The Jewish world has been shaken to its core by the global surge of antisemitism that followed the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terror attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. But amid the heartbreak and justified anger about the mainstreaming of Jew-hatred in American education, culture, media and politics, there have been some notable victories.
A series of congressional hearings beginning in December 2023 and continuing into 2025 that exposed elite universities that tolerated and encouraged antisemitism on their campuses made it clear that the bullying and targeting of Jewish students wasn’t being ignored by everyone in power. That paved the way for the Trump administration’s efforts to take action on the issue.
His initiative has forced many schools to acknowledge their failures and to sign settlements either with the federal government or with private plaintiffs. They involved both financial compensation and necessary changes in the way administrations run their institutions. If enforced, these agreements will make a difference in how Jews are treated, as well as cause it to become harder for the sort of woke antisemitism that prevailed throughout academia to continue.
Enforcing Title VI
That some people are unhappy about this isn’t surprising. The academics who embraced toxic left-wing ideas like critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism—and label Israel and Jews as “white” oppressors—are outraged about being held accountable for how they have normalized anti-Zionism and Jew-hatred. And they are particularly angry about being called out for the fact that their policies violated Title VI of the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin.
It is especially disturbing that one of the loudest critics of the push against campus antisemitism is a prominent Jewish member of Congress.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, claims that Trump’s efforts to stop campus antisemitism were “fake, a pre-baked frame-up operation thoroughly political in nature.”
He cited a complaint by a federal bureaucrat who opposed the president’s determination to root out both the Jew-hatred and the way the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) had enabled discrimination, and then resigned and filed a “whistleblower complaint. He not only seeks to pursue retribution against members of the antisemitism taskforce, but also to possibly change the civil-rights laws that prohibit this illegal bias.
Raskin, like the academics who made anti-Zionism (indistinguishable from antisemitism) the new orthodoxy throughout American education and culture, thinks colleges and universities should be free to create hostile environments for Jews on their campuses. This is neither a matter of free speech nor academic freedom. A generation of faculty members and students who were indoctrinated in the “anti-racist” faith think advocating for Jewish genocide (“From the river to the sea”) and terrorism against Jews everywhere (“Globalize the intifada”) is a matter of free speech. Of course, these same voices would be in favor of the harshest retaliation for those who made similar threats against other minority groups, like African Americans or Hispanics. But when it comes to discrimination against Jews, it’s a different story.
As the heads of three such institutions—Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—all said when they were questioned about it by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) in December 2023, it depended on the “context” as to whether advocacy for Jewish genocide violated the rules of their schools. Yet Raskin thinks the ordeal that Jewish students have endured by not disavowing their connection to the land of Israel is somehow unworthy of public concern.
The antisemites’ political guardians
The claim that Trump was playing politics by targeting certain schools is more than disingenuous. In fact, it’s Raskin and others on the left now bending their knees to the antisemitic left that seeks Israel’s destruction—and which, as recent primary results indicate, now dominates the Democratic Party—who are playing politics by defending Jew-haters. His comments call to mind the private assurances that Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer gave to the board of trustees of Columbia University that “only Republicans” cared about the issue of campus antisemitism. Though these two Jewish politicians claim to oppose such hatred, their refusal to stand up to their party’s intersectional left-wing base has essentially led them to become the guardians of academic antisemites.
It boggles the imagination to contemplate their claim that Jews being prevented from entering parts of their campuses where pro-Hamas encampments were located, in addition to being shunned, targeted and singled out for violence, was no big deal. They similarly think that the people responsible for organizing and carrying out these outrages, especially if they were foreign nationals violating the terms of their visas, ought not to be deported.
Many liberals, including some who were outspoken about the post-Oct. 7 surge of antisemitism, opposed the Trump administration’s threats to pull federal funding from institutions of higher learning that were responsible for discriminating against Jews. Some did so for purely political motives; they have become so deranged by their detestation for the president that they’d be against anything he did. Some were worried about research that would be affected by funding cuts or the reputation of their favorite schools. But whatever you think about Trump or however loyal you might be to your alma mater, without those threats, the normalization of institutional anti-Jewish policies would have continued. Somehow, the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act—something that ought to be supported by all decent people—is considered wrong by liberals like Raskin if it involves stopping bigotry against Jewish youth and faculty.
Nor should we take the “whistleblower” complaint seriously. The individual who filed it was representative of most members of the vast federal bureaucracy not interested in enforcing the law due to their adherence to ideological and political agendas associated with “anti-racist” doctrine and Israel. This unaccountable and unelected fourth branch of government constitutes a roadblock to efforts to deal with the threat posed to American liberty by woke ideology. It took a president like Trump, who was determined to bulldoze the bureaucratic obstacles to action, for the government to finally start taking Title VI violations against Jews seriously.
And it was precisely those government actions that have now forced schools that were not under direct federal pressure to sign settlements changing their discriminatory actions.
