How Trump’s attacks on the university target what has made America great for Jews

History caught up with American Jews. Many of us grew up believing we had escaped the legacy of forebears victimized, banished and exterminated. In the United States, in the decades after the Holocaust, Jews came to enjoy the promise of a constitutional democracy and a proud nation of immigrants: education, opportunity and relative peace.

For many, that unthinking ease has now evaporated. The lethal sucker punch of Oct. 7, followed by the horrors of the Israel-Hamas war, the pain of the hostages and their families, the extreme right-wing policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and the unspeakable devastation suffered by Palestinians in Gaza have roiled American society and riven Jewish communities. Those shockwaves have also fueled virulent antisemitism on college campuses, online, and in the form of violent attacks such as, most recently, the arson of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s home.

The Trump Administration has seized on antisemitism as grounds to hit hard at institutions, with universities in the strike zone. An unprecedented frontal assault on Harvard University includes the recission of more than $3 billion in federal funds, moves to eliminate its tax exemption, and threats to curtail international student visas. The administration is pursuing similar funding cuts and pressure tactics with colleges including Columbia, Princeton, Brown, Cornell and Northwestern that stand accused of letting antisemitism run amok.

Although many Jews are alarmed at antisemitism being used as grounds to bludgeon universities, that feeling is not universal.  Some Jews take grim satisfaction at the forceful action used to address what they see as dereliction of duty by their own alma maters.  Such feelings are understandable; universities have not done enough. But American Jews should not let their frustration and fears back them into support for the administration’s torching of Harvard and other campuses, purportedly in the name of making them safe from antisemitism.

While the Trump administration claims to be protecting Jews, the radical right-wing ideology propelling the assault on universities long predates Oct. 7. Set out in tracts by blogger Curtis Larvin, conservative activist Chris Rufo and other culture warriors, that agenda is motivated by outrage over DEI and aimed at rescuing the university from what is deemed “ideological capture.” In the name of an agenda sometimes known as the “dark enlightenment” and reflected in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the administration, despite purporting to defend Jews from discrimination, is actually trying to remake the very institutions and social arrangements under which Jews have historically thrived.  Strongman attacks on liberal principles, alliances and institutions will ultimately leave Jews more isolated and less safe.

Colleges have struggled to come to grips with rising antisemitism. They have been caught between respect for pro-Palestinian activists’ speech rights and the reality that pervasive harsh expression, while mostly protected by the First Amendment and university policy, can nonetheless cause Jews to feel harassed and marginalized. Universities had invested years and millions of dollars fostering inclusion for Black, Latino, Muslim, LGBTQ and other minority groups. In so doing, alongside many other efforts, they tackled speech and conduct — memes, culturally-insensitive costumes, and blunt views on topics like affirmative action or immigration — that could undercut feelings of psychological safety on campus. Recognizing the power of speech to stigmatize and offend, campus culture erected powerful taboos. Errant speech could lead to discipline or social and professional pariahdom. Commitments to unfettered expression gave way to the policing of speech in the name of building a sense of belonging for minority students.

After Oct. 7, some who had witnessed — and chafed at —  these narrowing bounds on offensive discourse were dumbstruck. Instances of exclusion of Jews from quads and clubs, the shouting down of pro-Israel speakers, disruptions of classes, and vandalism targeting Jews were met with defense of free speech and activism, reluctance to enforce rules, and ignorance or dubiousness regarding concerns of antisemitism. Jews on campus were expected to tolerate chants and slogans that, while perhaps subject to multiple interpretations, also had clear associations with terror campaigns targeting Jews. While according to the teachings of some DEI offices, minority groups deserve deference to define what is considered offensive or biased, Jews’ assertions regarding antisemitism were often hotly contested.

While baffling to some, the apparent turnabout and newfound fealty to free speech ideals made perfect sense to others. Through the lens of contemporary identity politics, Jews were classed as white, wealthy, and well able to fend for themselves. It is true that most Jews are designated as “white” for purposes of the U.S. census, and that median Jewish wealth is well above the national average. But those characterizations overlook the intertwining of privilege and vulnerability that has marked Jewish life for centuries. That duality defies the binary paradigm of today’s social justice movements. Yet it is foundational to Jewish identities shaped by the stories of generations not long ago whose wealth and assimilation did not save them.

