We mentioned not long ago the firing of an anti-Zionist tenured professor at Muehlenberg College, and now the Office of Civil Rights report on the case is public.  It contains two pieces of information of significance. 

First, OCR says there were "repeated reports in a single semester regarding a professor’s classroom statements and social media posts that created a potential hostile environment for Jewish students."  Faculty have no right under AAUP standards to utilize classroom time for political statements unrelated to their subject-matter.  If, as CHE reports and the OCR implies, Professor Finkelstein did that, she could be sanctioned for it.  The OCR report also says that "the college received…allegations, which the college confirmed, that the professor had entered the Hillel space on campus, photographed a student fundraising display for 'the various war efforts in Israel' and posted denigrating comments on Instagram regarding the students."   This also seems to me unprotected behavior:  students have a reasonable expectation that their lawful political speech on campus will not be photographed by faculty for purposes of extramural denigration of them.

Much more alarming, however, is that the OCR has now put its imprint on the proposition that there is a "Title VI obligation to take steps reasonably calculated to redress any hostile environment related to shared ancestry affecting the education program or activity, if one exists, even if the conduct occurs on private social media and involves political speech. Students had reported significant anxiety and fear resulting from the professor’s comments in class and on social media that impacted their access to education" (emphasis added).  The idea that the lawful extramural speech in private about political topics can form the basis for sanctioning a faculty member is a massive infringement on the existing contractual rights of academic freedom under AAUP standards.  The fact that students reporting "anxiety and fear" based on "comments…on social media" can be a factor a college may consider in imposing sanctions is not just a "weaponizing" of Title VI, it turns Title VI into a nuclear warhead directed at otherwise lawful political speech by faculty.

Consider how the next Trump OCR will utilize this.  Every faculty member critical of Israel and/or Zionism will now be a potential target for organized student complaints about their political speech–on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, as well as in opinion pieces in the traditional media.  So too will the faculty member critical of American imperialism:  after all, patrotic American students will report "fear and anxiety" about that professor's classroom, given their hostility to American policy.   Indeed, a faculty member critical of American immigration policy, or American domestic policy, may cause patriotic American students to feel "fear and anxiety" as Americans in that faculty member's classroom.   Even now, a faculty member critical of Hindu nationalism in India will have to worry about being brought up on Title VI charges by their Indian students.  A faculty member critical of any political movement associated with any nation is now a potential target.

But not just that.   For many years, I wrote critically about the "Texas Taliban," reactionary Christians in Texas who exercise a malign influence on social and educational policy in the state.   Christian students in my classes could, under this new standard, complain that my political speech created a hostile enviroment for them in the classroom.  Indeed, I would predict that conservative Christians will weaponize Title VI against professors under a second Trump administration.   After all, isn't the professor in Tennesse critical of the state's policies towards trans people creating a hostile evironment for conservative Christians who support those policies?

Unless a federal court steps in and strikes down this extension of Title VI to otherwise lawful political speech outside the classroom, Title VI will become a potent instrument of political repression in the academy.