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The Civil Rights Law Shutting Down Pro-Palestine Speech [1]
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Date: 2025-01
Even when plaintiffs lose Title VI lawsuits, as they did at MIT in August, the cases may still accomplish what they set out to do, said Lakier. “The Barnard situation is a great example of how even the existence of a lawsuit [somewhere] might have the effect of chilling speech, or on the willingness of administrators to tolerate certain kinds of speech, because it’s creating a whole set of examples of the kinds of things that you could potentially get in trouble for doing,” she said. Lakier argued that the lawsuits are not legally sound, but noted that that may not interfere with their intended purpose. “These lawsuits are operating in a political environment in which they want to be able to turn the political disagreements—about whether Israel is a colonial oppressor, or whether what’s happening right now is genocide—into questions of discrimination and harassment,” she said. “These risk-averse university administrators, who do not want to get in trouble in any way, or lose donor funding, or get bad publicity, are going to think that the easiest way of avoiding a bad outcome is to repress speech that somebody says violates Title VI.”
Israel advocates hope that a new Trump administration will help them build on their successes, enforcing Title VI even more vigorously. As Trump’s second term in office approaches, such groups are calling for increased funding to help the DOE combat what they define as antisemitism; they have also demanded the issuing of DOE regulations on how to enforce Trump’s 2019 executive order. “We will urge the Trump Administration to continue to reach resolution agreements and enforce existing agreements,” an ADL spokesperson told Jewish Currents, and “will continue to call for the [DOE] to be equipped with the resources necessary to protect Jewish students and faculty on campus . . . so that the Department of Education has the full capacity to investigate complaints alleging antisemitic harassment and discrimination.” Roz Rothstein, the CEO of pro-Israel group StandWithUs, concurred. “StandWithUs expects that the DOE-OCR will continue its consideration of the international consensus IHRA definition in its investigations, and apply efficiency and careful scrutiny to the allegations of antisemitism in the complaints it receives,” she said. “We look forward to any changes that . . . hold certain schools accountable for failure to enforce their own rules.”
The ADL and allied groups’ push to use Title VI to target anti-Zionist speech has ample support in Congress, where members have advanced a range of measures to supercharge the statute’s repressive utility. One such bill, introduced in April in response to pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia, would allow the DOE to install an antisemitism monitor at any college or university receiving federal funding. The monitor would publish public reports detailing the progress universities have made in combating alleged antisemitism, and would provide an annual report to Congress recommending policies and sanctions the DOE and Congress should pursue in response to what they call antisemitism. Another bill, introduced in July, would impose increased fines on, and potentially revoke the tax-exempt status of, universities found to be in violation of Title VI. While neither of these bills has received a vote so far, a third measure has advanced farther: the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which mandates that the DOE, while investigating Title VI complaints, consider the IHRA definition when determining whether a school presents a hostile environment for Jewish students. The bill was passed by the House of Representatives in May; while the Senate has yet to take up the bill, the office of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he planned to bring it up for a vote before the end of the year. “These members of Congress are looking at the situation and saying that universities clearly have too much wiggle room on how they deal with protesters and what they do and don’t consider antisemitism,” said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation of Middle East Peace. “The legislation is intended to remove that wiggle room.”
Analysts say that the effort to remake civil rights law as a silencing tool could accelerate even further if Trump follows through on his pledge to upend the DOE. During his campaign, Trump promised to abolish the department entirely—a call echoed in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the incoming Trump administration, which recommends that the Department of Justice take over OCR. “The DOE conceives of itself as promoting the healthy functioning of the American educational system,” Lakier said. That mandate can sometimes come into tension with aggressive enforcement of Title VI. By contrast, she noted, the DOJ’s core mission is law enforcement, which fits much better with the right’s attempt to use Title VI as a punitive tool against protesters.
Ultimately, Lakier said, a Trump OCR—whether it’s housed at the DOE or the DOJ—will be equipped with the tools to put unprecedented pressure on schools, pushing them to crack down on pro-Palestinian activism. “Federal funding is a powerful weapon that the federal government has used in the past to shape university decision-making,” said Lakier, “and there is no reason to think the Trump administration won’t use it aggressively to advance its own agenda on college campuses.”
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[1] Url:
https://jewishcurrents.org/civil-rights-law-pro-palestine-speech-israel-trump
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