Free Speech and Title VI at California Colleges and Universities
My latest Verdict column discusses some of the most recent events in the ongoing conflict on college campuses in the wake of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack and the ensuing extremely deadly Israeli military campaign in Gaza. The column focuses mostly on last week's news concerning and at Columbia University. As I note, one day after testifying before Congress in a way that seemed calculated to avoid the fates of former University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill and former Harvard President Claudine Gay, Columbia President Minouche Shafik invited the police to arrest student-protesters who had erected a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus. My column uses the Columbia events as a springboard for explaining what I regard as the central legal clash there and elsewhere. On one hand, Title VI (which applies to nearly all U.S. colleges and universities because of the broad definition of federal funding) obligates colleges and universities to ensure that students are not