On Capitol Hill, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has long been a vocal advocate for combating antisemitism and active on Middle East security issues. But it was her questioning at a December 2023 hearing that made her a household name in the American Jewish community and beyond, and drew her into the center of the unfolding fight on campus antisemitism.

“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your school’s] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment?” Stefanik asked the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Their equivocal responses, as disruptive and at times threatening anti-Israel protests were sweeping universities across the country, were a major factor in the resignations of two of those presidents and a slew of further hearings that put college presidents in the hot seat.

Now, as she prepares to leave Congress next year, Stefanik is out with a new book on campus antisemitism, ​​Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities.

More than two years after that first hearing — and after a tumultuous political period in which she saw her nomination as ambassador to the United Nations withdrawn before launching a short-lived New York gubernatorial campaign — Stefanik offered a mixed readout on how she sees the state of American higher education in an interview with Jewish Insider this week.

“In the year after the hearing, we saw that the universities failed to fix themselves and continued to dig deeper and deeper, and it was going to take significant administrative and legislative and frankly, appropriations action of withholding of funds, to force them to really reckon with what the American people saw loudly and clearly in that hearing, [which] is that there are deep-seated issues in higher education,” Stefanik said.

She said that there have also, however, been leadership changes at many of the universities that were probed by the House Committee on Education & the Workforce, in part because of those hearings, as well as overhauls such as the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at some schools.

“The other piece, I would say, is you’re seeing parents and students vote with their wallets and their feet,” such as the rising application and matriculation rates to schools like Vanderbilt University, which Stefanik has highlighted as having handled the post-Oct. 7, 2023, environment effectively.

The New York congresswoman argued that the hearings played a major factor in the reform efforts that followed. She also said that the Trump administration, even before it took office, has been sharply focused on the issue of campus antisemitism, coordinating closely with her office to help shape the administration’s lawsuits and executive orders on the issue.

Asked about anti-Israel and antisemitic voices in the Republican Party such as commentators Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, Stefanik largely dismissed the idea that antisemitism was, or could become, a significant problem within the GOP.

“The difference between [New York City Mayor Zohran] Mamdani and those podcasters is Mamdani is elected to the most important city in the world as mayor, and those other names are not elected, and I think are often overstated [in] their influence,” Stefanik said. “They would not be elected to local office, to state office, to congressional office. That’s why I think it’s very important for actual elected officials, actual leaders, to speak out on issues of importance.”

She praised Trump for calling out Carlson and Owens and making clear that they don’t represent him or his voters, and argued that similar voices represent just a small fringe of Republican members in Congress. 

Pressed on the fact that such voices represented a similarly small fringe of the Democratic Party in Congress a decade ago, Stefanik insisted that Republican voters would not embrace such voices.

“The Democrat[ic] Party — it’s a full blown takeover of Hasan Piker, of these voices that The New York Times is now embracing, and ‘Pod Save America’ is now embracing,” Stefanik said. “That is not the case on the Republican side. And as a candidate who actually has stood in front of the voters for the past decade-plus — yes, those voices can say what they want, you actually represent the people that elect you, and that’s not what voters in my district [want].”

Despite the relatively small share of Jewish voters in her district, Stefanik said that her work on campus antisemitism still receives some of the strongest praise from constituents.

Though the administration’s initial blitz of action on campus antisemitism has faded from the headlines, Stefanik said its efforts to address issues in higher education are ongoing, and that the issue also remains top-of-mind for the country at large.

“It’s not just about antisemitism,” she added. “This is broader higher education reform. … That was the canary in the coal mine issue that brought up so many broader issues that were wrong with higher education.”

In Congress, she said that more legislation should be brought to the floor on campus antisemitism, adding that she’s also hoping to work on reining in funding to colleges, cracking down on tax advantages and loopholes that benefit colleges and further limiting foreign funding and foreign student populations at U.S. institutions in her remaining months on the Hill.

She pointed to Qatar as one driver of antisemitism on campuses, and said that the U.S. should make clear to Doha that, if it wants to remain a military partner with the U.S., it “can’t foment and fund this anti-Americanism on college campuses, full stop.”

Stefanik isn’t yet sharing her next steps, but said she wrote her new book in part to serve as a historical record of antisemitism on college campuses, so that “mainstream media” can’t “brush this chapter under the rug.” She said she intends to continue shining a light on the issue.

Though she ultimately passed on a gubernatorial run, Stefanik seems to have longer-term plans in New York politics, and said that Republicans will be in a stronger position to win in the state in the coming years.

Regarding her decision to drop out of the governor’s race, Stefanik argued that the political environment is not currently ripe for a GOP victory, that Republicans need more time to build their statewide infrastructure and that Mamdani’s policies will grow more unpopular in the next few years.

“I think the Democrat Party is going to be increasingly taken over [by Mamdani-aligned socialists],” Stefanik said. “That, long-term, is where Republicans can win back those independents and traditional Democrats.”

Stefanik drew a direct line between the anti-Israel encampment at Columbia University and Mamdani’s election — both because Mamdani’s father is “very much part of this antisemitic petri dish” at Columbia and because “the same people that were organizing the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia directly were boots on the ground for [his] campaign.”

She called herself “the leader” among state Republicans in pushing back against “socialist and Democrat single-party rule of New York State,” and highlighted that she has her own statewide political apparatus — separate from the statewide GOP, which she said lacks infrastructure.

“There is going to be a long road in rebuilding that infrastructure to save the state,” she said. 

She also said she wanted to spend more time with her four-year-old son at this stage of his life.

“My voice is not going anywhere. If anything, it’s more. I mean, we’re putting this [book] out in the world and helping set the tone for the type of leadership we need in New York and, frankly, across the country,” Stefanik said.

