The Department of Education is required by law to guard against discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in higher education. Now the agency is telling college and university administrators they can only achieve this important goal by violating the First Amendment.

That’s the chilling takeaway from agreements publicized this month between the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the University of Michigan, the City University of New York, and Lafayette College, which were under investigation for their post-October 7 responses to alleged anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. 

In some cases, when students complained about instances of political speech — such as a social media post using the phrase “from the river to the sea” or protesters shouting about “Nazi liberation” — the schools correctly determined the expression is First Amendment-protected speech. 

But to meet institutional obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, OCR now says campus administrators should have continued investigating.