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In recent years, diversity has become both a touchstone for judging colleges and universities and a lightning rod for critics. Colleges seek to attract students by advertising the demographic diversity of their student bodies. And the Trump Administration is on the lookout for signs that diversity for some means discrimination for others.
Demographic diversity is sometimes used as a stand-in for diversity of viewpoints or of life experience. Both are said to enrich the education colleges provide inside and outside the classroom. The Center for American Progress puts it simply: “Diversity on college campuses enhances the educational experiences of students of all backgrounds.”
University of Wisconsin Professor Anthony Hernandez elaborates on that claim. He argues, “A diverse classroom fosters a dynamic exchange of experiences and perspectives, enhancing both the intellectual and social atmosphere. This diversity promotes critical thinking and helps students connect with individuals from various backgrounds, ultimately enriching their communities and future professional environments.”
But achieving diversity can be very costly for higher education institutions as they face increasing demands from underrepresented groups to change their ways or make accommodations so that everyone feels like they belong. Colleges and universities have learned that talking about diversity is much easier than realizing it in practice.
An example of that difficulty came to light on April 23, when news broke that an Orthodox Jewish student at Williams College, an elite private school in Massachusetts, had filed a complaint with the federal government “alleging that (it)… denied him ‘full and equal access’ to campus housing and meals because of his religious faith.” It noted that “Even before [redacted] arrived on campus, the College discouraged him from living on campus due to his religion, telling him not to come to Williams if he could not ‘deal with’ challenges he would face observing his religious practice.”
Williams says it “is committed to building and sustaining a community of students, staff, and faculty that is broadly diverse and respectful of all social identities. Diversity refers to all the many ways in which people differ, encompassing the characteristics that make one individual or group different from another, including, …religion/spirituality…”.
The diversity that colleges like Williams and other institutions value is easier to accommodate when it is not disruptive of traditional ways of doing things. And, Orthodox Judaism and the needs of Orthodox Jews are not among those easy cases, as the Williams case illustrates.
That is why it is worth examining.
The complaint was filed on the Orthodox student’s behalf by The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. The Brandeis Center calls it “a first-of-its-kind complaint … alleging that the college violated Title VIII – also known as the Fair Housing Act (FHA) – by discriminating against the student due to his religion.”
“According to the complaint, the school did not give the student full and equal access to required on-campus housing and meal plans.” It claims that “the student has been unable to freely access his dormitory on weekends, as his religious observance prevents him from using the electronic key device provided by the College during the Sabbath. The student has been effectively locked out of his residential building on numerous occasions, forced to wait outside, at times in freezing Northeast winter weather for over an hour, in the hope that another student who lives in the building will let him inside.”
“The student,” it says, “has suffered embarrassment, humiliation, social stigma and emotional distress as a result, and he is often confined to his dorm room on Saturdays to avoid being locked out of his building if he leaves.” In addition, “Williams College also discriminated against the student in his request for kosher food, a service offered by the College in connection with mandatory on-campus housing.”
According to a report in the Jewish News Syndicate, the college “suggested that during Shabbat, the student could knock on the door of a campus office and ask for an escort to his building….” It adds that “The complaint described that recommendation as “equally, if not more, uncertain, inconvenient and lengthy than the untenable process he was already enduring.”
Williams College issued a statement that the school has “no tolerance” for discrimination or antisemitism and that it is “devoted to ensuring that all students have access to appropriate living spaces, dining options, and our full range of learning opportunities.”
The keyword, of course, is “appropriate.”
Colleges often look to the law as they figure out what to do and treat requests like the one made by the Wesleyan student as a risk management issue. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act requires that colleges and universities offer “reasonable accommodations for sincerely held religious beliefs, practices, or observances unless doing so poses an undue hardship” to student employees. For students who are not employed in any way, the relevant laws are the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and state education laws.
As one example of how a university understands what accommodations those laws require, Washington State University offers the following guidance: “A reasonable religious accommodation is a modification to a policy or practice within an academic, housing, or extracurricular environment to enable students to avoid conflict with their sincerely held religious beliefs or practices. A religious accommodation is reasonable if it does not cause undue hardship to WSU operations; factors include safety, cost, efficiency, academic requirements, business needs, and the rights of others.”
“Reasonable religious accommodations,” it says, “are individualized to the needs of the students who request them and the settings for which they are requested.”
The kinds of accommodations typically made in higher education include excused absences for religious holidays, rescheduling exams, allowing students to wear attire required by their religion, and offering food options. On the other hand, undue hardships might include requiring changes to course content, creating safety hazards through accommodations, violating other students’ rights, or imposing severe financial or administrative burdens on the university.
The complaint filed by the Williams student also alleges that the college violated the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination “against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of sale or rental of a dwelling, or in the provision of services or facilities in connection therewith, because of … religion.”
But the question of when and how colleges accommodate diversity should not be reduced to a question of compliance with the law. It is, more importantly, a question of the kind of places they aspire to be.
Inclusion requires institutions of higher education to rethink their taken-for-granted notions of what constitutes an appropriate accommodation and what hardships are “undue.” It now looks like Williams is leaning into that question.
The college is to be congratulated on its expressed willingness to “work with the student and the Brandeis Center….” The Williams Record quotes a spokesperson for the college who says, “’The college’s leaders and chaplains are strongly committed to working with students and their families to address student concerns. We welcome the opportunity to continue that dialogue with the student and the Brandeis Center in order to ensure a welcoming and inclusive educational environment.’”
Achieving that won’t be easy. Universities like Yale and the University of Wisconsin have found that out when they dealt with requests for housing accommodations from Orthodox Jewish students.
Other schools will be watching to see what happens at Williams. Whatever happens there, colleges and universities supposedly devoted to being “welcoming and inclusive” should do better than telling an Orthodox Jewish student to either accept an unacceptable status quo or not attend their schools.
Austin D. Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. He is an internationally renowned scholar whose interdisciplinary work examines law in relation to culture, violence, and the liberal arts. His academic foundation includes a B.A. from Providence College (1969), an M.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1973) from the University of Wisconsin, and a J.D. from Yale Law School (1988). He has also received honorary degrees, including an LL.D. from Providence College (2008) and an A.M. from Amherst College (1984). Sarat has also been awarded the Jeffrey B. Ferguson Memorial Teaching Prize at Amherst in 2022 and the Ronald Pipkin Service Award as well as many others
For more about our original academic freedom collection—including additional work from Professor Sarat—visit here. Here is our latest on the subject:
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