A newly released report from House Republicans on the Education and Workforce Committee alleges that faculty members and student groups have played a central role in promoting and amplifying antisemitism on college campuses, particularly those affiliated with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

The report, titled “How Campuses Became Hotbeds: The Rise of Radical Antisemitism on College Campuses,” was released Tuesday and examines campus activity following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel.

The report finds that faculty affiliated with Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) “played a significant role in legitimizing and amplifying antisemitism on college campuses,” and that campuses with FSJP chapters were seven times more likely to experience “violence against Jews.”

It alleges that some faculty members sought to “strip Jewish students of protections, incited protests that turned violent, taught antisemitic content in their courses and hosted programming that isolated Jewish students and demonized Israel.”

According to the report, FSJP chapters have pressured universities to boycott Israel, reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism and circulated statements that justified violence against Israel.

In one example, the report indicates that the FSJP chapter at Sarah Lawrence College challenged the school’s decision to put the word “antisemitism” before the word “racism” in a two-day orientation curriculum. “We’re worried [it] sends a message to incoming students about whose oppression matters,” the school’s chapter wrote. 

“Faculty members also perpetuate antisemitism through university centers, such as Middle East studies centers, that offer a one-sided view of Israel as a ‘settler colonialist’ enterprise,” the report states. “It also views Jews as white and the privileged ‘oppressor,’ rather than a diverse minority that has been persecuted for thousands of years.”

The report found that in September 2024, the University of California Berkeley announced Ussama Makdisi as the inaugural chair of a newly created program in Palestinian and Arab Studies. However, earlier that year, Makdisi made a post on social media supporting the actions of Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, writing: “I could have been one of those who broke through the siege on October 7.” 

The report also alleges that student groups, most notably SJP, have “consistently acted as ringleaders for antisemitic harassment faced by Jewish students on campus.” It argues that institutions of higher education have “given in” to student demands and “failed” to discipline students promoting antisemitism. SJP chapters in particular “organize violent antisemitic disturbances, host antisemitic speakers and pressure universities to boycott Israel.”

The report cites another incident at Sarah Lawrence College in which the school’s SJP chapter posted a statement calling on peers to “defend the student intifada,” described the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks as an “uprising” and shared an image “of a Hamas bulldozer tearing through Israel’s security fence.” The group later received a student leadership award after being nominated by the school’s FSJP chapter.

“At the award ceremony, the individual presenting the award described SJP as having ‘engaged in empathetic and powerful activism,’” the report states.

“Every campus that the Committee investigated while preparing this report featured an SJP chapter, or a variant of one, that served as a ringleader for antisemitic activity on campus,” the report adds, noting that many colleges and universities not only “failed” to respond to SJP, but also allowed “hostility towards Jewish students to fester.”

The report also suggested that foreign influence in American higher education is part of the problem, pointing to satellite campuses in Qatar operated by Northwestern University and Georgetown University. It alleges that both institutions have “housed faculty or fellows and student groups that foment antisemitism” without consequences.

“Neither NU-Q nor GU-Q have disciplined any faculty, students, or staff for antisemitism since October 7, 2023,” the report states. “The committee found that after October 7th, GU-Q entities that should be neutral promoted, participated in or hosted deeply one-sided events that legitimize antisemitic rhetoric.”

The report cites a series of incidents involving faculty and staff at Northwestern’s Qatar campus, including Professor Marc Jones, who it says has circulated a conspiracy theory that Israelis steal Palestinian organs and described Israel as “worse than Hamas.” It also references visiting Professor William Youmans, described as an Al Jazeera specialist, who called Israel a “terrorist state” and defended Hamas following the Oct. 7 attacks.

Additionally, the report highlights a social media post from Sami Hermez, director of Northwestern in Qatar’s Liberal Arts Program, in which he wrote that “Zionists have control over European policy and power,” adding, “If you want to make the leap that Jews control Europe, I don’t care.”

At Georgetown University’s Qatar campus, the report alleges that student groups displayed posters reading, “We stand with violence on Israelis,” and that at an SJP event, some students “drew hearts around Hamas’ name,” while others left messages including, “Oh Allah, deal with the Zionists,” and expressed a desire for the Jewish people “to fall.”

The report also outlines a series of recommendations aimed at addressing these problems, including adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

It also calls on Congress to pass legislation such as the Civil Rights Protection Act, which would require higher education institutions to be more transparent about procedures and investigations related to civil rights complaints, as well as the Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes in Nefarious Transactions (DETERRENT) Act, which would lower the financial threshold at which universities must report foreign gifts and contracts.

The report further suggests requiring U.S. universities operating overseas to make course syllabi publicly available, arguing that doing so would allow the government to hold faculty “who have exhibited blatant antisemitism” accountable.

“The findings in this report make clear that antisemitism in higher education is not confined to encampments at a handful of elite universities, nor did it begin or end with the events of October 7th,” the report states. “The evidence demonstrates that antisemitism is driven by persistent leadership failures and radical faculty and student groups that legitimize and foment antisemitism in classrooms and on campus grounds.”

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights met in Washington on Thursday to hold its first hearing on campus antisemitism in more than 20 years. 

The commission — a bipartisan federal fact-finding agency established in 1957 — is chaired by a Democrat and also includes two Republicans appointed by President Donald Trump, yielding a diverse group of witnesses who sparred over Trump’s approach to campus antisemitism and his administration’s firing of more than half of the attorneys in the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. 

The 22 witnesses included Craig Trainor, who served as acting director of OCR during Trump’s first year in office; several former OCR attorneys; Matt Nosanchuk, a former deputy assistant secretary at DOE during the Biden administration now at The George Washington University Law School; Brandeis Center CEO Ken Marcus, who led OCR during Trump’s first term; National Jewish Advocacy Center CEO Mark Goldfeder; Jewish Council for Public Affairs CEO Amy Spitalnick; J Street U Director Erin Beiner; and students from Harvard, American University and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. 

