Dhillon urges pro-Israel students to separate protected speech from disruptive conduct

Speaking at the Israel on Campus Coalition's National Leadership Summit in Washington, assistant attorney general for civil rights Harmeet Dhillon cautioned pro-Israel students to differentiate speech shielded by the First Amendment from behavior that interferes with their education. She contrasted benign expressions, like wearing a keffiyeh or chanting "from the river to the sea," with mob actions such as holding a red triangle over a student's head and declaring "Jews not welcome," which she said approaches unprotected conduct.

Dhillon noted her own articles on the subject and highlighted an amicus brief filed by the law firm Consovoy, McCarthy on her behalf in the Stand With Us Center for Legal Justice v. MIT case before the Supreme Court. The brief asks whether protected speech endorsing violence can serve as contextual evidence of a hostile environment, a question the First Circuit had not fully addressed. She argued that liability lies with universities that ignore hostile conditions, not the students who create them, and warned that a narrow ruling could undermine future hostile-environment litigation.