I'm probably alone on this... at least on this forum.... but when universities don't consistently enforce their rules, and allow students to call for the elimination of Israel/Jews, they shouldn't get money.
1. There's such a thing as the First Amendment, right? As in, universities can teach whatever they want to teach; they cannot be targeted by the government for the content of that expression. In this case, it's actually worse -- it's targeting based on viewpoint, which is the ultimate First Amendment sin.
2. But you're saying things like : they are discriminating against some students. The speech in question is actually conduct. And those distinctions are, in fact, relevant here. On that, you're not wrong.
And indeed, that's why the First Amendment isn't necessarily the right way to look at this, in the first instance. The schools can be reprimanded. But there is a process for doing so, and a list of prescribed remedies. Cutting of "all funding" is not among them on these facts, as far as I know, and not by administrative fiat. I will readily admit that I'm not very knowledgeable about the issues surrounding compliance with educational non-discrimination law, but I would be very surprised if it was OK for the government to say, "you get nothing unless you adopt our view on this contested matter."
If the administration had gone through the proper processes, then the action might be perfectly legal. But of course neither Trump nor MAGA have any patience for process. They have to do everything with the stroke of a pen. So the way they are doing things is very likely illegal.
Once the proper procedures have been skipped, then the First Am becomes relevant and the administration should and will likely be deemed to have violated it. There's really no other way to describe these denials of funding.
3. In addition, speech cannot be curtailed based on unflattering interpretations of it. This is a concept called the "heckler's veto." The heckler doesn't get to decide what a speaker means, nor can the heckler's rowdiness be the basis for curtailing speech. This concept is very old and well-established in case law. It also makes eminent sense.
In this case, your attempt to interpret speech to fit your narrative -- i.e. that "from the river to the sea" is a statement calling for the destruction of Israel -- is a classic heckler's veto. It's not the way it works. It would be a different case if someone was using speech as intimidation and trying to cloak that behind neutral meanings -- for instance, if someone were to walk around campus saying, "I love to fuck MAGAs up their tiny tight assholes with a broom handle," I don't think the court would credit a defendant who claimed he was merely talking about his sexual preferences. I think that would be deemed a threat.
But this case isn't that, because the meanings of the speech in question are genuinely and reasonably contested. The government cannot say, "schools, you lose funding without due process because you interpret the phrase "from the river to the sea" differently than we do."
www.nytimes.com