If the only choices were oppressor or oppressed, Jews were categorized as the former whereas DEI offices served the latter. Columbia University senior administrators caught texting during a campus antisemitism presentation last spring said the quiet part out loud, remarking that the concerns being articulated came from “such a place of privilege” and that it was “hard to hear the ‘woe is me.’”

For many on the left, the wanton conduct of the war in Gaza rendered anything short of wholesale repudiation — not just of the Israeli government and military conduct but of the Jewish state itself — a mark of personal moral complicity in mass death. Thus the labeling of Governor Shapiro “Genocide Josh” despite the fact that he supports Palestinian statehood and has said Netanyahu is “a dangerous and destructive force” and “one of the worst leaders of all time” and has called out the death and destruction in Gaza.

Charges of antisemitism were spurned by many on the left who insisted that all that right-minded Jews needed to do to remain in good graces was simply confess that the Jewish state is an amoral “settler colonialist” enterprise that did not deserve to exist. Jews’ religious, spiritual, familial and ancestral links to Israel were waved away.  Talk of complex histories, mutual traumas and displacements, two-state solutions, or Hamas’ part in imperiling Palestinian civilians were dismissed as distractions. That a small minority of Jews spiritedly disavowed Israel proved the point. Even as recorded hate crimes against Jews soared, concerns of antisemitism were discounted as a right-wing talking point invoked to thwart the quest for Palestinian liberation.

For some Jews, a climate of rising hostility was compounded by indignation over the rebuff of their concerns. Failure to empower campus antisemitism task forces or implement their key recommendations, hesitancy to discipline rule-breaking protesters, and wan official administrative statements fed Jews’ sense that the universities’ values and orientation had turned away from them. Jews were accused of catastrophizing, yet were ever mindful that, in eras past, those who predicted the worst were often the only ones to survive it.

Like much else in our bottom-feeding culture, as antisemitism grew more pervasive it also became more subject to manipulation. The current crusade to bring elite, largely progressive campuses to heel forms part of a larger campaign against influential societal institutions including non-profits, law firms, media outlets and cultural organizations where left-wing and liberal leanings prevail. Funding cut-offs further a goal of Project 2025 to end “massive, inefficient, and open-ended subsidies to ‘traditional’ colleges and universities.” The administration’s April 11 demand letter to Harvard University came right from the playbook of Chris Rufo who calls for “overthrow” of the left and  prides himself on having driven out the presidents of Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard.

That rising antisemitism is both a documented and painful reality as well as a cynical rallying cry reflects an entanglement not easily captured in headlines or tweets. Yet, by overlooking that complexity, we risk excusing or tolerating tactics that will do grave harm to Jews, and to society at large.

An immediate risk is that the battle against antisemitism is being fast tainted by the trammeling of rights and the hobbling of treasured institutions. The role of radical pro-Israel organizations such as Canary Mission and Betar in identifying students as potential targets for deportation based upon lawful protest activities is already discrediting the cause. By embracing reactionary tactics, these actors feed the claim that support for Israel eviscerates Jewish claims to liberal legitimacy. The right to live free from antisemitic harassment need not and must not come at the expense of rights to free speech, free assembly or academic freedom.

Turning the campaign against antisemitism, which should be a project shared by Americans of all political views, into a MAGA flagship risks a potent boomerang effect whereby Jews take the blame for an authoritarian crackdown while leftwing antisemitism only intensifies. Those who were always dubious about concerns over antisemitism are already seizing on the Trump administration’s power grab as proof of their point. On the other hand, as universities hang tough and research laboratories and campus services pay the price, Jews may be blamed for crashing the country’s leading research institutions. Having been scapegoated throughout their history, Jews should be wise enough to see it coming.

Beyond the straight-up backlash, the Trump administration’s actions in the name of combating campus antisemitism pose more profound risks. The weakening of universities as autonomous institutions will detract from a primary engine for social mobility, integration and professional success for Jews and everyone else. Punishing universities by withholding federal funds will primarily hit the sciences and medicine, realms where Jews have long found much professional success.

