1/ The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights just released its report on campus antisemitism and Title VI. I testified at the hearing. The report is unanimous, bipartisan, & debunks the main legal theories behind recent attacks on universities for allegedly tolerating antisemitism. 🧵
![Title VI’s restriction to ancestry-based harassment also means that the Government’s allegations about the intensity of anti-Israel or “anti-Zionist” sentiment on campus are mostly beside
the point. E.g., AC ¶¶ 9, 19–21, 51, 54, 56, 68, 79, 97. Drawing on the same Harvard report, for
example, the Government stresses that many Jewish survey respondents “indicated they had experienced some form of discrimination, stereotyping, or negative bias on campus due to their views
on current events.” Id. ¶ 85 (emphasis added). Those experiences certainly matter for a university
that aims to foster respectful engagement amid profound disagreements. But under Stand With Us,
the Government must allege facts suggesting that the hostility felt by these students was not simply
“due to their views on current events”—even if those views were despised by many of their peers—
but rather owed to their Jewish or Israeli birth. Assuming arguendo that many Harvard students
reject the legitimacy of a specifically Jewish state in the historic Land of Israel—and that many of
those anti-Zionist students exhibited intolerance toward everyone who disagreed with them—those
hostile students still would not have engaged in discrimination covered by Title VI. See, e.g., Kestenbaum v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, 743 F. Supp. 3d 297, 311 (D. Mass. 2024)
(“[V]iewpoint discrimination . . . is not actionable under Title VI.”).](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:tb2bwzxom5qv4542ru3zqcgu/bafkreie2f337gnqfn3vjul6n2vijue3zjnnluhdtg2xu4wuncv5ejie7iq)
