FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 A
Politics & the Nation
BY ANNE GEARANPresident Trump’s point per-
son on talks between Israel and
the Palestinians said Thursday
that he will soon leave his post,
with no date announced to re-
lease the U.S.-drawn peace pro-
posal.
The departure of lawyer Jason
D. Greenblatt leaves the
Arab-Israeli peace effort without
its top full-time leader. Although
Greenblatt has long said he did
not intend to stay indefinitely, his
departure now suggests that the
team led by presidential aide and
son-in-law Jared Kushner sees
few prospects for direct peace
negotiations.
Greenblatt would have played
the role of front-line U.S. negotia-
tor for talks Trump once hoped to
launch, with a goal of what the
former New York real estate de-
veloper called the “ultimate deal.”
It does not appear that Trump
plans to bring in another lawyer
or special envoy to replace Green-
blatt, and it has been months
since Trump spoke with any en-
thusiasm about Arab-Israeli
peace.
The peace effort bogged down
in its first year, when Trump
fulfilled a campaign promise to
declare that the United States
recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s
capital. Palestinians, who claim
part of the holy city as their
capital, walked away from the
Kushner-Greenblatt effort and
have refused all official contact
with the administration since De-
cember 2017.
That left Greenblatt to oversee
an attempt to prod negotiations
from the margins, while the
Trump administration took steps
to isolate and undermine what
Greenblatt called an obstruction-
ist and hidebound Palestinian
leadership.
The goal became to show Pales-
tinians and their Arab backers a
path to better jobs and lives
through settling the decades-long
conflict, and effecting an end-run
around the governing Palestinian
Authority.
It hasn’t worked.
Greenblatt said last month
that the detailed peace package
he had spent more than two years
drafting would remain under
wraps up until at least after Is-
raeli elections Sept. 17, the latest
of numerous delays meant to give
the plan a chance. It is not clear
whether the White House will go
ahead with the release immedi-
ately after the vote, in which close
Trump ally Benjamin Netanyahu
is trying to extend his term as
prime minister.
“It has been the honor of a
lifetime to have worked in the
White House for over 2^1 / 2 years
under the leadership of President
Trump. I am incredibly grateful
to have been part of a team that
drafted a vision for peace,” Green-blatt said in a statement released
by the White House. “This vision
has the potential to vastly im-
prove the lives of millions of
Israelis, Palestinians and others
in the region.”
The administration has de-
clined to publicly endorse the
long-held U.S. goal of a separate,
independent Palestinian state.
Trump has said he prefers that
outcome but would accept what
both sides find most workable.
The Kushner-Greenblatt plan
is expected to call for Palestinian
self-governance that is short of a
fully sovereign state, although
U.S. officials have never been
explicit on that point. Instead,
Kushner has said that his goal is
to break out of established expec-
tations for what a peace agree-ment would look like.
Greenblatt’s announcement
comes just before Trump will see
world leaders at the annual Unit-
ed Nations General Assembly this
month. He spoke at length about
his hopes for Middle East peace at
last year’s session and had said
then that he intended to release
his plan within four months.
“I really believe something will
happen. It is a dream of mine to
be able to get that done before the
end of my first term,” Trump said
as he sat alongside Netanyahu at
last year’s U.N. gathering.
This year, the Middle East top-
ic capturing the most attention is
the possibility of a meeting be-
tween Trump and Iranian Presi-
dent Hassan Rouhani, a diplo-
matic endeavor that would goaround Netanyahu to seek a new,
stronger nuclear agreement.
There is no plan for any high-lev-
el U.S. discussion of Arab-Israeli
peace talks.
Trump praised Greenblatt in a
tweet Thursday.
“After almost 3 years in my
Administration, Jason Greenb-
latt will be leaving to pursue work
in the private sector. Jason has
been a loyal and great friend and
fantastic lawyer,” Trump wrote.
“His dedication to Israel and to
seeking peace between Israel and
the Palestinians won’t be forgot-
ten. He will be missed. Thank you
Jason!”
Greenblatt was Trump’s top
in-house lawyer at his real estate
and development company be-
fore joining the White House. Hedid not announce either an exact
departure date or plans for a next
job.
A senior administration offi-
cial told reporters Thursday that
the negotiating team’s portfolio
has partly merged with the ad-
ministration’s larger operation
focused on Iran. A senior Kush-
ner aide, Avi Berkowitz, will as-
sume an expanded role in the
peace portfolio, the official said.
The official, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity to discuss
a personnel matter, said the deci-
sion was Greenblatt’s and that he
wants to return home after re-
maining in Washington longer
than he had originally planned.
“He holds the confidence of the
president and his senior team,”
the official said.
Greenblatt’s team led a two-
day summit in June in Bahrain,
where he and Kushner presented
detailed but hypothetical plans to
improve jobs and economic out-
look for Palestinians in the occu-
pied West Bank and Gaza Strip, as
well as surrounding Arab states.
The more difficult issues, in-
cluding proposed borders, the
status of Jerusalem and Arab
land claims in Israel, were left out
of the plans. The Palestinians
rejected the package sight unseen
as biased toward Israel.
“Jason has done a tremendous
job leading the efforts to develop
an economic and political vision
for a long-sought-after peace in
the Middle East. His work has
helped develop the relationships
between Israel and its neighbors,
as he is trusted and respected by
all of the leaders throughout the
region,” Kushner said in remarks
released by the White House.
Netanyahu also released a
statement.
“I would like to thank Jason
Greenblatt for his dedicated work
to security and peace, and for not
hesitating for a moment to tell
the truth about the State of Israel
in front of all its abusers,” he said.