Two former OCR attorneys who lost their jobs last year after Trump slashed thousands of jobs at the Education Department, which he has said he hopes to shutter entirely, testified that the office’s civil rights monitoring and enforcement team had been pulverized, leaving the agency less equipped to investigate complaints of antisemitism at schools and universities.

“The issue now, in the wake of these cuts, is whether sufficient resources remain to combat the ongoing threat of antisemitism in our nation’s schools,” said Linda Mangel, who served as enforcement director at OCR until last March. “Unless immediate and significant steps are taken now to rebuild the agency so it can respond to complaints from students in harm’s way, hate will win.” 

Beth Gellman-Beer, who was director of OCR’s Philadelphia office until it was shuttered last year, said she worried the dramatic reduction in staff in the civil rights office would lead to a diminished ability to monitor universities’ handling of antisemitic discrimination. 

“I didn’t have the opportunity to complete the monitoring for all of the cases that my office helped resolve, and that is going to weigh heavily on me into my career in the future, because I know, from my 18 years of experience at OCR, that the power doesn’t lie in the terms of the agreement, but in rigorous enforcement of that agreement,” Gellman-Beer said.

Nosanchuk — who was a political appointee at the Department of Education during Biden’s term — said that an effective, if bureaucratic, approach to combating antisemitism that he argued was working had since been abandoned for political reasons. 

“What has replaced this approach? In the name of combating antisemitism, the current administration has built a Trojan horse to unleash a frontal ideological attack on higher education,” said Nosanchuk. 

A cadre of more conservative witnesses pushed back, arguing that fewer staff at OCR does not mean less enforcement of federal civil rights statutes, particularly when it comes to antisemitism. Instead, they said the onus has now been taken up by a slew of other federal agencies, including the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. Even if OCR’s team has resolved fewer cases related to antisemitism than the Biden administration, the forceful strategy by Trump has been more impactful, they argued.  

“If we need to understand what’s happening with the Trump administration, we’re seeing a whole of government approach using not just the Education Department, but also HHS, Justice, the Federal Acquisition [Service] and other agencies in an extraordinary way,” said Marcus. “It’s far more comprehensive than anything we’ve seen before.”

Trainor, who led OCR until he left for a position at the Department of Housing and Urban Development this month, clapped back at critics of Trump’s approach and his cuts to OCR.

“What I just hear is sort of desperate attempts to justify being complicit in a failed OCR operation that was politicized under the Biden administration, and the results and the efforts that were taken by the Trump administration speak for themselves,” said Trainor. “The Biden OCR’s response to these hateful hordes was equivocal, craven and pathetic.” 

At other sessions, witnesses addressed the constitutionality of Trump’s higher education policies, particularly as he has cut funding from universities. A group of law professors debated whether certain efforts to combat antisemitism infringe on students’ and professors’ constitutionally protected free speech. Students discussed whether they felt their concerns had been taken seriously by government officials.

The members of the commission told witnesses that they intended to use the testimony from Thursday’s hearing, as well as public testimony gathered over the coming weeks, to publish a bipartisan report about federal civil rights laws as related to antisemitism. One of the Trump-appointed commissioners said that the witnesses criticizing Trump’s cuts to the Education Department jeopardized that task. 

“I think the problem that is sought to be addressed here is so wicked and evil that bickering about federal bureaucrats losing their jobs is not serving any purpose,” said J. Christian Adams, the Trump-appointed commissioner, who is the president and general counsel at the conservative Public Interest Legal Foundation. “I think complaining about Donald Trump is not going to get a report passed by this commission, because you won’t get the votes.”

The last time the commission produced a report on campus antisemitism was in 2006. One of its findings proved particularly prescient, as witnesses on Thursday discussed the antisemitism that followed the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel: “Anti-Semitic bigotry is no less morally deplorable when camouflaged as anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism,” the commission wrote 20 years ago.

Liz Magill, the former University of Pennsylvania president who resigned after facing criticism of inaction against campus antisemitism, was tapped on Friday as the dean of Georgetown University Law Center. 

Magill left her post at UPenn in December 2023, four days after she appeared at a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill where she evaded questioning over whether students who called for the genocide of Jews violated the school’s code of conduct. 

Magill, who maintained her role as a tenured professor at the university’s law school after resigning as president, faced scrutiny following the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks in Israel over her handling of the subsequent rise of campus antisemitism from many elected officials in the state including Gov. Josh Shapiro. Even prior to Oct. 7, the Philadelphia campus saw increased hostility to Jewish students, including a September 2023 Palestinian Writes literature conference that featured a lineup of antisemitic speakers. 

In a campus-wide email, Robert Groves, Georgetown’s interim president, said Magill was selected for her “rare combination of leadership and experience.” 

“I am shocked and deeply taken aback by the announcement that Liz Magill will be the new dean of Georgetown Law. For many Jewish students including myself on this campus, this decision feels like a slap in the face,” Julia Wax Vanderwiel, a third-year student in the law school and founder of Georgetown Law Zionists, told Jewish Insider. 

“At Penn she failed to protect the students in her charge, choosing instead to engage in what appeared to be a political and semantic exercise at a moment when moral clarity was required. When directly confronted, she refused to acknowledge the harm her institution allowed or the fear Jewish students were experiencing due to cries and chants of calling for the genocide of Jews,” continued Wax Vanderwiel. “At a time when antisemitism on college campuses has surged and Jewish students are looking to their institutions for leadership and protection, this appointment sends a deeply troubling message. It suggests that Jewish students’ concerns are negotiable, contextual or secondary. That is profoundly disappointing.” 

Georgetown University — and its law school — have been under scrutiny for alleged inaction against extremism and the more than $1 billion the school has received from Qatar, a Hamas benefactor. In July, Groves was questioned about campus antisemitism by the House Education and Workforce Committee.

