In 2019, the Canadian province of Quebec banned a range of public-sector employees from wearing religious garb, including yarmulkes and turbans, on the job. France recently tightened such restrictions as well, in an effort to curtail Islamic extremism. This month, an Indian court upheld a ban on wearing hijabs in certain schools. These and other laws reflect a growing suspicion of religious expression in the public square. In the U.S., however, support for such expression is high, as indicated by polling results and recent state laws protecting religious liberty. Kelsey Dallas reports:

Even as interest in organized religion declines in the United States, Americans remain incredibly supportive of public displays of faith, according to new research from the Deseret News and Marist Poll.

The survey showed that more than nine in ten U.S. adults, including 93 percent of those who do not practice a religion, feel “very comfortable” or “comfortable” with people wearing religious symbols or attire. Republicans (96 percent) and Democrats (92 percent) are almost equally supportive of this practice, as are the youngest Americans and the oldest.

Meanwhile, state legislatures in the U.S. are passing laws creating additional protections for people of faith. In the past year, both Illinois and Ohio adjusted school sports rules to ensure that young athletes can wear faith-related garb as they compete.

However, these new policies and the research showing strong public support for religious attire does not mean the U.S. is problem-free. . . . In 2020, more than half of Jews (53 percent) said they were feeling less safe than they had in the past and 15 percent said they’d been called offensive names in the past year, according to Pew Research Center.

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.