[email protected]Ruth Eglash in Jerusalem contributed
to this report.Trump’s lead Mideast negotiator to step down, peace plan still under wraps
LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS
Jason D. Greenblatt, right, President Trump’s point person on Arab-Israeli peace talks, speaks with White House senior adviser Jared
Kushner last year. Greenblatt’s departure, the timing of which is not yet clear, suggests that the Kushner-led team sees few prospects for
direct peace negotiations.BY SUSAN SVRLUGA
AND MORIAH BALINGITThe Education Department is
fining Michigan State University
a record $4.5 million and requir-
ing the school to make major
changes after finding a “systemic
failure to protect students from
sexual abuse.”
The public university has faced
a reckoning since Larry Nassar, a
former USA Gymnastics and
Michigan State sports doctor,
pleaded guilty to sexual assault.
Scores of women gave harrowing
testimony about the abuse they
suffered — and about how school
officials did not help them. That
was followed by revelations
about sexual harassment allega-
tions leveled against William
Strampel, who was the dean of
MSU’s College of Osteopathic
Medicine and Nassar’s supervi-
sor.
What happened at Michigan
State was “abhorrent, inexcus-
able, and a total and complete
failure to follow the law and
protect students,” said Education
Secretary Betsy DeVos, who had
launched investigations by the
Office for Civil Rights and the
Office of Federal Student Aid.
But some victims of Nassar
and leaders of campaigns to re-
duce sexual abuse on college
campuses said the penalty wasn’t
nearly severe enough given the
extent of the misdeeds and the
lack of response from university
leaders.
Tiffany Thomas Lopez, who
said she first reported Nassar’s
abuse to Michigan State in 1999,
called the penalty “inadequate”
and said she was afraid it would
not stop other universities from
hiding the crimes of sexual abus-
ers. “If MSU had believed me and
other survivors more than twenty
years ago,” she said in a written
statement, “at least 600 women
could have been spared sexual
abuse.”
Michigan State President Sam-
uel L. Stanley Jr. said Thursday he
had established an oversight
committee that would comply
with the Education Department’s
conditions spelled out in an
agreement letter. The university
signed an agreement with the
Education Department to make
major changes to the way ithandles complaints and prevents
sexual misconduct on campus.
“I’m grateful for the thorough-
ness of these investigations and
intend to use them as a blueprint
for action,” said Stanley, the
fourth person to lead the univer-
sity since the scandal broke.
The Office for Civil Rights in-
vestigation concluded that Michi-
gan State failed to adequately
respond to reports of sexual mis-
conduct by Nassar and Strampel,
failed to take steps to protect
students while complaints were
pending and failed to act to end
any harassment.
The Office for Civil Rights
found that “administrators at the
highest level of the University —
the President and the Provost —
had a long and disturbing history
of failing to take any effective
actions to address what was to
become, over the course over 14
years, a torrent of reports and
complaints about the Dean’s
sexually harassing conduct.”
The report found that Provost
June Youatt “failed to take effec-
tive action to address the increas-
ing number of comments from
faculty and staff issues concern-ing the Dean’s sexually inappro-
priate behavior.” Strampel was
reviewed and reappointed as
dean three times.
On Thursday morning, Stanley
spoke with Youatt and accepted
her resignation.
“I want to thank each of the
survivors who came forward and
shared their stories,” DeVos said
in a written statement. “Doing so
took an incredible amount of
courage. Never again should inci-
dents of sexual misconduct on
campuses — or anywhere — be
swept under the rug. Students,
faculty and staff must all feel
empowered to come forward,
know that they will be taken
seriously, and know that the De-
partment of Education will hold
schools accountable.”
John C. Manly, an attorney for
200 of Nassar’s victims, said the
fine “is essentially a punch in the
gut to my clients.” The univer-
sity’s budget is more than $1.
billion a year, he said. “A $4.
million fine is just incredibly
anemic. That’s not a disincentive
to anybody.”
The fault for that, Manly said,
“lies at Secretary DeVos’s feet.” Hesaid she and her family are
among the university’s largest
financial supporters. “This is not
an accident.”
Education Department
spokeswoman Elizabeth Hill said
in response to Manly’s comment,
“This is the largest fine in Clery
history.” The Clery Act requires
colleges and universities that par-
ticipate in the federal student
financial aid program to main-
tain and disclose crime statistics
and to warn students of an on-
going threat to their safety.
“To put this is perspective for
you,” Hill said, “Penn State’s Clery
fine was $2.4 million.”
That penalty in 2016 was in
connection with the Jerry San-
dusky scandal, in which the assis-
tant football coach was convicted
of sexually abusing several chil-
dren over more than a decade.
Jess Davidson, executive direc-
tor of the advocacy group End
Rape on Campus, said, “It’s ludi-
crous that DeVos claimed she
believes that sexual violence
must never again be swept under
the rug.” Davidson has criticized
the department’s attempts to al-
ter how Title IX is enforced, aproposal that would narrow the
kinds of cases colleges and uni-
versities are required to investi-
gate and allow schools to raise
the burden of proof for accusers
when adjudicating cases.
Manly praised the investiga-
tors who “essentially made a find-
ing that everything that Michi-
gan State’s leadership and their
lawyers have been saying about
this case are utter lies. They
engaged in the systemic protec-
tion of a pedophile,” he said.
Women have said they com-
plained to Michigan State offi-
cials as early as the 1990s. Nassar
was cleared in an investigation by
the school in 2014 after a woman
alleged he assaulted her.
In 2016, the Indianapolis Star
broke a story about a woman who
said she was assaulted by Nassar,
leading several more victims to
come forward. He was tried and
sentenced to 40 to 175 years in
connection with the assaults.
The university agreed last year
to pay $500 million to settle
lawsuits by 332 women who al-
leged abuse by Nassar.
[email protected]
[email protected]Record $4.5 million fine levied on MSU for ‘systemic failure’ in Nassar case
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