That the administration’s broadside against antisemitism coincides with the punitive abolition of DEI programs compounds the problem. Jews’ success in America was premised on defeating academic quotas, redlining, stigmatization and hate. They did so by advocating neutral principles intended to address all forms of bias, not just that targeting Jews. Black Americans and other groups are waging similar battles, in some cases against entrenched histories of subjugation and deprivation far worse than Jews ever endured in America. The acronym DEI has become discredited in some circles for its overreach, orthodoxies and blind spots. But the administration’s war on DEI is not tailored to rectify those flaws. Society would benefit from remaking the fight against prejudice into one that protects all equally, and strictly respects free speech. But the administration’s approach instead bluntly eradicates all measures to confront the legacies of racism and inequality, including those that are lawful, essential and deserving of protection under the principle of academic freedom.

In recent years, some Jews have felt that the safeguarding of other minorities came at their expense. The Trump administration’s approach risks crudely turning the tables to prioritize Jewish vulnerability over that of others, rather than tackling the breadth of biases and bigotries to ensure fair treatment for all. When Jews support such efforts they forsake not just longstanding allies, but the essence of their own centuries-long quest for acceptance and equality in America.

More broadly, Jews’ success in America has rested on liberal principles of non-discrimination, separation of church and state, freedom of speech and association, concern for the welfare of others, and the rule of law. These ideals, upheld by strong institutions, allowed Jews to enter universities and professions, build Jewish communities, maintain religious practices, support fellow Jews around the world, foster goodwill with neighbors, and maintain strong Jewish and American identities simultaneously. Embracing, or even just excusing, authoritarian tactics will undermine the very reasons why Jews have found the United States to be perhaps the most hospitable home in their history.

Measures contained in the April 11 demand letter to Harvard would inject Trump administration officials into the most sensitive aspects of the running of a private institution, including governance, admissions, teaching, and student disciplinary policies. By imposing its own vision of the “scholarly mission” of the university, the administration would substitute what it decries as the ideological chains of the left with captivity to the right, enforced not by social pressure but by penalty of law. Such a precedent could mean that any form of federal funding, contracts or collaboration would render private sector entities vassals of the state. That is the system in China, where every university, corporation and executive is effectively a proxy for the Communist Party. A government that wins license to turn against certain groups and ideas can later turn on others, a lesson Jews know well.

Resentment over the betrayals of the left and DEI, cynicism about the place of traditional liberal values in an era of zero-sum, pay-to-play politics, and even justified outrage over passivity toward antisemitism should not obscure what has kept Jews safe over decades. Nor should the temptation to court Trump’s favor. Whether in apartheid South Africa or the civil rights era South, there has always been a minority of Jews who aligned themselves with repressive authorities hoping that proximity to power would keep them safe. But in both of those instances, most Jews sided with the causes of freedom and equality, standing up to repression in the name of values — such as commands to repair the world and pursue justice — that are rooted in Jewish traditions. Steeped in their own history, Jews should position themselves on the right side of it.

None of this contradicts the imperative of taking antisemitism seriously. Nor does it suggest that Jews can rest assured that liberal values will save them. Lawsuits, civil rights investigations, and hate crimes prosecutions are all established legal channels for rooting out prejudice that do not involve government takeovers or shakedowns.

The universities in the crosshairs should step up efforts to counter ideological overreach, strengthen support for Jewish students, and beef up the viewpoint-neutral discipline necessary to keep campuses open and safe for all. They should listen to Jewish students and faculty who have a range of views on these challenges, and what would ameliorate or exacerbate them. The urgency sparked in recent weeks should be a catalyst not just to push back against the Trump administration, but also to accelerate long-sought reforms to diversify faculties intellectually, embrace heterodox thinking, and facilitate dialogue across differences. Credible efforts to root out antisemitism must go beyond campus and address Jew hatred from the right as well as the left. The most effective tactics may lie in fortifying Jewish institutions and communities as refuges. but also as foundations for outreach and bridge-building to others.

Rooting out antisemitism will ultimately depend not just on enforcing rules or applying pressure. It will demand defending threatened principles of openness, respect for differences, compassion and solidarity. These are principles that undergird American society, and the place of Jews within it. It is by defending what is best about their country that Jews can save themselves.

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