Antisemitism has surged, particularly on college campuses, over the last 18 months as protests and tensions surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict have escalated. In response, the Trump administration has taken a significant step by leveraging federal funding to compel universities to protect Jewish students' rights. While this move has sparked controversy, it aligns with a long-standing precedent of using federal funding as leverage to hold universities accountable for safeguarding students from discrimination and harm, a strategy that has been used to address various civil rights issues for decades.
In early March, the Trump administration sent letters to 60 educational institutions, informing them that they would face serious consequences for failing to protect Jewish students amid the encampments and protests regarding the Israel-Hamas war.
Weeks later, the administration followed through on its threats and canceled $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University, citing the university's alleged failure to address antisemitic harassment on campus. Brown University was targeted next when the administration announced its plans to withdraw approximately $510 million in federal funding as part of its broader efforts to address alleged civil rights violations and antisemitism.
Now, the administration has expanded its crackdown by announcing that it will freeze more than $1.8 billion in federal funding for Cornell and Northwestern universities.
Jewish Americans have endured 18 months of anguish on campus – first watching their families and friends in Israel suffer the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, then witnessing celebrations in the streets of their own hometowns. On campus, they've been confronted by pro-Hamas mobs waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags, setting up encampments and "Liberated Zones" where Jewish students were reportedly barred from passing. At Columbia University, this culminated in a violent takeover of a campus building, where the mob seized control and even held staff members hostage.
Many American Jews are pleased that action is finally being taken against higher education institutions that have long failed to safeguard the rights of Jewish students, both through the freezing of federal funding and the revocation of visas for green card holders. Yet others worry that public discourse will instead focus on free speech laws, gaslighting Jews for being unable to tolerate criticism.
The reality, however, is that the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has historically had the authority to revoke federal funding from institutions that violate civil rights laws, including those pertaining to racial discrimination.
Threatening to revoke federal funding from universities was used to combat racism during the civil rights movement in the 1960s, when schools in the South that refused to allow Black Americans to enroll were threatened with losing their funding. The federal government was able to force these institutions to desegregate under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (1964).
The Civil Rights Act introduced two key provisions that, for the first time, allowed the federal government to enforce desegregation in universities even if they didn't want to: the Justice Department was authorized to file lawsuits against noncompliant schools, and federal funding could be withheld from institutions that remained segregated. Within five years of the law's passage, nearly one-third of Black children in the South were attending integrated schools – a number that rose to nearly 90 percent by 1973. Withholding federal funds from universities or programs where discrimination occurred was a strong tool in fighting schools that refused to desegregate and comply with the law.
Laws have always been put in place to protect various university groups using federal funding (or the threat of withholding federal funding) to force universities to comply with equality. We have seen this advance progress for women through Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance. It was key in motivating institutions to implement changes, such as equal access to sports or faculty positions for women. We have also seen advances for LGBTQ+ individuals, prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. These protections also stretch to people with disabilities and undocumented immigrants.
So then, why is the public in such an outrage over the Trump administration enacting the same protections for Jewish students that it offers all other groups? What Jewish students have endured since the Hamas October 7 atrocities is on another level of discrimination on campus that far surpasses "criticism of Israel" and free speech. The Jewish community has long expressed that criticism of Israel is not antisemitic. Yet, waving flags of terrorist organizations, setting up liberated zones that refuse entry to Zionist students, and passing out flyers from Hamas's playbook (while the terror group is still holding hostages) very much puts Jewish students in danger.
While American universities pretend to be spaces for open dialogue, they have often been on the wrong side of history, just like when they refused to allow Black Americans to enroll, and just like when they sided with the Nazis, they are now failing to protect Jewish students and must face the consequences for doing so, the way we would expect with any other group of people.
The administration's crackdown is a necessary step in holding universities accountable for their failure to protect Jewish students, who have faced not only physical and emotional harm but also the violation of their right to learn and exist freely on campus. The question isn't whether Jewish students can tolerate criticism of Israel – it's whether they can survive the terrifying realities of being targeted for their identity in their own schools.
When universities fail to protect their students, particularly when those students are subjected to open hate and threats, they cease to be institutions of higher learning and become breeding grounds for division, hostility, and intolerance. The Trump administration's actions are not about stifling debate but about ensuring that universities uphold the fundamental principles of safety and equality that should be afforded to all students, regardless of their background. Just as the government once forced universities to desegregate in the name of civil rights, it is time for them to be held accountable for failing to protect Jewish students from the same kind of discrimination that has no place in this country.
