Members of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center met with Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Wednesday to discuss federal efforts to counter antisemitism and new legislation promoting school choice.

The meeting came amid a backdrop of concern from inside and outside the administration that negotiations with colleges and universities will prioritize hefty financial settlements rather than lasting reforms on antisemitism.

“We … spent time talking about combating antisemitism at universities, and — while expressing appreciation for the aggressive approach the department has taken — urging them to keep doing things that are going to make for lasting changes, and not things that could get rolled back when another administration comes into office,” Nathan Diament, executive director of public policy for the OU, said.

Diament said that OU is pushing for concrete policy changes at universities including “enforcement of policies protecting the rights of students, more careful scrutiny of faculty hiring and curriculum content.” He said that the issues on some campuses have “abated, but that could easily be reversed.”

Diament said that McMahon was “very much in agreement” with the OU group and conveyed that “that’s [the department’s] goal.”

The group also discussed the implementation of the Educational Choice for Children Act, which creates a national tax credit for donations to scholarship programs that can be used for a range of purposes including religious schooling.

Though the program is being primarily implemented through the Treasury Department, Diament said that the Department of Education has an important role to play and that the administration will need to make some key policy decisions on how it will carry out the program.

He said the OU wants to ensure that state governments, which need to approve scholarship programs on a state-by-state basis under the law, will not seek to limit or condition the eligibility of certain types of scholarship programs for funding.

Diament said that the OU leaders also met with lawmakers including Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) about Nonprofit Security Grant Program funding.

“The good news, so to speak, is that they all agree with the need to increase the funding of NSGP significantly above where it’s currently funded,” Diament said. “They recognize the need of the Jewish community. … On the other hand, it’s a very challenging appropriations environment, but these were very important discussions with key people to try to keep the ball rolling in the direction of funding this program.”

He added that a significant increase in the number of Catholic organizations applying for the grants is expected next year, in light of the Annunciation Church shooting in Minneapolis in August.