Last February, the law school scheduled a discussion featuring a convicted member of the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The event, which was organized by Georgetown Law Students for Justice in Palestine, was postponed indefinitely following pushback from both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY). Weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks, Georgetown Law hosted Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd, who celebrated Hamas as a “liberation movement” and called the massacre a “resistance tactic.” 

In a statement, Magill, who will begin at Georgetown on Aug. 1, said, “I know my testimony in Congress left many concerned and distressed, especially Jewish students on the Penn campus. That response matters deeply to me. I failed to convey my compassion and concern for Jewish students. I regret that; it does not reflect who I am as a person and a leader. I want every Jewish student, and all students, to have a secure environment at the law school where they can thrive.”

As the Trump administration ratchets up its efforts to influence higher education, the latest White House proposal for colleges and universities is being met with skepticism from academics — even as its authors say its implementation should be a no-brainer.

That’s in reference to a White House document called the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” a 10-point plan that the federal government is asking universities to sign in order to get preferential treatment for the federal funds upon which many research universities rely. 

If the schools don’t agree to the terms in the compact — which include commitments to end race-based hiring and admissions, limits on foreign enrollment and a pledge to foster greater ideological diversity — they risk losing billions of dollars.

The compact reflects an evolution of a familiar Trump administration argument: that America’s preeminent educational institutions have strayed from their mission, letting politics interfere with their raison d’etre as centers of academic excellence. Combating antisemitism on college campuses — a cause the White House has prioritized this year — provided President Donald Trump a foray into greater oversight of higher education. But there appears to be no direct line from that fight against antisemitism to the broader ideological framework in this compact, which makes only a passing reference to antisemitism.

A White House official who worked on the compact called it a “basic, basic easy low hurdle,” telling Jewish Insider that the document is “a nonpartisan, neutral concept.” 

Many academics, including several who have spoken out against antisemitism and against universities’ handling of it in recent years, don’t agree. 

“Fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth said last week, making MIT the first university to formally reject the compact. 

The White House wrote to MIT and eight other campuses this month, giving them early access. Brown University joined MIT in rejecting the compact on Wednesday, but the other seven universities haven’t yet responded ahead of the Oct. 20 deadline. 

With the compact, Trump is making the case that universities have a fiduciary responsibility to American citizens that they have not met, as academia has “lost its way,” according to the administration official. 

“It’s for the taxpayers,” said the official, who requested anonymity to speak openly about a negotiating process that is mostly taking place behind closed doors. “This administration is here to support research … but at the same time we also can’t abdicate our responsibility to you and myself. There are a lot of people who are cutting checks to the IRS because that’s what they have to do, and they don’t even go to college.” 

But where the Trump administration sees “good hygiene,” according to the official, many academics worry the compact’s far-reaching goals could amount to an overreach that impinges on free speech and academic freedom.

“It’s something that everybody’s talking about, and people are taking it very seriously,” said David Myers, a professor and the chair of Jewish history at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It really seems to touch upon one of the cardinal principles of university governance, which is autonomy and independence.” 

Menachem Rosensaft, an adjunct law professor who teaches about antisemitism and the Holocaust at Cornell University, called the compact “overkill, with a number of positive items in it, but overall problematic for any independent university of college.” 

Rosensaft questioned how the compact addresses antisemitism, if at all: Antisemitism is only mentioned in a section about foreign students, which accuses those who are “not properly vetted” with “saturating the campus with noxious values such as antisemitism and other anti-American values.”

Academics concerned about antisemitism told JI that the Trump administration is right to point out that severe problems exist in higher education. But many are unsure how this compact will address the issues Jewish students face. 

“I often wonder if a compact like this had come out of the Biden administration or a Harris administration, whether, from the faculty, there’d be that same kind of knee-jerk reaction [that] we have to oppose everything that comes out of the administration — when actually, when you read this line by line, there’s a lot of things we can agree with,” said Miriam Elman, a former political science professor at Syracuse University. 

“If you look at certain things individually, they’re OK. I don’t have any problem with freezing tuition, for example, or with arresting grade inflation. I don’t have any problem with teaching [Western civilization]. The problem is that, as a whole package, it’s kind of the antithesis of what universities are meant to do,” said Norman Goda, a historian and professor of Holocaust studies at the University of Florida. “And if the addressing of antisemitism is one of the aims of this, then I don’t know how that is done.”

Miriam Elman, a former political science professor at Syracuse University, said that some of the immediate skepticism of the compact is likely due to politics. But that doesn’t alleviate all of her concerns.

“I often wonder if a compact like this had come out of the Biden administration or a Harris administration, whether, from the faculty, there’d be that same kind of knee-jerk reaction [that] we have to oppose everything that comes out of the administration — when actually, when you read this line by line, there’s a lot of things we can agree with,” said Elman, who is the executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, which fights academic boycotts of Israel. 

“But we also are not naive. The Trump administration does have an agenda. It does have priorities, and it is wrapping those priorities into the fight against campus antisemitism. So there is a lot of concern.” 

The compact appears to be primarily directed at undergraduate programs. Dr. Philip Greenland, a professor of medicine at Northwestern University, said his colleagues at the medical school are generally not worried about the compact in the way many humanities professors are. “It could affect the medical school in a secondary way: If Northwestern is drawn into this and doesn’t comply, we may never get our federal funding back,” said Greenland. The Trump administration froze $790 million in federal funding for Northwestern in April. 

“Although the compact doesn’t seem to be talking about antisemitism, in the end, people will remember: How did the administration go after the universities?” said Pamela Nadell, the chair in women’s and gender history at American University and the author of a new book about antisemitism in America. “They said that they were promoting antisemitism.”

