A federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the school’s anti-Israel protest movement, could be rearrested. 

Khalil was released in June from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana, where he had been held for three months. 

A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reopened the case on Thursday, instructing the lower court to dismiss Khalil’s habeas petition, a court filing that challenged his incarceration and eventually secured his release. In a 2-1 ruling, the panel decided that the federal district court in New Jersey that issued Khalil’s release did not have jurisdiction over the matter and that it should have been handled in immigration court, which is part of the executive branch overseen by the Justice Department, meaning Khalil is now liable to be rearrested.

Baher Azmy, a lawyer for Khalil, told The New York Times, “We are disappointed with and strongly disagree with the majority opinion, but take heart in the very powerful and persuasive dissenting opinion. We’ll continue to fight with all available legal options.” The dissenting option came from Judge Arianna Freeman, who said that Khalil had proved that he faced irreversible injuries during his detention. 

Khalil’s deportation proceedings are currently paused, secured through a deal between his lawyers and the federal government. Thursday’s ruling could mean that the case restarts again, though it will very likely be appealed.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani responded to the reopening of Khalil’s case, saying in a statement that “last year’s arrest of Mahmoud Khalil was more than just a chilling act of political repression, it was an attack on all of our constitutional rights.”

“Now, as the crackdown on pro-Palestinian free speech continues, Mahmoud is being threatened with rearrest. Mahmoud is free—and must remain free,” said Mamdani.

Khalil, who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent, first came to the U.S. on a student visa, and later married a U.S. citizen and received a green card. While a graduate student at Columbia in 2024, he led campus  protests against the war in Gaza and subsequent negotiations with university administrators. 

The federal government sought to deport Khalil on the basis of his failure to disclose crucial information in his green card application, including his former employment by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency that works with Palestinians, as well as his membership in the unofficial campus group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which was banned from Instagram last year for promoting violence. 

Immigration authorities arrested Khalil at his home in March. He was not charged with a crime. The White House said at the time that the government had authority to arrest and deport Khalil based on the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which states that if the secretary of state has “reasonable grounds” to believe that a migrant poses “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” that person is eligible for deportation.

A memo submitted in May to the court in Louisiana and signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited the president’s authority to expel noncitizens whose presence in the country could have adverse foreign policy consequences, regardless of whether they have committed a crime. It stated that Khalil’s arrest and planned deportation were based on his “participation in antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.” 

Khalil’s arrest was largely met with cautious celebration from mainstream Jewish groups at the time who said his deportation was “fully justified” but emphasised a need for due process. 

Khail was released on June 20 when Judge Michael Farbiarz ruled that his prolonged detention likely violated his constitutional rights. 

One day after his release, Khalil appeared at a rally in New York City organized by a group accused of ties to the Iranian regime protesting the U.S.’ airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities that had occurred a few days earlier. 

The Columbia University task force overseeing efforts to combat antisemitism on campus released its fourth and final report on Tuesday, spotlighting Columbia’s lack of full-time Middle East faculty who are not explicitly anti-Zionist.

According to the report, “Columbia lacks full-time tenure line faculty expertise in Middle East history, politics, political economy and policy that is not explicitly anti-Zionist.” The absence of ideological diversity is having an impact on course offerings — in listening sessions, the task force said it heard from students that classes at the university more often than not treat Zionism as entirely illegitimate. 

The report calls on the university to “work quickly to add more intellectual diversity to these offerings” and to “establish new chairs at a senior level in Middle East history, politics, political economy and policy.” 

Furthermore, it claims that “academic resources available for teaching and research on Jewish and Israeli topics at Columbia are insufficient, especially in comparison to the resources available for teaching and research on other parts of the Middle East. The University should work quickly and energetically to build up its capabilities here, through academically first-rate full time tenure line additions to the faculty and the curriculum.” 

The report also cites numerous instances in which the academic freedom of Jewish and Israeli students was not protected in classrooms and suggests remedies — while trying to find a delicate balance between allowing for free expression and cracking down on discrimination.

