Ben Eidelson

When you’re so busy crowing about your political motivations that you forget to pretend you did it for the Jews.

I have learned a ton from engaging across differences with Sherif and this essay is a wonderful example. Highly recommended!

Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and Title VI: A Guide for the Perplexed - Harvard Law Review The past eighteen months have seen an unprecedented wave of claims by public officials and private plaintiffs that universities are violating their legal obligations...

The op-ed draws on my co-authored article on "Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and Title VI" with @hellmandeborah.bsky.social in the Harvard Law Review Forum, available here: harvardlawreview.org/forum/vol-13... (3/3)

Most glaringly, it treats speech acts (like putting an anti-Israel sign on your laptop) as discrimination against a group if they disproportionately _affect_ that group—no intent needed. This is a form of disparate impact, a linchpin of civil rights that Trump has pronounced unconstitutional. (2/3)

Trump goes ‘woke’ in report on antisemitism at Harvard - The Boston Globe What is most striking is the brazen hypocrisy — one might even say chutzpah — of the Trump lawyers’ arguments.

As I explain in this @bostonglobe.com op-ed, the new Trump ruling on antisemitism at Harvard is deeply ironic—it quietly embraces ideas about anti-discrimination law that the administration has repudiated for civil rights claims by every other group. (1/3)

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/03/o...

P.S. if somehow I missed what they're actually citing there, I will delete this. But I looked pretty hard before posting this and I really don't see it.

Is it possible OCR turned “As a Muslim woman who wears hijab, I have been spat on and harassed in multiple places on campus” into "reports of Jewish and Israeli students being spit on in the face for wearing a yarmulke"??

If so, that pretty well sums up the seriousness of this investigation. (3/3)

But the only mention of spitting in that part of the report is a complaint by a "Muslim woman who wears hijab." And there are no complaints of spitting anywhere else in the report either (though there's another mention of "spitting at pro-Palestinian demonstrators"). (2/3)

A stunning and telling error in the Title VI "notice of violation" against Harvard:

One of the document's most striking claims is that Harvard ignored "reports of Jewish and Israeli students being spit on in the face for wearing a yarmulke." This is repeated in their letter & in news coverage.(1/3)

Reading the Title VI "notice of violation" against Harvard makes stark that, to a large extent, the target is not antisemitism (not even trumped up claims of antisemitism) but protests. Where in these descriptions of alleged misconduct is the discrimination against Jewish (or Israeli) students?

www.hhs.gov/sites/defaul...

Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and Title VI: A Guide for the Perplexed - Harvard Law Review The past eighteen months have seen an unprecedented wave of claims by public officials and private plaintiffs that universities are violating their legal obligations...

But if the administration thinks "faculty members from the Harvard Law School ... are presumably familiar with legal evidentiary burdens of proof," they might be interested in one such faculty member's explanation of why these Title VI claims are very dubious: harvardlawreview.org/forum/vol-13...

There is much that's far-fetched and remarkable about Trump admin's new Title VI finding against Harvard. One example is this bizarre bit about why claims in Harvard's antisemitism report can be treated as evidence—despite the task force's explanation that it 'did not require ... evidence'! (1/2)

This Ogles letter is deranged and incompetent on many levels. The Supreme Court addressed the standard for denaturalization in a unanimous opinion less than a decade ago and every one of the many elements it required is absent. Reporters covering this stunt should tell their readers as much.

"Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and Title VI: A Guide for the Perplexed" is now out: tinyurl.com/3wpvbnzu

Thanks to HLR editors for fast & diligent editing and to the many who've engaged with us since we posted the draft. And of course to @hellmandeborah.bsky.social for another great collaboration.

Some takeaways from our new article on Title VI and antisemitism/antizionism (cc @hellmandeborah.bsky.social) in this @chronicle.com Q&A with @shenandoahkate.bsky.social. Full paper: ssrn.com/abstract=527...

Discrimination cases unravel as Trump scraps core civil rights tenet The administration is dismissing cases and unwinding settlements built on "disparate impact," which holds that even neutral policies can lead to biased outcomes.

Trump's renunciation of disparate impact is ironic: As @hellmandeborah.bsky.social and I explain in new paper, the disparate impact regulation is likely essential to any plausible Title VI theory re: campus antisemitism. Reporters should ask if they're making an exception!

ssrn.com/abstract=527...

I appreciate what @beidelson.bsky.social & @hellmandeborah.bsky.social have accomplished here: a concise and thoughtful guide to the reach of Title VI when it comes to antisemitism and speech about Israel.

