In November, the AAUP and the Middle East Studies Association released a new report finding that the weaponization of civil rights law constituted a key element in attacks on campus speech over the past two years. The report, Discriminating Against Dissent: The Weaponization of Civil Rights Law to Repress Campus Speech on Palestine, is the first systematic empirical study of government investigations and private lawsuits against US colleges and universities under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The report emphasizes how the Civil Rights Act—enacted following years of nonviolent civil disobedience against racial injustice—has now become a tool in the hands of those eager to crush political dissent and speech that advocates for Palestinian human rights. At the same time, the Trump administration appears to have completely halted investigations based on complaints of racial harassment. While reprehensible acts of antisemitism have no doubt occurred on campuses over the last two years, the report demonstrates that most federal antisemitism investigations originated with complaints from individuals and organizations having no relationship to the colleges and universities in question.
Pressured by pro-Israel groups, the Biden administration took steps to advance the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism and compelled over twenty schools to accept agreements requiring them, among other measures, to hand over extensive data on internal antisemitism complaints—including the names of accusers and accused. The Trump administration has gone even further, weaponizing antisemitism as a pretext to advance broader far-right agendas for higher education. The report analyzes the work of the administration’s multiagency Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, including its pretextual use of antisemitism allegations to cut federal funding to universities and to extract coercive agreements from Columbia and Brown Universities, among others.
In its conclusion the report recommends, among other actions, that faculties, administrations, and governing boards refuse to comply with unlawful federal government demands based on Title VI investigations that impinge on institutional autonomy or faculty academic freedom (including the faculty’s role in governance) and that administrations and governing boards publicly affirm their commitment to defending academic freedom.