My dean denied a routine travel-funding request. That’s hardly headline news — until you see what she approves. My university funds LGBTQIA+ activism and an entire “Center for Justice.” But when a Jewish law professor gets invited to testify before the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on religious discrimination and campus antisemitism, the system labels it a forbidden “political activity.”
Is being Jewish somehow partisan?
This is inclusion asymmetry in action: universities that loudly champion diversity, equity, and inclusion suddenly discover rigid bureaucratic rules and invent scruples when an accommodation request involves traditional religious observance by people of faith.
In 2022, I left my tenured position at Duquesne University — a private Catholic school that had gone beyond legal requirements to accommodate my Sabbath observance — sold my house in Pennsylvania, and moved my family to New Hampshire. I came to teach in UNH’s Hybrid JD program. UNH markets that program as the most flexible law degree in the country. It’s built explicitly for “non-traditional” students.
But the glossy website omitted how the program’s mandatory “immersion” weekends made it structurally impossible for traditionally observant people of faith, Jews and Christians alike, to participate. These weekends required in-person teaching blocks on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
When I flagged the conflict with Shabbat, I proposed a simple, zero-cost fix: I would teach double shifts on another day, including Sunday, so students received exactly the same instructional hours. The students were already on campus all weekend anyway.
Administrators routinely accommodate weddings, mental health crises, child care needs, and logistical challenges. For a funeral or family emergency, the answer is “Go, we’ll cover you.” But my request triggered a six-week legalistic rope-a-dope invoking the university’s Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity office. They insisted on rigid adherence to the schedule because of the program’s “special nature.”
That claim was false. They accommodated many other life circumstances. When I challenged the legality of denying Sabbath observance, a senior administrator even asked why I had not disclosed my religion during the hiring process — a demand that itself violates federal employment law. The message was clear: deep religious commitment is a risk to manage, not diversity to cherish. And the “equity” office won’t protect you.
For secular preferences, accommodation is a simple conversation. For people of faith who take religious observance seriously, it becomes a Kafkaesque tribunal.
This pattern long predates Oct. 7, 2023. The Hamas massacre exposed the bitter irony of this asymmetry. In legal academia, professional listservs, which we use to stay abreast of the latest judicial decisions and regulatory actions, were flooded with eliminationist rhetoric against Israel. The Association of American Law Schools claimed it does not moderate the listservs — even as it maintains detailed positions on virtually every other progressive cause.
Clearly, some rights are more equal than others.
The result of this asymmetry is profound isolation for religious faculty and Jewish students. I nearly left the academy. Staying has cost me time, career progress, and mental health.
THE DEI LOOPHOLE IN FEDERAL CONTRACTING RULES
Public universities cannot have it both ways. They cannot run civil-rights clinics, fund identity-based advocacy, rebrand DEI offices to evade legislative bans, and then treat requests for religious accommodation as uniquely burdensome.
To the commission: Stop letting universities eat their cake and have it too. Either provide equal accommodations and enforce Title VI without favoritism or stop accepting public funds while practicing selective inclusion. End the inclusion asymmetry.
Seth C. Oranburg is a professor of law at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law — but he writes only in his individual capacity. He testified on Thursday before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights regarding antisemitism on U.S. college campuses.