A case study in tolerating Jew-hatred
One such place was Haverford College outside Philadelphia; it was sued by the Deborah Project public interest law firm. As I noted in 2024, when the lawsuit against Haverford was filed, what happened there was a case study in how respected liberal institutions were harming Jewish students. As Deborah Project legal director Lori Lowenthal Marcus said, the lawsuit details “incident after incident of horrible, vile antisemitic statements, actions, activities, chants, disruptions, intimidation, harassment and oppression by members of the Haverford College community” that were “ignored, condoned or even praised” by top college administrators.
While institutions like Harvard are fighting efforts to hold them accountable, Haverford surrendered earlier this month by signing an agreement with the plaintiffs that will end previous policies, which didn’t merely tolerate antisemitism but encouraged it.
Among the incidents cited in the suit was the refusal of the school to allow Jewish students to set up a table at a basketball game where materials would be available to promote awareness of antisemitism. Haverford dean John McKnight and the school’s athletic director, Danielle Lynch, told Ally Landau—the named plaintiff in the lawsuit and star player on the women’s basketball team—that she had to cancel the effort or else the game would be forfeited. Their reason was that the school believed that any talk about such bigotry would provoke “pro-Palestinian students” and lead to a riot. While McKnight claimed that the decision to withdraw the proposal was Landau’s, she said that was “a lie.”
Other highlights of the suit include the reaction of Haverford president Wendy Raymond when she was confronted about a series of social-media posts by a professor at the college who reposted an image of a bulldozer used in the Oct. 7 attacks with the text: “We should never have to apologize for celebrating these scenes of an imprisoned people breaking free from their chains. This was a historic moment to be recorded in the history books.”
At a Jewish student event on campus, Raymond was asked whether the post by Tarik Aougab, who remains a Haverford math and statistics professor, should be considered antisemitism. Raymond answered that his statement “could be perceived in many ways.” When asked how she perceived it, she answered: ‘I hear people breaking free from their chains.’” The president of Haverford was not ashamed to admit to considering an image of the Oct. 7 orgy of mass murder, rape, torture and wanton destruction committed by Hamas and its Palestinian supporters to be something she admired.
As egregious as that sounds, it should be understood that, in addition to the persistence and courage of the Deborah Project and its clients, the main reason Haverford agreed to settle was the result of pressure put on it by Republicans in Congress and the administration. Raymond was called to testify before the House Education and Workforce Committee, along with the presidents of DePaul University and California Polytechnic State University. As a result of her evasive answers, the Department of Education initiated an investigation of the school for violating Title VI.
While an academic giant like Harvard felt it had the resources to fight the federal government and await a change in attitude in Washington from a future Democratic administration, Haverford decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
Raymond, who will soon leave her job, stated in an email to the university community that as part of the settlement, the college is making clear that all students are “welcome” on campus. That includes Jews, Israelis and Zionists, whom she said can “enjoy equal access to the college and all of its educational programs and activities.”
She added that the college agreed to clarify that “harassing, excluding or seeking to silence Jewish community members on the basis of their beliefs, their commitment to Jewish observance or any other element of their Jewish identity, including Zionism, is anathema to the college’s core principles of trust, concern and respect.”
Raymond said that “this extends to our classrooms, offices and student-led organizations and activities, and it includes all employees—faculty, staff and administrators—and students.”
Given her previous attitude, this was an amazing victory and a standard that ought to be applied at every American college and university. It’s a tribute to both the Deborah Project and the Trump administration, which created the environment where those who winked at antisemitism in the past came to understand the need to change their tune if they were not to suffer for violating the law.
The victory at Haverford and the Trump administration’s settlements with universities like Columbia, Brown, Cornell, Northwestern, Penn and Virginia are important milestones in the effort to roll back the woke tide that has degraded the educational establishment and done so much to harm Jews. It will require even more such lawsuits aimed at other schools, as well as efforts to ensure that the leftists who still dominate academia and the woke commissars who enforce the DEI-based policies that enable antisemitism don’t intend to violate the terms of the existing agreements.
Still, if Raskin and many of his fellow Democrats have their way, the complacency about antisemitism in academia will return, along with, no doubt, a new round of outrageous actions by mobs of students and faculty that will again target their Jewish peers.
If instead of continuing to pressure academic institutions to stop tolerating antisemitism in ways they would never treat discrimination against other minorities, a Democratic-controlled Congress prefers to target Trump administration officials for fighting Jew-hatred, the woke reign of intolerance will make a comeback. It’s one thing to deplore the way a partisan scoundrel like Raskin is seeking to impede efforts to stop this scourge. But liberals and others who are appalled by the current surge of Jew-hatred need to understand the consequences of empowering someone like the congressman or a future Democratic president who will reverse Trump’s policies on academia.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS. Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