“I think it’s in some sense a good thing that it doesn’t call out, specifically, that this is about antisemitism,” Greenland continued. “What the compact seems to be more about is a claim, which is justifiable, that universities have become very, very ideological in one direction … People are claiming that the compact will deprive them of their free speech. But what that doesn’t recognize is that the current situation deprives other people of their free speech and their free expression.” 

The Trump administration official told JI that the compact is “all-encompassing,” and argued that its broad mandate includes antisemitism — but not only that.

“It overlaps, but the compact isn’t a compact to stop antisemitism. It’s a compact to return to lawful academic excellence and a marketplace of ideas, [and] that includes eradicating antisemitism,” said the official. 

Pamela Nadell, the chair in women’s and gender history at American University and the author of a new book about antisemitism in America, argued that the Trump administration’s earlier actions targeting antisemitism will come to be viewed as the pretext for what is now a much larger and more strategic rewriting of federal policy toward institutions of higher education. 

“Although the compact doesn’t seem to be talking about antisemitism, in the end, people will remember: How did the administration go after the universities?” said Nadell. “They said that they were promoting antisemitism.”

Over the weekend, The New York Times published a story contending that the momentum for settlements with elite universities was stalling amid divisions between those in the Trump administration looking to make a deal and those looking for more meaningful reforms in combating antisemitism. 

The story glossed over the related development we’ve been hearing from officials involved in the negotiating process: that a zeal for dealmaking from some officials is overshadowing the main reason the Trump administration was playing hardball with these schools in the first place — the rampant antisemitism that has been festering on campus.

In fact, the word “antisemitism” was hardly mentioned in the lengthy NYT story, a sign in itself of the administration’s flagging focus.

Indeed, many of the deals struck — along with the outlines of potential future deals — have focused on the dollar amounts in the settlement, without requiring many significant reforms that would deal with antisemitism at the elite schools.

Columbia University agreed in July, following a lengthy legal battle, to pay a $200 million settlement over three years to the federal government. In addition to the legal penalty, the Ivy League school — which did not admit to wrongdoing in the resolution agreement — pledged to implement a series of commitments aimed at protecting Jewish students. 

These include further incorporating the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism by requiring its Office of Institutional Equity to embrace the definition; appointing a Title VI coordinator to review alleged violations of the Civil Rights Act; requiring antisemitism training for all students, faculty and staff; and refusing to recognize or meet with anti-Israel student coalition Columbia University Apartheid Divest.

On Columbia’s campus, some pro-Israel students expressed disappointment over those “largely symbolic” commitments, which diverged from a list of reforms initially demanded by the Trump administration. 

Soon after Columbia, Brown University entered into an agreement with the Trump administration to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding. The settlement also primarily focused on money rather than reform, although unlike Columbia, Brown was not required to pay a fine directly to the federal government. The university instead agreed to pay $50 million over 10 years to workforce development organizations in Rhode Island. It also agreed to launch a third-party campus climate survey in an effort to protect Jewish students. 

Meanwhile, the conversation surrounding a possible settlement with Harvard has increasingly centered on the significant size of the potential payment — a whopping half-billion dollars — over any of the institutional changes the university will need to make. Sources familiar with the dealmaking confirm to Jewish Insider that President Donald Trump himself is increasingly enamored with the size of the payment, which has led some of his advisors to focus less on reforms and more on the money.

“There’s growing dissatisfaction with the White House letting universities buy their way out of accountability with no meaningful change. It’s clear they’ve been totally out-negotiated,” said one source familiar with the negotiations. 

Reading the Times story, the administration officials working to fight against the universities’ harassment of their Jewish students were caricatured as “ideologically driven aides,” whereas those looking to cut lucrative financial deals were portrayed as the pragmatists. 

The reality is the opposite. Securing government payouts as the primary achievement for using state power to freeze a private university’s funds makes the whole enterprise seem like extortion. Putting in the work to make sure these abuses don’t happen again is what would make the exertion of government power more justifiable.

Indeed, the outcome of this showdown with elite universities — with negotiations with Cornell and Northwestern taking place now — will be a test of whether many of the systemic abuses that led to the extraordinary freeze on research funding will be rolled back, or whether the tolerance of anti-Jewish discrimination on campus could become the new normal.

Harvard University’s recent decision to cover security costs for Harvard Hillel was celebrated by many Jewish students as a way to alleviate growing security costs amid a surge in campus antisemitism. But for others, it raised questions about why the agreement did not extend to other Jewish groups affiliated with the school, such as Harvard Chabad. 

“Of course, there is a sense that there should be a responsibility” to cover Chabad’s security as well, Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi told Jewish Insider, although he said that he has never directly asked the administration to do so.   

Alex Bernat, Harvard Chabad’s outgoing undergraduate student president who graduated in the spring, said it’s “crucial” that Chabad receive the same funding. “If you want to make claims about protecting the Jewish community, you have to protect the whole Jewish community,” he told JI. 

“As an incoming student planning to be active in Chabad, I’m concerned that only funding security for Hillel overlooks the safety needs of the entire Jewish community,” Stella Hiltzik, who is slated to begin her freshman year at Harvard in the fall, told JI. “In today’s climate, all Jewish spaces deserve equal protection.”

While Hillel owns its building structure, that building sits on university property. It also contains a Harvard dining facility and other spaces that are accessible to all students, faculty and staff using Harvard’s ID swipe system. Chabad’s building is located on private property in a Cambridge, Mass. neighborhood. The latter has been guarded by armed security — funded by donors — every day since the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks and subsequent rise of antisemitism on college campuses. 

A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment to JI regarding the reason Hillel received university-funded security, but Chabad didn’t. 

