(José Niño, Headline USA) A Harvard Law School professor has ignited a national debate over whether universities can legally exclude students who support Israel from campus life, arguing that anti-Zionism may constitute illegal discrimination under federal civil rights law.
Stephen E. Sachs, who holds the Antonin Scalia professorship at Harvard Law School, published an essay in the Harvard Law Review Forum titled “Zionism and Title VI.”
In the essay, she argued that when universities make anti-Zionism a condition of participation in campus activities, they may violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The law prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in federally funded programs.
Sachs wrote the essay in response to criticism from fellow Harvard University professors Benjamin Eidelson and Deborah Hellman, who questioned whether Title VI could apply to campus anti-Zionism. His argument centers on the claim that Israel represents the Jewish national home in the same way Greece represents the Greek people or Czechia represents the Czech people.
“If made a condition of full participation in university life, anti-Zionism is a form of national-origin discrimination, creating a hostile environment for Israelis forced to abjure their national origin or Jews forced to abjure their nationhood,” Sachs wrote. He argued that requiring students to renounce Zionism is comparable to demanding they reject any other national identity, which would clearly violate federal law.
The controversy emerged after Oct. 7, 2023, when protests erupted across American campuses following the attack on Israel. Unlike earlier demonstrations focused on Palestinian statehood, these protests explicitly targeted Zionism itself. Campus protesters displayed messages declaring “Zionists not allowed” and chanted “Zionists not welcome here” outside classes and Jewish facilities at Columbia University and Harvard.
Sachs noted that at the University of California Los Angeles, protesters allegedly blocked campus passages to anyone unwilling to denounce Zionism, with university staff directing excluded students to alternate routes. Federal investigators accused the institution of creating a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students.
Sachs argued that universities cannot avoid responsibility by claiming protest activity falls under protected speech. “When a university abandons its ordinary rules, ceding to a protest movement the authority to deny access to campus spaces and resources, it bears greater responsibility for that movement’s actions and renders more menacing that movement’s demands,” he wrote.
The Department of Health and Human Services found Harvard in violation of Title VI earlier this year, determining the university showed “deliberate indifference” to harassment creating a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students. The finding came amid multiple federal investigations into how elite universities have handled campus tensions over Israel and Palestine.
Sachs acknowledged the tension between anti-discrimination law and free speech but insisted universities must protect students from exclusion based on their national identity or peoplehood. “The campus anti-Zionist movement needn’t be classified as antisemitism in law for it to be antisemitic in fact,” he wrote, suggesting that legal standards and moral judgments operate on different planes.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