“We urge the University to protect freedom of expression to the maximum extent possible while also complying with antidiscrimination laws,” states the report, titled The Classroom Experience at Columbia: Protecting the Academic Freedom of Faculty and Students. “Censorship has no place at Columbia. Neither does discrimination.”

Columbia University Acting President Claire Shipman said in a statement on Tuesday that the university will “continue to work on implementing the recommendations of the task force and addressing antisemitism on our campus.”

“We have also been working this semester to focus on discrimination and hate more broadly on our campuses — which has long been a strong recommendation of the task force. All of this work must become part of our DNA,” said Shipman. 

Columbia’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism was formed in November 2023 as a response to a surge of antisemitism on campus that began as an immediate response to the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel. Throughout the following two years of war in Gaza, scenes of masked anti-Israel protesters barging into classrooms and hourslong demonstrations in the center of campus calling for an “intifada revolution” became commonplace at Columbia, which has faced some of the worst antisemitic incidents of any college campus since Oct. 7. 

The new report is the first one released since Columbia reached a deal with the Trump administration in July to restore some $400 million in federal funding. 

The funding was frozen by the government in March due to the university’s record dealing with antisemitism. The campus has seen less turbulence since the deal was struck and reforms aimed at combating antisemitism — some based on the task force’s earlier recommendations — were announced over the summer.  

The 13-member task force, which is led by by Ester Fuchs, professor of international and public affairs and political science; Nicholas Lemann, professor of journalism and dean emeritus of Columbia Journalism School; and David Schizer, professor of law and economics and dean emeritus of Columbia Law School, suggested a range of free expression and anti-discrimination policies that Columbia could adopt.

Among the recommendations are that the university disclose, before students enroll in a course, if the material has the potential to cause students to feel excluded or silenced. If students are not aware in advance, or if it is a required course, and a controversial topic — such as the Middle East — is not the stated topic, “it’s not appropriate to make it a central part of the course,” the report states.  

The authors write that academic freedom “entails openness to scholars and students from other countries.” As such, the report states that boycotts of faculty, students, researchers or scholars from other countries “are not consistent with academic freedom.” The academic boycott movement consistently targets Israel, “proposing to restrict the research, teaching, and studying opportunities available to a cohort whose members are overwhelmingly Jewish,” the report continues. Student protesters at Columbia have frequently demanded that the university end its partnership with Tel Aviv University.   

In addition, the task force calls for consistency across all university anti-discrimination policies to include Jewish and Israeli students and for applying anti-discrimination policies in regards to classroom disruptions targeting students or instructors for their identity in a protected class.

The latest report builds upon a series of earlier ones released by the antisemitism task force in March 2024, August 2024 and June 2025, each offering solutions to a different key issue impacting Jewish students at the Ivy League university. Each report was based in part on two dozen listening sessions the task force conducted with hundreds of Jewish and Israeli students at Columbia. 

The 70-page fourth and final report includes recommendations from the three prior reports and recaps several of the most egregious incidents of antisemitism in the classroom at Columbia since Oct. 7. Those include reports of several instructors encouraging their students, during class, to participate in the 2023-24 academic year’s anti-Israel protests. Some professors held their classes or office hours within anti-Israel encampments (where in several cases it was indicated Zionists were not welcome).

Editor’s note: After publication, Columbia’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism updated language in the report to read: “Columbia would benefit from full-time tenure line faculty expertise in Middle East history, politics, political economy and policy that is not explicitly anti-Zionist.”

The first day of the new school year on Tuesday at Columbia University was met with a wary sense of relief from Jewish students and faculty, who returned to campus unsure whether recent reforms aimed at combating campus antisemitism would make any difference. 

Scenes that have become commonplace on Columbia’s campus over the past two years — masked anti-Israel demonstrators barging into classrooms and the library banging on drums and chanting “Free Palestine” or hourslong demonstrations in the center of campus of more than 100 students calling for an “intifada revolution” — were nowhere to be seen. 

