Robert Shibley is special counsel for campus advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He tells American Family News that colleges and universities are being told by the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) that they must guard against discrimination on the basis of color, race or national origin – even if it means violating the First Amendment in order to do so.
"[OCR has] decided … a hostile environment [exists] on campus even if what the people are saying is protected by the Constitution or by the school's own policy [and that] they still have a responsibility to somehow prevent it from happening," Shibley explains. "There's really no way to do that."
Three institutions of higher learning – the University of Michigan, the City University of New York, and Lafayette College – all faced federal investigations in recent months for their post-October 7 responses to alleged anti-Semitism and "Islamophobia."
According to FIRE, the message schools are hearing is clear and "chilling": to avoid federal anti-discrimination investigations, the school will have little choice but to violate the First Amendment.
In creating this new standard, the OCR is threatening to punish those who don't comply with the law, Shibley says.
"In one resolution agreement, the school actually agreed to send the names of every person who had been accused of harassment, every person who said they had been a victim of harassment, etcetera all to a big federal government database," he states.
FIRE warns that without a course-correction, students and faculty with controversial views will face formal investigations merely for expressing themselves.
