The panel investigating claims of antisemitism at three colleges and universities in Colorado has lined up experts for its hearing later this month.

The Colorado Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights earlier voted to investigate whether antisemitism permeated the protests on the Auraria campus, in light of what the panel described as the rise of antisemitic incidents across universities in America in the last several years.

Testifying at the July 16 hearing are Jeremy Shaver, the senior associate regional director for the Anti-Defamation League Mountain Region; Eugene Volokh, the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at Hoover Institution; and Ken Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law.

The Anti-Defamation League described Shaver’s work as assisting local law enforcement agencies and Jewish institutions in combating “antisemitism, hate and extremism.”

Volokh, who clerked for then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court, has taught First Amendment law, as well as business tort and criminal law.

Marcus served as assistant U.S. Secretary of Education for Civil Rights and as staff director at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The New York Times called him “the man who helped redefine campus antisemitism.”

In its profile of Marcus, the New York Times said he watched with unease as pro-Palestinian protests broke out at college campuses back in the early 2000s during the second intifada.

“We were seeing, internationally, a transformation of anti-Israel animus into something that looked like possibly a new form of antisemitism,” Marcus told the New York Times, adding that American universities had also been at the forefront of that resurgence.

Last May, the Colorado advisory panel noted the pro-Palestinian protests that swept the country following the onset of the Israel-Hamas war, which broke out after the militant group, tagged as a terrorist organization by the U.S., crossed into Southern Israel and killed some 1,200 people and kidnapped roughly 250. Retaliatory strikes by Israeli forces have killed thousands of Palestinians.

The panel stated that, while the First Amendment is sacrosanct, some campuses have adopted speech policies and raised concerns that these policies are not being applied evenly.

Specifically, the inquiry will look at what occurred at the Tivoli quad on the Auraria campus, which was the site of a weeks-long encampment by activists protesting against Israel. The body also said it will investigate claims that some faculty and staff “explicitly endorsed the encampment and its slogans.”

The protesters insisted America’s free speech rights protected their actions on campus.

Several weeks ago, a Denver civil rights law firm filed a lawsuit on behalf of Auraria Campus students and faculty members, alleging their constitutional rights were violated when campus police arrested them during the protest in April 2024.

The lawsuit alleged that some of the students arrested didn’t erect the tents.

“The arrest of the plaintiffs had nothing to do with the tents,” attorney Azra Taslimi said at a news conference. “This was about silencing dissent, and this was about using police power to punish political speech, and that is a direct violation of the First Amendment.”

Last year, another attorney representing some of the students charged by the city with trespassing and failure to obey a lawful order said they were “just out there executing their right to free speech.”

That April, the police dismantled dozens of tents and arrested more than 40 protesters — many of them college students — on the campus.

Protesters chanted: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

The river is the Jordan, and the sea is the Mediterranean, between which lie Israel and the Palestinian territories. Palestinian activists say it’s a call for peace and equality after 75 years of Israeli statehood and decades-long Israeli military rule over millions of Palestinians.

Jews hear an apparent demand for Israel’s annihilation.

Reporters Nico Brambila and Kyla contributed to this article.