Still, in quieter ways, there were moments behind the tall iron entrance gates reminiscent of the antisemitic turbulence that grew commonplace on the Morningside Heights campus since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. 

Three members of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of over 80 university student groups that Instagram banned earlier this year for promoting violence, protested Columbia Hillel’s club fair, distributing fliers urging Jewish students to “drop Hillel” because it “supports genocide.” 

Elsewhere on campus, an organizer of the 2024 anti-Israel encampment movement, Cameron Jones, paraded a sign that read, “some of your classmates were IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] criminals committing genocide in Palestine.” 

Within hours, Columbia announced it had “initiated investigations into incidents that involve potential violations of the University’s Student Anti-Discrimination and Discriminatory Harassment Policies and University Rules.”

“The individuals involved are being notified that the University will immediately pursue its process for disciplinary action regarding their conduct,” the school said.

Jewish students and faculty praised Columbia’s swift response, which some attributed to the recent reforms, part of a deal made in July between the university and the Trump administration to restore the school’s federal funding that was slashed over the school’s alleged failure to address antisemitism. 

Tal Zussman, a third year PhD student in computer science, called the quick investigation a “significant change from a year ago.” 

“Last year’s first day of classes was marked by a protest that completely blocked the campus entrance and vandalism of [the sculpture] Alma Mater,” Zussman told Jewish Insider. “There were a few isolated instances [on Tuesday] that the university seems to be handling, but they were minor compared to last year’s drama. Hopefully things remain calm, but the university’s clear communication and quick response is a significant change from a year ago.” He said he felt that the change was “absolutely” due to the reforms. 

Civil engineering professor Jacob Fish similarly described a “situation in and around campus [that] is much better compared to previous fall and spring.” Fish, the director of Kalaniyot, the university’s new initiative to bring Israeli researchers to the Columbia campus, lauded the program as a way to further “make a difference on campus,” he told JI. 

“More than 200 first-year students participated in joyful and welcoming on campus activities,” Columbia’s Hillel director Brian Cohen told JI. “Three students disrupted these activities. We will continue to work with Columbia University’s rules process and hope that students who violate University rules continue to be held accountable.”

Columbia’s settlement with the federal government to restore some $400 million in federal funding that was slashed in March was met at the time with cautious optimism from Jewish leaders. 

Some expressed hope that the settlement could lead to a safer environment for Jewish students following nearly two years of antisemitic protests and disruptions on campus in the aftermath of Oct. 7. Others, however, raised concerns that the settlement did not include key structural reforms to protect Jewish students. 

Lishi Baker, a senior studying Middle East history and co-chair of the pro-Israel campus group Aryeh, told JI he is “optimistic” that Columbia’s recent changes, “particularly around discipline and policymaking, will make a big difference in improving life on campus for Jewish students and in preventing campus chaos.” 

Columbia University’s new hire for senior associate dean of community and culture was a signatory of a 2021 letter supporting the Palestinian “indigenous resistance movement” and rejecting the “the fiction of a ‘two-sided conflict.’” He is tasked with leading “meaningful dialogue” in his new position. 

Jonathon Kahn signed on to the “Vassar Community Members’ Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” while a professor of religion at Vassar College. 

“We affirm that the Palestinian struggle is an indigenous resistance movement confronting settler colonialism, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, and stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people,” the letter read. It came amid the May 2021 Israel-Hamas conflict, in which at least 13 Israelis were killed by Hamas rocket fire. The open letter also “includes a commitment to academic BDS, which, if put into effect, would restrict the educational opportunities and academic freedom of students and faculty who want to study about or in Israel.” 

In his new role at Columbia, Kahn will “build and lead initiatives that cultivate curiosity, civic purpose and meaningful dialogue — facilitating student engagement with faculty outside the classroom, and helping reimagine what a liberal arts and sciences education can be in the next century,” Josef Sorett, dean of Columbia College and vice president for undergraduate education, said in a statement announcing the appointment on Tuesday. 

Columbia University did not respond to an inquiry from Jewish Insider asking whether the school was aware of the petition before hiring Kahn.