The Trump Administration's attacks on universities, supposedly regarding antisemitism, are...

These issues are discussed in section 1 of the paper if you’re interested.

Very important guide for navigating the complexities here, including especially the nature of "deliberate indifference" in the context of a deeply contested mix of values and rights at stake.

New to Bluesky, and posting a new paper: "Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and Title VI: A Guide for the Perplexed" -- with @beidelson.bsky.social.

Forthcoming in Harv. L. Rev. Forum in June. (papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....).

A thread follows.

Thanks to many colleagues (incl. @casssunstein.bsky.social, @micahschwartzman.bsky.social, @nikobowie.bsky.social, @ryandoerfler.bsky.social, @noahfeldman.bsky.social, @sherifgirgis.bsky.social) for helpful conversations and to @hellmandeborah.bsky.social for another very rewarding collaboration!

Bottom line: colleges should of course tackle hate & discrimination, but the Title VI claims are much weaker than recent discussion (& media coverage) would suggest.

More details in the paper (which is written to be of readable length!): ssrn.com/abstract=5271044

... but the recent claims are distinctive in many other ways too. E.g., the claims are enmeshed w/ disputed views about world affairs, with special risks that accommodation will chill speech. And not clear that Arab students' complaints (best comparator) have gotten more solicitude in same period.

... over adult students' patterns of social behavior and aren't plausibly liable for failing to purge all hostility around charged political issues.

5) Claims of a double standard in reacting to complaints are also shaky. Must allege that the *reason* for any disparity was a difference in race...

4) Also, institutional liability for hostile environment depends on *absence of reasonable response*, not fact of harassment. And this too is context-sensitive. SCOTUS barely upheld liability for K-12 school that did nothing about persistent sexual harassment. Universities have far less control ...

3) In any case, SCOTUS requires "objective offensiveness" indexed to social context, which should mostly rule out complaints about contested slogans in public spaces at universities ("intifada," "river to sea," etc.). Standards for workplace or K-12 harassment would not just mechanically apply.

Therefore, if "hostile environment" must comprise covered disparate treatment, discrimination against Zionists doesn't count.

2) Can basis instead be other "racially offensive" conduct? Maybe—but probably only under disparate impact theory that Trump repudiated and SCOTUS killed for private suits.

These claims face several legal hurdles that haven't gotten much attention.

1) Title VI doesn't cover "religion," only "race" (and "nat'l origin"). So the Q isn't whether anti-Zionism is antisemitic; it's whether anti-Zionism is racist. Courts' thin account of race mostly precludes that.

ANTISEMITISM, ANTI-ZIONISM, AND TITLE VI: A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED Benjamin Eidelson & Deborah Hellman ABSTRACT Universities are facing an unprecedented wave of claims that they have violated their obligations to Jewish students under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. These charges center on an equally unprecedented wave of anti-Israel activity on college campuses, much of which is alleged to cross the line into antisemitism. This essay, forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review Forum, provides one of the first systematic analyses of these exceptionally high-stakes claims about Title VI. Our analysis reveals that the Title VI claims face formidable hurdles, including some that have received surprisingly little attention thus far. Most fundamentally, Title VI’s omission of “religion” as a protected characteristic means that Jewishness is protected under the statute only insofar as it constitutes a “race” or (less likely) a “national origin.” Under existing law, however, discrimination based on the cultural practices or viewpoints that may be associated with such an immutable characteristic—as Zionism might be associated with Jewishnessis ordinarily not cognizable as discrimination based on the protected characteristic itself. Moreover, if “hostile environment” liability can be founded on offensive conduct that does not constitute covered disparate treatment in its own right, this is likely possible only pursuant to a disparate impact theory that the Trump Administration has denounced and that the Supreme Court has rejected for private suits. Any notion of harassment based on conduct’s “objective offensiveness” would also need to account for distinctive features of the university setting that likely preclude liability for much of the protest activity that has loomed large in recent public discussions of Jewish students’ experiences on campus. Although specific facts matter and not all of the issues are clear-cut, we thus conclude that appeals to Title VI in

New paper: "Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and Title VI: A Guide for the Perplexed" — with @hellmandeborah.bsky.social.

Forthcoming in Harv L Rev Forum (ssrn.com/abstract=5271044)

This is one of the first systematic analyses of the wave of Title VI claims over campus antisemitism. A quick summary 🧵: