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By Lauren Markoe
November 14, 2024
In the days since Donald Trump’s reelection, Jews and others who value a strict separation between church and state in the nation’s public schools have been alarmed by some of the names floated to run the Department of Education — and by the president-elect’s talk of eliminating it.
Among those reportedly on the shortlist are Tiffany Justice, the co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a group that has pushed to ban books and accused teachers of “indoctrinating” students about LGBTQ+ rights, and Ryan Walters, the Oklahoma schools chief who mandated a Bible in each of the state’s classrooms.
Regardless of who Trump taps to lead the department, Jewish groups and education experts are concerned about the president-elect giving wide berth to Christian nationalists who believe the country needs more religious influence on public education — and that that religious influence would be fundamentally Christian.
“I think it’s going to be a disaster,” said Frank Ravitch, a Michigan State University professor who specializes in religion and the law. “Every Jewish parent needs to be on guard.”
Daniel Mach, who heads the American Civil Liberties Union’s religious freedom office, said Trump and his first-term appointees “routinely displayed an outright hostility to church-state separation.”
With both houses of Congress set to be controlled by the president’s party next year, Mach said he expects “a steady flow of dangerous policies that trample the rights of religious minorities, LGBTQ folks, and anyone who doesn’t subscribe to a particular set of Christian beliefs.”
Most funding and regulation of public schools happens at the state and local level. But the federal government runs important programs involving equity including special education, school lunch, Head Start and Title IX athletics.
Eliminating it has been a perennial Republican talking point that has never come to fruition. But Trump’s unpredictability has made some people take the prospect more seriously this time. Which raises the question of what would happen to dozens of campus antisemitism cases brought to the Education Department since Oct. 7.
At the same time, Orthodox Jews — 86% of whom voted for Trump — have been strong advocates for vouchers to use public funds for private schools, something many in Trump’s circle also favor.
As Trump’s education plans take shape, here are three issues of particular concern for American Jews:
Reading, writing and religion
The teaching of the Bible mandated in Oklahoma schools is one of many recent efforts across the nation to boost religion in public classrooms. The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority solidified by Trump’s first-term nominees, has nearly always backed them.
The court decided in 2022, for example, that a public high school football coach could pray on the 50-yard line. That same year, it ruled that Maine cannot exclude religious schools from a state tuition program.
More cases involving schools and religion are likely headed to the Supreme Court.
Oklahoma officials in June approved the nation’s first religious public charter school. But the Oklahoma Supreme court soon after ruled it unconstitutional. The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, which held the charter, have pledged to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In Louisiana, the attorney general has promised to appeal this week’s ruling unconstitutional a new law requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom.
Trump has whole-heartedly has endorsed the law, and railed against its detractors at a meeting of the evangelical Faith & Freedom Coalition in June.
“Has anyone read the ‘Thou shalt not steal’? I mean, has anybody read this incredible stuff? It’s just incredible,” Trump said at the gathering of the Faith & Freedom Coalition. “They don’t want it to go up. It’s a crazy world.’’
And he has weighed in on school prayer.
“We will support bringing back prayer to our schools,” Trump promised in a September campaign video, listing 10 ideas that he said would “power our movement for great schools.”
Ravitch, the law professor, said Trump’s education agenda, designed by right-wing Christians, would “be a disaster for Jewish children.”
From the standpoint of the right-wing Christians backing Trump, “Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus — we’re allowed to be here, but we should not expect that the government will recognize our stuff,” said Ravitch. “And we should expect that the government will recognize the more dominant religion of Christianity.”
Jewish groups have tried to push back. The American Jewish Committee, for example, was among the signers of a joint brief arguing that the football coach should not be allowed to pray on the field after school games.
Parents are entitled to send their children to public schools, the brief stated, “without having any concern that teachers or coaches will induce their children to become more or less religious — or religious in a different way from what is taught at home.”
Tax dollars for religious schools
Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration written by officials who served in his first, calls for federal policies to make it easier for families to afford private education, including at religious schools.
It suggests redirecting federal education spending “to fund families directly,” or provide tax credits to encourage contributions to education savings accounts that could be used for private school tuition.
The Orthodox Union has long lobbied in Washington to expand such programs and others that allow for more school choice. Nathan Diament, its executive director for public policy, said he is looking forward to possible gains on this front in the second Trump administration.
“There’s really an opportunity to rethink and revisit how the federal government supports K-12 education,” Diament said, “and how it can better empower parents by making them the ones who decide where the resources go.”
That idea troubles Rabbi David Saperstein, who long headed the Reform movement’s lobbying arm in Washington, D.C. and then ambassador-at-large for religious freedom.
“There’s a limited pot of money for education,” Saperstein said. “We don’t want to pull billions and billions of dollars out of the public school system.”
For Saperstein, a commitment to universal, free education is not just a political point of view, but a Jewish value.
Saperstein referenced the Talmud, which credits first-century Rabbi Joshua Ben Gamla for establishing schooling for all boys, no matter where they lived, and the community’s responsibility to educate every child.
“Wherever Jews live, we have applied that belief,” he said.
Combating antisemitism and shuttering the Education Department
The question of campus antisemitism stands out from most other education issues. First, because many Jews from across the political spectrum are deeply concerned about it. And, second, because some of the Trump supporters who call for axing the Department of Education are also among the loudest critics of universities’ handling of the pro-Palestinan protests on campus and anti-Zionism infiltrating curricula.
Trump has blasted the protesters as part of a “radical revolution” and threatened to deport them.
But if he succeeds in abolishing the education department — part of his broader move to drastically reduce the size of the federal government — its growing backlog of antisemitism cases would have to be adjudicated somewhere else. Some have suggested the Justice Department.
Kenneth Marcus headed the education department’s civil rights office during Trump’s first presidency, handling such antisemitism cases. He said in an interview that the office was “more forceful than any other” in its pursuit of justice for Jewish students, and expects no less in a second Trump presidency, no matter which federal department handles the cases.
Many Jewish groups praised Marcus for bolstering protections for Jewish students when he ran the civil rights office. But others, including the pro-Israel National Council of Jewish Women, opposed his nomination, concerned that he would roll back protections for victims of sexual assault. Under his leadership the office released the final regulations for schools dealing with sexual misconduct. But he came under intense criticism from some civil rights advocates who accused him of favoring Jewish students’ cases.
Marcus in 2011 founded the Brandeis Center — a nonprofit to combat antisemitism and anti-Zionism on college campuses — which he now chairs. Asked whether he might return to his old post in a second Trump administration, Marcus said:
“If offered a position, I would have to listen very carefully.”
Neither he nor any other expert seemed to think the department would be shuttered any time soon. Trump would need Congressional approval, likely including a supermajority of the Senate — and past attempts to dissolve the department have failed.
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