Trump antisemitism executive order to target ‘leftist, anti-American’ universities

By Arno Rosenfeld
January 29, 2025

President Donald Trump plans to sign an expansive executive order intended to address “the explosion of antisemitism on our campuses and in our streets,” with a focus on what the administration called “pro-Hamas aliens and left-wing radicals,” according to a White House fact sheet obtained by the Forward.

“Immediate action will be taken by the Department of Justice to protect law and order, quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities,” the document stated.

It added that the executive order “demands the removal of resident aliens who violate our laws.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The New York Post reported that Trump planned to sign the order Wednesday.

The order expands upon a 2019 executive order from Trump’s first term that directed federal agencies to interpret a crucial provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as covering antisemitism, and endorsed the widespread but controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which covers many expressions of anti-Zionism.

And yet despite the flurry of attention it received when it was released in late 2019, that order’s impact was blunted by its limited scope — it was tailored to clarifying Education Department investigations into antisemitism — and by the fact that the Trump administration never fully implemented the order. President Joe Biden left it in place, but similarly never converted it from a presidential decree into the kind of regulations federal employees need to apply an order to their everyday work.

But the policy landscape has changed significantly over the past six years, and especially since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War 15 months ago sparked an increase in both antisemitism and raucous demonstrations against Israel, particularly on university campuses.

The Anti-Defamation League has called for more aggressive action against students protesting Israel, including asking school presidents to investigate Students for Justice in Palestine chapters for providing material support to terrorist organizations, while Secure Community Network — the main organization providing security advice to synagogues and Jewish organizations in the United States — recently called for this country to “expel any non-citizen alien who supports terrorism,” including protesters.

Republicans have focused almost all of their attention on what they believe is antisemitism coming from left-wing activists and critics of Israel. The Heritage Foundation released a blueprint for the Trump administration to fight antisemitism called Project Esther that discussed how to dismantle a “Hamas Support Network” composed of progressive advocacy groups and foundations, while the author of that report said that he was not concerned with addressing the threat posed by white supremacists.

Trump did not make a statement about International Holocaust Remembrance Day Monday, and a leaked memo Tuesday from the Defense Intelligence Agency stated that the agency was pausing all of its “special emphasis programs,” including observances of “Holocaust Day/Days of Remembrance” in May.

The White House fact sheet also stated that immediately following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack against Israel “pro-Hamas aliens and left-wing radicals began a campaign of intimidation, vandalism, and violence on the campuses and streets of America.”

“Celebrating Hamas’ mass rape, kidnapping, and murder, they physically blocked Jewish Americans from attending college classes, obstructed synagogues and assaulted worshippers, and vandalized American monuments and statues,” while the “Biden Administration turned a blind eye to this coordinated assault on public order; it simply refused to protect the civil rights of Jewish Americans, especially students.”

Last executive order had muted impact

Trump’s 2019 executive order was greeted with both support and consternation in the Jewish community.

Supporters, including establishment groups like the ADL hailed the order, saying it was “designed to give the federal government more tools to protect Jews from antisemitism.” Skeptics worried that it was too focused on stanching criticism of Israel, while others focused on the order’s apparent classification of Jews as an ethnic group — collapsing the complexity of Jewish identity.

Its endorsement of the widespread but controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which covers many expressions of anti-Zionism, also drew attention but ultimately ended up as one of many made by the federal government over the past nearly two decades that have never managed to give the definition force of law.

Civil rights investigators at the Department of Education were trained on the order, and told to consider the IHRA definition when investigating cases, although the failure to codify it into an official regulation meant it was never used to determine the final results of a case.

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