The American Jewish Committee — together with major groups representing U.S. universities — on Tuesday released a statement asking the Trump administration to reconsider its approach to combatting campus antisemitism, which it said involves steps that “endanger” academic freedom. 

“America’s higher education and Jewish communities share and endorse the Trump Administration’s priority of eradicating antisemitism. We come together to ask the Administration to pursue this important goal in ways that preserve academic freedom, respect due process, and strengthen the government-campus scientific partnership,” said the joint statement, which was co-signed by American Council on Education, Association of American Universities, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, American Association of Community Colleges, National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

The groups — which together represent more than 1,000 colleges and universities — called antisemitism “a plague on humanity” which “has found unacceptable expression on U.S. campuses in recent years, as it has elsewhere in American society, on both sides of the political spectrum.”

The statement continued, “In the name of combating antisemitism, the federal government has recently taken steps that endanger the research grants, academic freedom, and institutional autonomy of America’s higher education sector.”

It urged the U.S. government to instead address antisemitism “through the nation’s powerful anti-discrimination laws, which allow for vigorous enforcement while providing due process rights that are essential to ensure fair treatment of individuals and institutions.” 

The groups pledged “continuing consequential reform and transparent action to root out antisemitism and all other forms of hate and prejudice from our campuses.”

The Trump administration has cut — or threatened to cut — more than $12 billion in research funding from elite schools including Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Brown and Northwestern. The moves to rescind billions in federal funding from colleges and universities, as well as to detain and deport foreign students, have ignited debate in the Jewish community in recent months, with many stressing a need for due process. 

“Our democratic values are not at odds with our vision for classrooms and campuses free from antisemitism – in fact, each is necessary for the other,” Ted Deutch, CEO of the AJC, said in a statement on Tuesday. 

Deutch told Jewish Insider last month that the group is trying to take a nuanced approach to the White House’s response to campus antisemitism. 

“There are campuses [where] so many of the challenges should have been addressed by universities, and weren’t. We’ve been clear that it’s really important that the administration, that the president, is making this a priority,” Deutch said. “At the same time, as we’ve said, due process matters and obviously our democratic principles matter as well, we have to be able to both express appreciation and, when necessary, express concern.”

“When the hammer [of funding cuts] is dropped in a way which winds up cutting life-saving cancer research, that’s when we have concern, which we’ve expressed,” Deutch warned. 

Barbara Snyder, president of AAU, an organization of 69 leading research universities, said in a statement that “cutting funds for life-saving research and threatening academic freedom and constitutional rights such as freedom of speech do nothing to make students safer. Fighting discrimination and supporting due process are two sides of the same coin; you cannot have one without the other.”