The senior associate dean of community and culture role is a new position, created in the wake of increased antisemitism that has plagued Columbia’s campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in Israel.  

Kahn, who has no known social media presence, said in a statement sent to the Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday regarding the petition that he is “a Zionist” who “believe[s] deeply in Israel’s right to exist and thrive as a Jewish state” and also “deeply value[s] Palestinian life and Palestinians’ aspirations for statehood.”

“My beliefs are not fully captured in this letter that was authored more than four years ago,” he said. “I didn’t agree with every sentence then, and I still don’t. But I put my name to that letter at a time when I felt in deep disagreement with actions taken by the Israeli government and I wanted to signal my support for the Palestinian civilians who were suffering.”

Kahn’s appointment comes just over a month after Columbia reached a deal with the Trump administration, in which it has to pay a $200 million dollar settlement, to restore some $400 million in federal funding that was cut by the government in March due to the university’s record dealing with antisemitism. 

This week, the Trump administration demonstrated its endgame in its fight against campus antisemitism: hefty financial settlements. 

Columbia University agreed to pay $221 million to the federal government to settle the administration’s civil rights investigation, and Brown University will pay $50 million to Rhode Island workforce development agencies to put a federal civil rights investigation to rest. Harvard is reportedly willing to spend up to $500 million on a settlement that is in the works. In return, frozen research grants to the tune of billions of dollars from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services will be reinstated.  

What these early settlements have made clear is that antisemitism is only one small part of President Donald Trump’s fight against elite universities. The agreements offer a window into the other right-wing culture war issues driving his administration’s hard-charging negotiations with America’s top academic institutions. The lengthy documents also have the universities ceding to White House demands on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, race-based hiring standards, transgender issues and international students. 

In its agreement with the White House, Columbia pledged to hire an administrator to “serve as a liaison to students concerning antisemitism issues,” and promised other sought-after changes, such as the hiring of new faculty members in the Israel and Jewish studies department and additional oversight of the school’s Middle East studies program. 

But the propositions agreed to by Columbia go much further. The school pledged not to use racial preferences in admissions and promised to share admissions and hiring data with the federal government. The university also said it will allow any women who want it to have access to “single-sex housing” and “all-female sports, locker rooms and showering facilities,” a reference to Trump’s opposition to the inclusion of transgender women in women’s sports. 

Brown’s settlement agreement is much more overt about the transgender issues — they’re the first issues addressed, above antisemitism. Below, Brown promised to take “significant, proactive, effective steps to combat antisemitism and ensure a campus environment free from harassment and discrimination.” Like Columbia, Brown will provide the federal government with admissions and hiring data. 

A clear template is emerging of what the White House views as the ideal outcome here: deals, deals, deals — in classic Trump fashion. The most important question for Jewish students to consider as they return to campus in the next few weeks, though, is whether these deals will bring meaningful change for them. Some pro-Israel students at Harvard and Columbia told Jewish Insider this week that they’re worried the financial settlements may not do much to create real change. 

Trump can now boast that he’s racked up wins with Columbia and Brown, and maybe even Harvard soon. Whether the deals lead to a calmer campus environment next year free of discrimination against Jewish students remains to be seen. 

Jewish leaders on and off Columbia University’s campus praised the settlement reached last week between the university and the Trump administration to restore some $400 million in federal funding that was slashed in March due to the Ivy League’s record dealing with antisemitism.

While some Jewish leaders, students and alumni are taking a wait-and-see-approach, others expressed cautious optimism that the deal could lead to a safer environment for Jewish students following nearly two years of antisemitic protests and disruptions on campus in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in Israel. 

“I am heartened to see the resolution agreement for several reasons,” Adam Lehman, president and CEO of Hillel International, told Jewish Insider last week. “It recognizes both the clear, egregious violations of the civil rights of Jewish students and staff at Columbia and Barnard [an affiliate of Columbia] during the past two academic years, and the concrete steps Columbia has recently pursued to address these issues.” 

