President Donald Trump’s efforts to combat antisemitism on college campuses worry American Jews, who say Trump could hurt more than he helps. But Trump’s moves have been applauded by politically conservative Christians and others opposed to liberalism in higher education.
Trump announced his plans to “fight antisemitism in the United States and around the world” in a Jan. 29 executive order and a Jan. 30 fact sheet that promised the removal of “resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests.”
“My promise to Jewish Americans is this: I will be your defender, your protector, and I will be the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House,” said the fact sheet.
“I will be the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House.”
“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,” said the executive order.
Trump’s order called for creation of a Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, which meets weekly to determine which colleges will be targeted. The task force is led by Leo Terrell, who formerly criticized Trump for rising antisemitism during his first term before supporting him on Fox News. The administration has declined to identify task force members, citing concerns about their safety.
However, reporting by other news outlets has identified some of the task force members, including Attorney General Pam Bondi; Education Secretary Linda McMahon; Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights; Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service; Thomas Wheeler, acting general counsel of the Department of Education; Sean Keveney, acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services; and Stephen Ehikian, acting GSA administrator.
Initial task force targets include Columbia University; George Washington University; Harvard University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern University; University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Los Angeles; University of Minnesota; and University of Southern California, according to The New York Times.
Some of those attacks on institutions — such as at Columbia and Harvard — have become very public.
Jewish leaders skeptical
Despite the optics of the task force’s work, many Jewish leaders remain skeptical of Trump’s efforts. Michael S. Roth, the Jewish president of Wesleyan University, says Trump’s actions “pose a direct threat to the very people they purport to help.”
Roth explained his concerns in a New York Times opinion piece titled, “Trump Is Selling Jews a Dangerous Lie.”
“It’s a cover for a wide range of agendas that have nothing to do with the welfare of Jewish people.”
“Jew hatred is real, but today’s anti-antisemitism isn’t a legitimate effort to fight it,” wrote Roth. “It’s a cover for a wide range of agendas that have nothing to do with the welfare of Jewish people.”
Michael S. Roth
“All of these agendas — from dismantling basic government functions to crushing the independence of cultural and educational organizations to criminalizing political speech to legitimating petty presidential vendettas — endanger the principles and institutions that have actually made this country great,” he wrote. “For Jews, a number of these agendas do something more: They pose a direct threat to the very people they purport to help. Jews who applaud the administration’s crackdown will soon find that they do so at their peril.”
As one worried Jewish man asked in a letter to the Times, “The American system that has allowed Jews to flourish here in safety is at risk. … If we ratify these tactics, how long will it be before they are turned against us?”
More than 200 academics in Israel have signed an open letter condemning Trump’s actions, reported the Israel news site Haaretz. “We condemn using Jewish students’ safety to silence or punish pro-Palestinian voices in U.S. academia,” said the open letter, which warned Trump’s cynical ploy was “fostering anti-Jewish sentiment.”
McCarthyism revisited
David French, an evangelical Christian attorney who writes for the Times, is one of many thinkers to compare Trump’s campaign against antisemitism on universities to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare campaign against communists in the 1950s. Hundreds of people were imprisoned and thousands lost their jobs before McCarthy was discredited and censured.
“The Red Scares of 20th-century anti-communism are being replaced by a new frenzy, whipped up against left-wing supporters of the Palestinian cause,” wrote French. “Even so, just as we rightly look back in shame at the excesses of McCarthyism, we will look back in shame at the excesses of this moment — if we permit anger at campus protests to overwhelm our commitment to due process and free speech.”
“As we rightly look back in shame at the excesses of McCarthyism, we will look back in shame at the excesses of this moment.”
The problem of antisemitism is real, and attacks on Jews have soared since Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023 and Israel’s military responded with deadly force.
“The most common religious hate crimes in the United States are against Jews,” reported the Christian Science Monitor, even though Jews make up only 2% of the U.S. population.
Yet Jews say Trump’s education policies could make things even harder. Trump wants to shut down the Department of Education, but the department’s Civil Rights Division “serves as the main federal body investigating allegations of antisemitism,” according to the Jewish outlet The Forward.
“The Education Department runs one of the largest civil rights divisions in the government, with 588 employees fielding more than 22,000 complaints in 2024, including more than 100 alleging discrimination against Jewish students as protests against Israel’s war in Gaza heated up,” The Forward reported.
Project Esther
The DNA for Trump’s antisemitism campaign can be found in Project Esther, the “National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism” from the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank behind Project 2025.
Like Trump, Project Esther focuses on antisemitism from leftists and progressives while ignoring the often more virulent and violent antisemitism on the right. As BNG previously reported, Heritage developed Project Esther with conservative Christian groups and the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, overlooking established Jewish groups that have fought antisemitism for decades.
“No major Jewish organizations appear to have participated in drafting the plan, or publicly endorsed it since its release,” reported The Forward in December.
Michael Gould-Wartofsky
A scholar at Columbia, one of the universities targeted by Trump, criticized partisan antisemitism campaigns.
“If the president were serious about fighting antisemitism, he would have to break up with his antisemitic friends and fans, including Holocaust deniers like Nicholas Fuentes, Great Replacement conspiracy theorists like Tucker Carlson, and self-described Western Chauvinists like the Proud Boys,” wrote Michael Gould-Wartofsky.
“It is seriously unlikely that any of these measures will make Jewish students or staff any safer — on or off campus.”
“It is seriously unlikely that any of these measures will make Jewish students or staff any safer — on or off campus — aimed as they are at suppressing speech rather than combating hatred. If anything, they promise to undermine the intercommunal solidarity on which Jewish safety ultimately depends, creating the impression that prioritizing Jewish interests means adhering to a right-wing agenda with which a majority of Jews disagree.”
Focus on the Family is among the conservative Christian groups that support Trump and endorse his campaign against universities.
“For years, campus faculty and administrators fed the sickness of antisemitism. Now, an astonishing number of students have been infected,” said Focus’s Daily Citizen. “Policy adjustments alone can’t cure them. Radical ideological change is the only permanent solution — and that takes time. In the meantime, Harvard, Columbia and the rest of their ilk will be playing whack-a-mole with the destructive ideology they once embraced.”
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