Can Trump actually crack down on campus antisemitism?

Sixteen months after Jew-hatred exploded on American campuses, President Donald Trump has issued an executive order to combat antisemitism. The First Amendment protects antisemitic speech, but Trump has put individuals targeting Jews on notice: Washington will no longer wink at their “discrimination, vandalism, and violence”.

“Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism” explicitly builds on Trump’s 2019 executive order formalising civil rights protections for Jewish students, which he explains “protect American Jews to the same extent to which all other American citizens are protected”. The US government will now “combat antisemitism vigorously”, using all relevant legal remedies against those engaging in “unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence”. Federal department and agency heads have 60 days to report how they can “curb or combat antisemitism” and recommend how to educate universities about their responsibilities tied to possible investigations and deportations of foreign students and staff.

Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, called the executive order “a home run”, showing “that President Trump is fully committed to protecting Jewish students from campus antisemitism. This bodes very well for the coming years.”

Trump certainly set a tone with this early executive order. It laid a marker, named a deadline, and promised follow-up.

Jay Greene, Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, thought this “restores the civil rights protections . . . [from] Trump’s first administration”. Greene expected “the US Department of Education to be much more aggressive and effective than during the Biden administration at reining in the worst abuses in higher ed”. The Biden administration officially kept Trump’s 2019 policy in effect. However, they didn’t enforce it, even after October 7. Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at The Lawfare Project, said: “Schools can no longer get away with promising to develop some policy, or to provide some training. They will be obligated to act and to be proactive, to punish bad actors, and to ensure that Jew-hatred is extinguished, not tolerated.” 

Jewish student activist Shabbos Kestenbaum approved that deportations are now a possibility, since he explained, “a significant amount of the pro-Palestine movement on campuses” endorses terrorism. (Filitti specified that this section will likely be applied to terrorism-supporting foreign students, who have engaged in unlawful activity.)

Maccabee Task Force’s National Campus director Benjamin Sweetwood wasn’t convinced deportation would prompt significant change, though. “In my experience, the malign activity is driven in large part by American students,” he said. Still, Sweetwood was “hopeful” because the order “activates the relevant federal entities” and invokes the Civil Rights Act for enforcement. Jews living and working on campuses applauded the directional change. University of Michigan senior Mia Curwin called the executive order “a big win for Jewish students and any student who comes to college to learn”. She was encouraged that government leadership is “speaking up against violence and harassment against students, against chaos and disruption”.

This executive order could prompt universities to finally adopt some tweaks to forestall externally imposed overhauls. It also signals a willingness to impose changes that Washington deems necessary.

“I believe universities are afraid to be so overtly antisemitic now, commented Max Abrahms, political science professor at Boston’s Northeastern University. “Hopefully Trump will help Jews in higher education – not just students, but also the beleaguered faculty.”

As beleaguered faculty know, other university employees frequently fuel campus antisemitism.

Shai Davidai, assistant professor at Columbia Business School, called the executive order “a good start”, observing the “problem has always been the [university] administration, not the students. The administration are the ones responsible for the [indoctrinating] faculty”.

So, Davidai would welcome subsequent action stipulating that universities violating the Civil Rights Act lose federal funding and their endowments are taxable.

Davidai worried, though, that after this executive order, “people will say, ‘We’ve done something; let’s move onto the next thing’”. He also saw the risk of “everything [being driven] back underground” while “hateful ideology” remains on campuses.

Sweetwood further observed: “Exorbitant amounts of money from foreign countries that don’t share American values filter into campus coffers every year, thus affording the benefactors of this funding undue influence over the collective [campus] intellect [and philosophy]… This issue needs to be addressed.”

Jew-hatred is a multi-faceted problem that requires a multi-pronged societal response. We’ll soon see a more complete, concrete plan.

For now, though, the Trump administration’s openly opposing campus antisemitism represents a positive shift away from the Biden administration’s effectively ignoring it.