New AAUP-MESA Report Sheds Light on the Weaponization of Title VI Regulations in the Attack on Higher Education

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) published a report on November 5, 2025, titled “Discriminating Against Dissent: The Weaponization of Civil Rights Law to Repress Campus Speech on Palestine.” The report sheds important light on the role of Title VI regulations, complaints and investigations in the ongoing crisis of academic freedom within the United States. Based on a review of material published on the website of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights between 2013 and 2025, which reports the different modes in which speech is being curtailed at US universities as well as the key actors involved in the process. The report also places the current situation in the context of longer-term patterns regarding how Title VI has been used to regulate higher education in the US.

A part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VI concerns discrimination based on “race, color, or national origin” and requires higher education institutions that receive federal funds to take the necessary steps to prevent a hostile environment that allows for such discrimination. While initially part of legislation that aimed to prevent obstacles to obtaining higher education, the law is now being weaponized against critics of Israel and Zionism on the basis that such expressions constitute discrimination based on “shared ancestry.”

The report identifies three modalities through which Title VI is being weaponized: Title VI investigations by the Department of Education, private lawsuits filed against universities in federal court, and the actions of the Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism that has been citing potential Title VI violations to cut federal funding for higher education.

While the Task Force is new (created in February 2025), investigations and lawsuits have been available as options for a long time but have only started to be used much more frequently since October 7, 2023. In 2023, 25 Title VI investigations were opened, which is more than the total number (24) of Title VI investigations that were opened until 2023. An additional 39 in 2024 and 38 in 2025 (as of September 30, 2025) were opened in the next two years. While Title VI investigations regarding allegations of on-campus antisemitism started to be opened and reached record-high numbers under the Biden administration, the Trump administration has completely halted investigations of discrimination based on other categories, such as race. Title VI investigations opened in 2025 have only been about antisemitism through the inclusion of the “shared ancestry” category within Title VI under its new interpretation. The number of private Title VI lawsuits against institutions has also skyrocketed. 26 lawsuits have been filed since October 7, 2023. The total number of such lawsuits before that was 2.

This is not only a quantitative shift. The content of the complaints that led to investigations, lawsuits, and funding cuts have also changed over time. The basis of this shift has been the equation of Zionism as a political ideology with not just every Israeli person but every Jewish person wherever they are in the world. When Zionism is equated with Jewish identity, the expression of political opposition to Zionism becomes antisemitic. When this definition of antisemitism is accepted by political actors, the expression in opposition to Zionism becomes the target of antidiscrimination regulation such as Title VI. The first Title VI complaint filed based on this definition of antisemitism was at University of California, Irvine in 2004. An investigation was opened based on the complaint, but it was closed in 2007 with no finding of wrongdoing. Efforts to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism were revived in the 2010s under the Obama administration and gradually gained ground and eventually culminated in the acceptance of the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism as the official government definition in 2019 under Trump’s first term.

The analysis of 102 antisemitism complaint letters in the report shows how this meaning shift has become the main basis of the weaponization of Title VI for the restriction of speech. All of these complaints, except for one, associate antisemitism with opposition to the state of Israel or to Zionist ideology. Only one complaint did not reference Israel or Zionism. 51 complaints were based solely on speech in opposition to Israel and Zionism without any reference to Judaism or Jewish identity. Most complaints concerned student expression, speech and protest, while a third were complaints against faculty members.

Understanding how this shift in the meaning of antisemitism has been possible requires a grasp of what actors are driving the weaponization of Title VI. Only 36.5% of antisemitism complaints are known to have been filed by people affiliated with a university. 17.5% have been filed by the government while the identity of 22.2% of the complaints are unknown since complaints can be filed anonymously. What is striking in the findings is that 23.8% of antisemitism complaints have been filed by external organization and individuals with no links to a university. Zionist and right-wing advocacy groups such as the Brandeis Center, Anti-Defamation League, Zionist Organization of America, and more are some of the main groups that have been active in filing Title VI complaints against higher education institutions. Even when they do not file complaints on their own, such groups provide legal representation or other kinds of support to individuals who file complaints. This has meant that they have been involved in 78% of all antisemitism investigations that were analyzed by the report. Similar groups are also at the forefront of the attempt to use private litigation against universities.

Individuals with careers in right-wing and pro-Israel advocacy have also been active in the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism. The report provides details about the members of the task force, its legal advisers, and more, showing their ties to right-wing and Zionist groups. These individuals have mostly been appointed to the task force in interim roles, avoiding the need to get senate approval on their appointments. One of the central functions of the task force has also been to get around the regular procedure for the withdrawal of federal funds from higher education institutions through the Department of Education. The regular procedure requires an investigation to be carried out, allows institutions to respond to the findings of the investigation and also requires the submission of a report to Congressional committees before funding can be cut. However, the task force has not followed this procedure and has been cutting funding at a speed that would not be possible under regular Title VI procedures, in an effort to bring universities to the bargaining table with the federal government and agree to its demands. The effectiveness of this strategy has been made clear by the broad concessions that institutions such as Columbia University and Brown University have made under settlements they have signed with the government, which will see drastic changes being made to their operations. The report emphasizes that the scope and degree of the changes would not have been possible under a regular Title VI settlement that would have been reached through the regular Department of Education procedure.

These findings by the AAUP and MESA are crucial for any attempt to stand up to the current attack against academic freedom in the United States. As the report recommends, recognizing that universities are being attacked from different angles at the same time shows that “pressure from politicians, donors, and trustees must be resisted because it creates a slippery slope for other forms of censorship and control.” Any meaningful resistance will have to be based on an uncompromising commitment to academic freedom as well as a rejection of the main pillars of the current attack on higher education, such as the weaponization of Title VI regulations and the adoption of a significantly widened definition of antisemitism. This is especially important given that some higher education institutions have already accepted the IHRA’s definition as their official definition for their own disciplinary procedures.

Endangered Scholars Worldwide (ESW) condemns the weaponization and misappropriation of anti-discrimination legislation for purposes of punishing on-campus expression and dissent. We join the AAUP and MESA’s call on university administrations to stand up to the current attack against American higher education. We further invite the global community dedicated to upholding academic freedom to join our c