Since Oct. 7, Harvard Chabad has been a centerpoint of campus security concerns. In a December 2023 speech made on campus during a Hanukkah menorah lighting, Zarchi described an atmosphere of fear for Jewish students and for his own family, who he said had been advised by Harvard’s police department to obtain private security after Harvard Chabad became the first university to screen IDF footage from the Hamas terror attacks in Israel. “Twenty-six years I gave my life to this community. I’ve never felt more alone,” Zarchi said at the time. 

On July 31, following years of lobbying by Harvard Hillel officials and advocates, Harvard agreed to cover all security costs for the university’s Hillel through the rest of Harvard President Alan Garber’s tenure, which is set to conclude at the end of the 2026-27 academic year. The move comes as Harvard faces billions of dollars in federal funding cuts from the Trump administration over its alleged failure to address antisemitism on campus.

“By taking on responsibility for security at Hillel, Harvard University is making a powerful statement: Harvard is committed to the safety of Jewish students,” Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel, told JI when the announcement was made. 

Zarchi called it “misleading” to claim that the university is protecting Jewish students broadly if Chabad is not included. Since last week’s announcement, Zarchi said he has received “floods” of calls and emails from students, parents and alumni who are “deeply concerned” about the university limiting security funding to Hillel. Chabad, according to Zarchi, is attended by nearly 500 students per week. 

“It’s this public misrepresentation and abandonment of the safety of so many that we need to address,” said Zarchi.

 “All Jewish students at Harvard, whether it’s Chabad or Hillel, should have safety and security.” 

It’s spring in Cambridge, Mass. — graduation season — which means that large white tents have started to appear on the leafy quads throughout Harvard Square. 

Until Tuesday, a different kind of tent was still visible in Harvard Yard: small camping tents housing the stragglers who remained in Harvard’s anti-Israel encampment even after final exams wrapped up several days ago. Last week, Harvard suspended student protesters who refused to abide by campus administrators’ orders to disband the encampment, blocking access to their dorms. 

But now, just a week from the start of official university commencement festivities, Harvard has backtracked on its disciplinary action, ahead of the arrival next week of thousands of graduates’ family members, alumni and honorary degree recipients to the Ivy League university. University officials seemed to be saying that Harvard cannot get ready for commencement if Harvard Yard is still gated and locked, accessible only to university affiliates and the handful of people still camped out in protest of Harvard’s alleged “complicity in genocide.” 

In making a deal with the protesters, Harvard interim President Alan Garber joined a growing number of leaders at elite universities who are incorporating protesters’ voices into major university investment decisions and allowing student activists to get off with few, if any, repercussions after weeks of disciplinary violations. Harvard’s dean of the faculty of arts and sciences wrote in a Tuesday email that the outcome “deepened” the university’s “commitment to dialogue and to strengthening the bonds that pull us together as a community.” 

The path Garber took is now a well-trodden one — remove the threat of disciplinary consequences and allow protesters to meet with university trustees or other senior leaders to pitch them on divesting their schools’ endowments from Israeli businesses, a concession that before last month would have been unthinkable at America’s top universities. 

In a matter of days it has become commonplace. Just two years ago, Harvard’s then-president, Lawrence Bacow, responded to the campus newspaper’s endorsement of a boycott of Israel by saying that “any suggestion of targeting or boycotting a particular group because of disagreements over the policies pursued by their governments is antithetical to what we stand for as a university.” 

Northwestern University set the tone two weeks ago when President Michael Schill reached an agreement with anti-Israel protesters in exchange for them ending their encampment. Jewish leaders on campus found the agreement so problematic that the seven Jewish members of the university’s antisemitism committee — including Northwestern’s Hillel director, several faculty members and a student — stepped down in protest. Lily Cohen, a Northwestern senior who resigned from the committee, summed up their concerns: “It appears as though breaking the rules gets you somewhere, and trying to do things respectfully and by the books does not.” 

Her observation has proven prescient as universities negotiate with anti-Israel protesters who break campus rules while they slow-walk reforms long sought by Jewish students — or even avoid meeting with Jewish community members altogether. 

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone signed onto a far-reaching agreement with protesters this week that calls for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, condemns “genocide” and denounces “scholasticide” in Gaza and cuts off ties between a university-affiliated environmental NGO and two government-owned Israeli water companies. Meanwhile, Hillel Milwaukee said in a statement that Mone has refused to meet with Jewish students since Oct. 7. Where universities fumbled over statements addressing the Oct. 7 attacks last fall in failed bids to satisfy everyone, many campus leaders have now conceded it is easier to give in to protesters than to stand firm against their rule-breaking. (The president of the University of Wisconsin system said he is “disappointed” by UWM’s actions.) 

Princeton University and Johns Hopkins University made concessions to encampment leaders this week. At Johns Hopkins, the school pledged to undertake a “timely review” of the matter of divestment, and to conclude student conduct proceedings related to the encampment. Hopkins Justice Collective, the group that organized the protests, characterized the agreement as “a step towards Johns Hopkins’ commitment to divest from the settler colonial state of Israel.” 

In a campus-wide email on Monday, Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber said all students must vacate the campus quad where they had organized an anti-Israel encampment. He offered the campus protest leaders an audience with the body that reviews petitions for divestment. Other student groups can also petition for a meeting, he wrote.

Students who were arrested during the course of the protests may have a chance to take part in a so-called “restorative justice” process, whereby the university “would work to minimize the impact of the arrest on the participating students.” If protesters take responsibility for their actions, Eisgruber wrote, the school will conclude all disciplinary processes and allow the protesters to graduate this month. 

At many more universities, top administrators — including university presidents — have met with demonstrators, giving them a chance to air their concerns even when they didn’t reach an agreement. University of Chicago administrators held several days of negotiations with encampment leaders before the talks fell apart and police cleared the protesters. The George Washington University President Ellen Granberg met over the weekend with student protesters who lectured her about “structural inequality” at GW and likened the university’s code of conduct to slavery and Jim Crow-era segregation, according to a video recording of the meeting.

