation of caste in university spaces and Rutgers’ commitment to ending caste-based discrimination.
• Sponsor a keynote talk by a well-known anti-caste American activist
• Provide financial support for graduate-student working groups focused on caste.

Medium-term goals include the following:

• Disseminate information and materials to all major groups within the Rutgers community
• Launch a “Becoming Anti-Casteist” webpage
• Sponsor a series of teach-ins on all Rutgers campuses about caste

Long-term goals include following:

• Collect voluntary identification of caste status pursuant to achieving greater equity
• Create a dedicated fellowship or visiting scholar position to offer courses about caste and caste-based discrimination at Rutgers
• Systematically collect stories of caste-based discrimination at Rutgers.
• Review Rutgers recruitment practices to ensure representation from diverse castes.
• Organise, separately, healing circles for the caste-oppressed and the caste privileged

“During the Fall semester, we will push the administration to accept the report’s recommendations — which were supported nearly unanimously by task force members, including those from the administration — to help cultivate greater equity within the Rutgers community,” said Rutgers AAUP-AFT in a post on X (formerly Twitter).