Campus Protest Investigations Hang Over Schools as New Academic Year Begins

With a new academic year well underway, more than 60 colleges and universities are still under federal investigation over antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents during the campus protests that swept the United States after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, according to the Department of Education.

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has opened inquiries into dozens of schools over the past year, checking for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on ethnicity or race.

Documents released by the department show that around 80 percent of the Oct. 7-related investigations it undertook stemmed from complaints about antisemitism, and that many of those complaints came to the department through conservative and pro-Jewish legal advocacy groups, including several founded by high-ranking former Education Department officials.

Under federal scrutiny, which carries the risk of losing federal funding, dozens of schools still facing government inquiries have moved quickly to pre-empt large campus disruptions and enforce stricter limits on certain types of speech and demonstrations.

But with anger simmering on college campuses about the violence in Gaza ahead of the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack, the volume of unresolved investigations has worried some civil rights experts who warn that pressure from the department could make school administrators eager to shut down protected speech.

As campus demonstrations began to roil college campuses last year, a network of conservative and Jewish advocacy groups — such as the Brandeis Center, the Defense of Freedom Institute, StandWithUs and the Lawfare Project — mobilized, lodging complaints against many prominent colleges and