College administrators’ negotiations to end the protests might bring a wave of good headlines and promises of quiet at campus commencements, the largest and most high-profile event of the year for most universities. But students haven’t said what they’ll do when school is back in session next year. 
By promising meetings with university investment committees, the administrators are almost certainly guaranteeing that campus angst over the war in Gaza will not die down. Brown University President Christina Paxson pledged that protest leaders can meet with the university’s governing body to discuss divestment from companies that operate in Israel — in October, a year after the Hamas attacks that killed more than 1,200 people and ignited the ongoing bloodshed in the Middle East.

Correction: This article was updated to more accurately reflect negotiations between Princeton’s president and the protesters.

A man convicted of manslaughter has been participating in an anti-Israel encampment in the middle of Syracuse University’s campus for more than a week, Jewish Insider has learned. 

Eural Warren Jr. was convicted of manslaughter in the first degree in 1996 when he beat a victim’s head with a firearm, causing multiple skull fractures, according to the New York State Department of Correctional Services website. (He was also charged with criminal possession of a firearm.)

The victim was punched and knocked down by a second person, and died due to his injuries. Warren appealed the conviction in 1997, but was denied. According to court documents from his appeal, “Medical testimony established that the victim died from the cumulative effect of several skull fractures, only one of which was caused by the second assailant. [D]efendant’s conduct was an actual cause of death, in the sense that it forged a link in the chain of causes which actually brought about the death.” Warren was released from prison in 2013 after serving 17 years, records show. His LinkedIn shows him as the “CEO/Executive Director/Founder” of No Space For Hate since April 2023. 

The 49-year-old is unaffiliated with the upstate New York university, but several photos obtained by Jewish Insider show him protesting and sleeping alongside students since the “Gaza solidarity encampment” overtook Syracuse’s campus on April 29. (On Tuesday, the encampment was directed by the administration to relocate off of the central quad to make room for graduation ceremonies; it was not shut down). 

Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick confirmed to JI that Warren is the person photographed at the encampment. “I can confirm it is absolutely the same person. I have looked up his mugshot just to be sure,” Fitzpatrick said. Of the encampment, Fitzpatrick added, “Syracuse administration has decided to handle it ‘internally’… my position is that [all of the protesters] are breaking the law [and] should be removed and arrested.” 

A spokesperson for Syracuse University did not respond to multiple inquiries from JI asking whether the school is aware of Warren. 

Warren’s troubling history came to light after a vocally pro-Israel female student alleged that, on several occasions, he photographed her and a friend passing by the encampment. “We were creeped out,” the student, who requested to remain anonymous to speak about a sensitive topic, told JI. “It wasn’t hard to find his name because he follows Syracuse’s Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace Instagram pages. Then we did a quick Google search and found out he’s a criminal,” she said.  

The student, who is active in the school’s pro-Israel group, said that last Sunday she reported Warren to the Syracuse Department of Public Safety, which encouraged her to fill out a bias report. She submitted the report on Tuesday, rather than going to the police. Also on Tuesday, Warren was photographed at the encampment, dressed in Syracuse gear to blend in with student protesters. 

By Thursday, the student hadn’t heard a response from the school. 

“It’s difficult, [especially] when the encampments were in the middle of campus because you couldn’t avoid it,” she said, noting that “intimidating” slogans have been tossed around by the protesters, “including calling for the intifada and ‘from the river to the sea Palestine will be free.’” 

The recommendations handed down earlier this week from Columbia University’s task force on antisemitism painted a picture of Jewish students feeling “isolation and pain” in the wake of pro-Palestinian protests that have gripped the campus since Oct. 7. 

They also cited a lack of disciplinary response from the university regarding unauthorized protests of the Israel-Hamas war as contributing to Jewish students’ struggles on campus, and called for the university to more effectively investigate policy violations by creating an easier process for filing complaints.

But on the pivotal question of whether some of the slogans chanted at those rallies veer from legitimate political speech into antisemitism the task force’s recommendations are ambiguous.

The report states, “Obviously, the chants ‘gas the Jews’ and ‘Hitler was right’ are calls to genocide, but fortunately no one at Columbia has been shouting these phrases… Rather, many of the chants at recent Columbia protests are viewed differently by different members of the Columbia community: some feel strongly that these are calls to genocide, while others feel strongly that they are not.” 

The report does not, however, specifically address the slogan “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free,” which has frequently been chanted at protests on Columbia’s campus and is widely viewed by Jewish groups as a call for genocide of Israelis.

According to David Schizer, a professor of law and economics and dean emeritus of Columbia’s law school, who is one of the three co-chairs of the task force, the key issue that the 24-page report addresses is the thorny matter of campus free speech — emphasizing that “everyone needs to have a right to speak and to protest,” he said. 

“How can we make sure the people have the right to speak and protest, while at the same time ensuring that protests don’t interfere with the ability of other members of the community to teach classes, study for a test, to hear their professors,” Schizer, who is also the former CEO of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, continued. While the report emphasizes the right to peaceful demonstrations, it also condemns faculty for participating in unauthorized demonstrations.

But some prominent leaders of the movement to fight antisemitism in higher education expressed skepticism that a set of recommendations could fix the raging antisemitism on Columbia’s campus — which has included repeated violations of the rules on protests and physical assault and other serious attacks on Jewish students. 

“The new recommendations have some technically good work which could provide incremental advances, but it’s certainly not the kind of thing that will solve Columbia’s problems,” Kenneth Marcus, founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, told JI. The Brandeis Center recently filed federal complaints against the University of California for antisemitism at UC Berkeley and American University, while the Department of Education is currently investigating Brandeis Center complaints filed against Wellesley, SUNY New Paltz, the University of Southern California, Brooklyn College and the University of Illinois for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and for discrimination against Jewish students.

