What’s really at stake in the legal struggle between Yeshiva University and its LGBTQ+ students

YU claims to be fighting for religious liberty, despite considerable internal opposition to its legal offensive

The campus of Yeshiva University in New York City on August 30, 2022 in New York City Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

By Jeffrey Freedman, Jenny Isaacs, Aaron Koller, Jess OlsonAugust 10, 2023

Yeshiva University, the institution at which all of us teach, has been embroiled in a protracted legal struggle with a group of its own students. An organization of LGBTQ+ undergraduates called the Pride Alliance is seeking to be recognized as an official university club.

Repeatedly rebuffed by the university, which claims that granting club status to the Pride Alliance would be incompatible with Jewish law, the students sued for recognition in 2021. Since then, two New York state courts have ruled against the university and found that it must recognize the alliance as a club in order to comply with the New York City Human Rights Law banning discrimination on the basis of gender and sexual orientation. The case is now back in trial court, where the university continues to litigate aggressively and to rule out the possibility of a negotiated settlement. Supported by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, it has signaled its intention to carry its appeal to the Supreme Court.

What is at stake in this conflict? In December 2022, the general counsel for Yeshiva University Andrew J. Lauer candidly told several faculty members, including three of the undersigned, that even if the university were able to reach an agreement with its LGBTQ+ students to create an alternative to the Pride Alliance — a club that would operate under rabbinic supervision — it would nonetheless pursue its appeal. He explained that the university would take this extraordinary step in order to have its religious identity upheld by the Supreme Court.

When asked what aspect of the university’s identity might be under threat, the general counsel provided the example of kosher dietary laws. It is conceivable, he suggested, that individuals might come to the student cafeteria demanding non-kosher food and then sue the university over its refusal to serve them.

This scenario is so implausible that it is hard to take seriously.

A more credible interpretation is that the university’s leadership is seeking not to preserve the status quo but to change it. With its allies in the Becket Fund, it likely hopes to secure a Supreme Court ruling that would give religiously affiliated educational institutions wide scope to sidestep civil rights laws in the name of “religious liberty.”

Academic freedom and religious liberty

A ruling of this kind could have far-reaching consequences for any member of the university community whose views do not conform to religious standards as determined by the administration. Religious liberty could be invoked to justify restrictions on academic freedom in areas such as the content of the curriculum and the recruitment and tenure of faculty.

The university has no doubt been emboldened to pursue its appeal by several recent Supreme Court rulings. In those cases, the court affirmed the rights of individuals who claimed that their religious liberty or free speech had been infringed by federal or state laws.

Yeshiva’s case, however, is fundamentally different. Whereas individuals can profess sharply defined, unambiguous beliefs, universities are complex institutions composed of faculty, students, administrators and a board of trustees. They encompass contrasting viewpoints and are forums for intellectual, moral and political debate. This diversity of opinion is part of what makes them universities — and why society supports them with public funds.

Yeshiva University is no exception. Although President Ari Berman claims to speak on behalf of the institution in challenging the New York state court rulings, his position has drawn considerable internal opposition.

In September 2022, a petition expressing strong support for the Pride Alliance and calling on the university to grant official club status garnered more than 70 signatures from members of the undergraduate faculty, including professors in the field of Jewish Studies. A similar letter of protest from alumni and members of the broader YU community drew more than 1,700 signatures. And the Wilf Family Foundation, a major financial donor in whose honor YU’s campus in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan is named, issued a strongly worded statement condemning the refusal to recognize the Pride Alliance as a club.

President Berman has not publicly acknowledged receipt of any of these statements, nor has he agreed to engage in any dialogue. Yet he continues to invoke religious liberty in support of principles that a large contingent of university affiliates contest.

The psychological harm of discrimination

The legal tussle between Yeshiva and the Pride Alliance is unfolding at a time when the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth across the country and the plight of those young people in the Orthodox community are drawing close scrutiny. A video essay in The New York Times published in May presents disturbing revelations of the brutal treatment, including “conversion therapy,” to which young, Orthodox gay men are subject.

The seriousness of this mental health crisis came into sharp focus at Yeshiva University when, on April 22, Herschel Siegel, a graduate of the Yeshiva College class of 2021 and member of the LGBTQ+ community, tragically took his own life.

While it is rarely possible to know with certainty what drives someone to suicide, in one of his last Instagram posts, Herschel described in these words the pain of being a gay man in the Orthodox world: “My very existence as a gay, Jewish male was an abomination … and even decades later that fear-based thought pattern erupted into my consciousness, at the most unexpected of times.” He ended the post by expressing “gratitude” toward fellow trauma survivors and calling for togetherness: “The fact that we made it this far past that initial trauma in one piece IS the evidence that we are far stronger than we think, so let’s celebrate our individual resilience together!”

We see in Herschel’s heartbreaking words an affirmation of the urgent need for the kind of support group that the Pride Alliance is seeking to create.

What we’re asking for

Until now, the university’s only concession has been the announcement of an alternative forum for LGBTQ+ students that would adhere to Jewish religious law and operate under rabbinic supervision. But that announcement is looking more and more like a PR move designed to rebut charges of discrimination. At the time of writing, this alternative grouping has no real existence and has held no actual events. At least one of the rabbis endorsing the plan has in the past been a proponent of conversion therapy.

Yeshiva University has a proud history as a unique kind of educational institution. Its philosophy is summed up in its longstanding motto of “Torah Umadda,” a vision of education that aspires to dialogue between traditional Jewish learning and modern secular studies.

As faculty committed to that ideal, and as educators engaged in teaching and mentoring students who include LGBTQ+ young people, we call upon the university’s leadership to abandon its legal case and to recognize the Pride Alliance.

Such recognition would not prevent Yeshiva University from maintaining its status as a Jewish institution. By contrast, the Supreme Court ruling that the university seeks would open the door to violations of rights that are enshrined in local and federal law and to infringements of academic freedom.

To contact the authors, email [email protected].

Jeffrey Freedman is professor and chair in the department of history at Yeshiva University, where he has taught since 1992. He holds a PhD from Princeton University and has published widely on the social and cultural history of Europe in the Age of Enlightenment.

Jenny Isaacs is associate professor and chair in the department of psychology at Yeshiva College. She has a PhD in child clinical psychology and much of her research focuses on social-emotional development in childhood through young adulthood.

Aaron Koller is professor of Near Eastern and Jewish studies at Yeshiva University and has also taught as a visiting professor at Hebrew University and Cambridge University. He received his BA from Yeshiva College and his PhD from the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies.

Jess Olson is associate professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva College and the Bernard Revel Graduate School in Jewish Studies. He specializes in modern European Jewish history and received his PhD from Stanford University. He has taught at Yeshiva his entire professional career.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion. To contact Opinion authors, email [email protected].

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO