(Bloomberg) -- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been added to a list of US universities being investigated by the US Education Department for discrimination following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. 

The agency updated its Office of Civil Rights website Tuesday, adding MIT to a list of colleges that includes Harvard University, Columbia University, Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania. The schools are being probed following complaints of incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia on college campuses since the attack and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza. 

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act bars discrimination based on race, color or national origin in institutions that receive federal funding. While the Education Department could withhold funding from schools, it typically seeks to negotiate settlements. 

MIT’s president, Sally Kornbluth, was one of three university leaders who testified this month about antisemitism on campus before the House Education and the Workforce Committee. Harvard’s Claudine Gay, Penn’s Liz Magill and Kornbluth were excoriated for their failure to clearly condemn calls for genocide of Jews as a violation of school policy. Magill has since stepped down, while Kornbluth and Gay have received the support of their boards.

Hamas is designated a terrorist group by the US and European Union.

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.