The recommendations come as Columbia faces pressure from donors and investigations by Congress and the Biden administration over antisemitism. It also comes in the wake of scrutiny regarding a number of antisemitism task forces set up at elite universities as a response to the surge in antisemitism that erupted following the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel. Five months later, questions remain over the effectiveness and direction of such groups — with some experts claiming task forces have been all talk with minimal action so far. 

But Schizer said that in Columbia’s case, there have been months of ongoing research of university policies, including interviewing students. It aims to release a series of reports in the coming months with the goal of gaining a deeper understanding of the campus climate and providing further recommendations.

The report states that while it agrees with the university’s principle that calls for genocide, like other incitement to violence, violate the rules, “the application of it should be clarified.”

It goes on to encourage the university’s legal team to “provide more guidance on this issue,” and emphasizes that clearer guidance is needed, like the university has done with its rules on gender-based misconduct to include “scenarios,” “to provide greater clarity help to provide fair notice, so Columbia affiliates have more of a sense of what is permissible (even if offensive) and what is not.” 

Columbia administration plans to review the task force’s interim policy at the end of this semester. Minouche Shafik, the university’s president, said in a statement that the new recommendations —  the first set in a series — are welcomed by the university and “will continue across a number of fronts as the University works to address this ancient, but sadly persistent, form of hate.” 

Marcus said it’s “good that Columbia finally has good people asking serious questions about harassment and disruptive protests,” but he added, “What’s needed is not just a few recommendations regarding the rules on protest. The fact is that there’s been antisemitic bigotry [at] Columbia University for decades now.”

“It’s not as if a few changes to the protest policies are going to substantially change the institution as long as they continue business as usual,” he continued. “Much of what’s in this new set of recommendations could have been written on Oct. 6 given everything that’s happened since. What’s needed is not a series of incremental measures, but a rethinking of what Columbia is doing to cause harm, not just to Jewish students but also to the surrounding community. These recommendations may lead to technical and marginal changes in the ways that the university responds to specific incidents, and generally speaking that’s a good thing. 

But it’s certainly not a solution to the problem.” 

Marcus noted that the recommendations are “framed fairly narrow, with response to only one narrow piece of the problem.” 

“I know this is only one of the series of reports that we can anticipate, but if this is an indication of what’s to come, it may provide some useful professional iteration but not a truly substantial change,” he said. “It does not indicate a new mindset that is ready to deal with the problems Oct. 7 has revealed.” 

Mark Yudof, chair of the Academic Engagement Network, expressed a similar sentiment as Marcus, but added that he’s “hopeful” the report will bring change. Schizer, as well as the two other co-chairs of the task force, Ester Fuchs and Nicolas Lemann, are all longtime members of AEN. 

“We need adequate rules about speech and we need to put teeth into it and have reasonable procedures in which people are actually disciplined for violating the rules,” Yudof said, calling the report “complex.” 

While skeptical, Yudof also expressed praise for the recommendations — “I think Columbia’s report gets at the core problem of education and I applaud them,” he said. 

“I like the report and am hopeful… I would urge the Columbia administration to adopt the recommendations of the task force, but the proof will be in the pudding.”

For two hours on Wednesday, lawmakers heard from a parade of Jewish students, each delivering the same message: They do not feel safe on their college campuses.

Speaking to a roundtable organized by the House Committee on Education & the Workforce, Jewish students from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia, Rutgers, Stanford, Tulane, Cooper Union and University of California, Berkeley spoke about about the harassment, threats and violence they’ve faced on their campuses since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

The students’ accounts were all remarkably similar, despite coming from a range of locations and school types, including openly antisemitic taunts and harassment, angry mobs rampaging through campus and overtaking campus buildings, vandalism and in some cases threats of or actual incidents of violence, all going largely or completely unaddressed by university administrators and campus police, despite repeated and sustained pleas from the students for help and support. 

In some cases, the students said professors and administrators were complicit or actively involved in the antisemitic activity. Students said that they feared for their safety and even their lives.

The students, saying they felt abandoned by their universities and had no faith in them to act to protect them, pleaded for action from Congress. They said that they hoped their testimony could serve as a wakeup call to both Congress and the American public.

“As my friends from Harvard and UPenn can tell you, it doesn’t end simply because presidents are replaced. Systemic change is needed,” Kevin Feigelis, a Stanford student, said. “Universities have proven they have no intention of fixing themselves. It must be you, and it must be now.”

Shabbos Kestenbaum — a Harvard student who said he’d contacted the school’s antisemitism task force more than 40 times without a response and had been threatened in a video with a machete by a still-employed Harvard staff member — called Congress and the courts the students’ “last hope.”

Multiple students and lawmakers said that the current events on campus carry echoes of 1930s Germany or the pogroms in Russia.

Some suggested potential courses of action that Congress and other federal branches could take, including leveraging U.S. taxpayer funding or the schools’ tax-exempt statuses, placing third-party monitors on campus and enforcing diversity requirements in Middle East studies departments requiring them to include pro-Israel views.

Students from Harvard, Penn and MIT all said that little has changed on their campuses since last year’s blockbuster congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, which prompted the ouster of Harvard and Penn’s presidents.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the committee’s chair, vowed that she and her colleagues would not stop their efforts to tackle antisemitism on campus.

“I was very emotional,” Foxx told Jewish Insider, “I’m a mother and a grandmother. I have one grandchild who went to college and I’m not sure what I would have done if he had come home to say he felt threatened on his campus like these students feel threatened. No student on a college campus, in this country, in the year 2024, should feel threatened.”

Foxx said that the committee’s antisemitism investigation is proceeding deliberately, but that the schools will be held to account. The committee has already requested documents from Harvard, Penn and Columbia and has now subpoenaed Harvard. Foxx suggested that other schools whose students had appeared Thursday could be next.