In April, a group of students and alumni of Yeshiva University (YU) filed a lawsuit after the school refused to recognize a gay and lesbian student club. If YU loses the suit, it could face a dilemma about how to continue to function simultaneously as an American university and an Orthodox yeshiva. Kelsey Dallas describes the similar situations that America’s myriad Christian colleges are confronting. At stake is the federal and state funding these institutions receive, which could be withdrawn if they are found to be violating ever-evolving nondiscrimination law.

Today, there are . . . hundreds of religious colleges and universities in the United States, but most are quite small. However, when it comes to responding to the needs of underserved communities, the schools punch above their weight.

Students [at these schools] must often agree to abide by a moral code, which typically includes prohibitions on drinking, smoking, and premarital sex. In recent years, these codes of conduct and related policies on sexuality and marriage have landed many schools in hot water. Former students, accrediting bodies, and policymakers, among others, have [averred that] faith-based schools are using religion as an excuse to be cruel.

Under federal law, faith-based colleges can request a religious exemption to nondiscrimination rules. If granted, they can sidestep certain legal protections for LGBTQ [individuals] and others and continue enforcing their most controversial policies, like bans on same-sex marriage. If successful, the current lawsuit brought by former students at religious schools would force the Department of Education to stop offering these exemptions. Faith-based colleges are also facing pressure from Democrats in Congress, many of whom believe LGBTQ-rights protections outweigh religious-freedom law.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.