A new paper of mine, "The Etiquette of Equality," is out in Philosophy & Public Affairs. It tackles a hard set of issues about how we convey respect amid social inequality. I hope others will find it thought-provoking, maybe even clarifying or useful. doi.org/10.1111/papa.12230 1/6

8/ Drawing on testimony by @glakier & others, the report distinguishes targeted abuse from rallies, chants, signs, and other speech addressed to the campus at large. In a university setting, the latter receives much greater First Amendment protection, even when very offensive.

7/ The report also stresses that an actionable “hostile environment” is not simply an alienating campus climate. The standard is much more demanding: severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive harassment, where "objective" offensiveness is informed by the First Amendment.

6/ Namely, even if subjective intent weren't necessary, the protesters' message would at least need to be "demeaning of the protected class (i.e., people of Jewish ancestry) as such and not simply of ideas or institutions that [they] are more likely … to value."

5/ The report then explains why—contrary to the pending Trump administration lawsuit— events like the anti-Israel "study-ins" at Harvard aren't plausibly covered as harassment: ...

4/ At the same time, anti-Zionism can be a pretext for anti-Jewish discrimination. Excluding “Zionists” by picking out people with Jewish-sounding names, for example, is ancestry discrimination. The report rightly acknowledges that this is a point of broad agreement too.

3/ That distinction matters for Zionism. Rejecting claims of some, the report says my "reluctance to treat Zionism as a protected facet of Jewish ancestry appears to align with current law”; beliefs about who should govern a certain territory are distinct from anyone's ancestry.

2/ First, it emphasizes the "broad agreement" that "Title VI protects against discrimination based on a person’s ancestry rather than their beliefs"; the law is concerned with "immutable, heritable characteristics." (Screenshots below are from usccr.gov/files/2026-09/anti…)

1/ The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights just released its report on campus antisemitism and Title VI. I testified at the hearing. The report is unanimous, bipartisan, & debunks the main legal theories behind recent attacks on universities for allegedly tolerating antisemitism. 🧵

Truly the greatest thing for @Harvard_Law and especially our students. I loved our faculty already but this is a huge boost that's going to make us all smarter, and kinder too. A great day!

Check out the new read aloud feature in @CaseViewerApp, thanks to a suggestion from @lessig. The app keeps getting better, although the name has now gotten decidedly less apt! Free to try, cheap to subscribe, and discount codes available if you need one. caseviewer.app

The brief explains why the lawsuit is foreclosed by both Title VI and the First Amdt. It also highlights some striking distortions in the govt's version of events (like blatantly misquoting an email & apparently defining opposition to speech restrictions as "anti-Israeli"). (2/2)