OPINION:
As thousands of undergraduates return to America’s campuses, they are not walking into the same campus cultures they left behind in the spring. The Trump administration’s July settlement with Columbia University was a hallmark victory for a functioning and resilient civil rights movement and has opened a floodgate of reforms at colleges across the country.
The Columbia settlement was more than a legal outcome; it signaled that change for America’s elite educational institutions is here to stay. These changes will reshape students’ campus life and bring the effects and institutionalizations of civil rights in our educational system to their final form. For too long, programs masquerading behind equal rights terminology have been used to silence debate, protect certain groups and propagate a single story of the role of civil rights in this country. Now, these programs have been pushed into the public sphere, forcing a reckoning on discourse, censorship and equal rights across America’s education systems.
The Trump administration’s settlement has created an era of public accountability for universities, which can no longer outsource responsibilities for their students’ experience. When harassment of any type escalates, students, faculty and public supporters feel empowered to hold universities accountable for protecting their rights. In the ruins of outdated and untransparent university enforcement of civil rights policy, clear and responsive guardrails should be accessible to all students.
The only reason Columbia’s violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act was even a question for public debate is that Jewish students were the victims. Had any other minority group been doxed or harassed or otherwise faced the threats experienced by Columbia’s Jewish population, condemnation would have been swift and absolute. Instead, administrative and academic wavering was rendered not as neutrality but as complicity. It left a question mark on statements and policies where there should have been an exclamation mark in support of Jewish students’ equal rights.
Columbia’s settlement enshrines across America’s campuses that students can demand these types of responses from their administration and must not feel cornered by popular campus sentiment or opinions into silence. Students should not feel fear as they return to campus; they should feel empowered to embrace and use a more transparent, responsive and individual civil rights system.
Signs of change have become visible at campuses across the country as calls for university accountability have pushed forward in the public sphere. Advocacy groups have launched billboard campaigns near major campuses with messages such as: “Being Jewish shouldn’t require campus security” and “Jewish students don’t need your pity. Just your spine.”
Such visible calls to action are reshaping the climate and pressing administrators to match rhetoric with results. It has been long overdue for a line in the sand to be drawn between constructive debate and harassment. For too long, university administration and faculty have been complicit in abdicating their responsibility in drawing and standing by this line, making them complicit in the hostile campus cultures that have resulted from their negligence.
For students and faculty, the Trump administration’s settlement with Columbia is not a relic of the spring; it’s the rule book for this fall. Universities that once leaned on ambiguity will be expected to act with clarity: posting enforceable policies, investigating complaints promptly, and drawing bright lines between protest and harassment. In light of these new guidelines, it is up to students to revitalize intellectual debate on campus.
Administrative action can go only so far if students do not take agency for the culture they create. They should want constructive debate, welcoming environments, and to feel challenged and valued by their classmates. It is the type of culture that young Americans create when given the opportunity to act without dogma that will decide our future. It is up to our students to return to America’s core intellectual values: to respect debate, challenge ideas and not people, and not fear the perspectives they do not know.
• Y. David Scharf, an experienced litigator and community leader, is co-managing partner of New York law firm Morrison Cohen and chair of its Government Strategies & Controversies practice. The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the firm.
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