Those steps, publicized last week, included 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 Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of over 80 university student groups that Instagram banned earlier this year for promoting violence. 

The school also announced last week that disciplinary action and rules surrounding student protests would be moved out of the purview of the faculty-run University Senate and into the provost’s office, a move called for by pro-Israel students. Columbia also agreed to pay a $200 million settlement over three years to the federal government.

“Importantly, it also restores the university’s ability to pursue essential medical and scientific research with access to federal funding support,” Lehman said. “I hope and trust that the university will use this important resolution to see through its recent commitments to foster a campus environment that will be safer and more welcoming for Jewish students, and all students, moving forward.” 

Still, some said that key reforms are missing from the deal, which falls short of several demands initially made by the Trump administration. Among the demands were putting the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies department and the Center for Palestine Studies under the purview of a senior vice provost, who would be appointed by the university to supervise course material and non-tenure faculty hiring, as well as the formation of a presidential search committee to replace acting President Claire Shipman. 

In addition to the fine, the university has agreed to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for $21 million. A number of open Title VI investigations into the university alleging harassment of Jewish students will also be settled and  the university will abide by laws banning the consideration of race in admissions and hiring. Columbia, which did not admit to wrongdoing in the deal, said it will continue to have “autonomy and authority over faculty hiring, admissions, and academic decision-making.” 

“I’m on board [with the settlement] but my support is contingent on enforcement,” said Shoshana Aufzien, an incoming sophomore in the dual program between Barnard College and the Jewish Theological Seminary. At the same time, Aufzien said that “the scope of the settlement is unclear” and “many of the reforms mentioned are existing legal obligations” for recipients of federal funding, such as the appointment of a Title VI coordinator. 

Lishi Baker, a rising Columbia senior studying Middle East history, called the settlement “an important moment for the Jewish community, Columbia, higher education and the United States more broadly. Getting federal funding back and committing to the work of positive reform within the university is a good thing,” Baker told JI. 

“This deal is not the end of the story. It is an important start. Reforming Columbia for the better is a long-term endeavor that could never be covered in one deal, and need not be overly intertwined with the government.” 

Eden Yadegar, a former president of the Columbia chapter of Students Supporting Israel who graduated in the spring with Middle East studies and modern Jewish studies degrees, told JI she is “grateful to the federal government for prioritizing the fight against antisemitism in higher education, and hope this deal is the beginning of what will be sustained change at Columbia.”

“I’m holding my breath to see if and how things will change for Jewish and Israeli students in September. There is undoubtedly plenty more work to do and the Jewish community is not going to back down from doing it and holding Columbia accountable,” Yadegar said.

The Anti-Defamation League called the settlement “an important next step in fighting antisemitism and hate on their campus, along with restoring federal funding needed for critical research.” 

But others raised concerns that the settlement does not include the structural reforms initially demanded in the Trump administration’s letter to Columbia in March.

“The deal stops short of necessary internal reforms, such as discipline and review of faculty leadership for those who participated in encampments or violated other campus policies,” Inbar Brand, who graduated in the spring from Columbia’s dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University, told JI. “Worst to me is that this deal is a closing of the Title VI investigation without any admission of guilt by Columbia.” 

A source familiar with the negotiations told JI that “while the [Trump] administration spins the deal as a win, the reality is it caved and let Columbia pay a fine and continue business as usual under a toothless monitor with no meaningful reforms.” 

The settlement “lets Columbia off the hook in advance of presidential selection, meaning [that there’s] no incentive to pick a president committed to reform,” the source said, referring to the ongoing search for a permanent president.  

The Trump administration is in talks with several other universities that have faced similar funding cutoffs, including Harvard, Cornell and Northwestern. 

Columbia University announced on Wednesday that it reached a deal with the Trump administration to restore some $400 million in federal funding that was cut by the government in March due to the university’s record dealing with antisemitism since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in Israel. 

Under the terms of the deal, Columbia agreed to pay a $200 million settlement over three years to the federal government. In addition, the university has agreed to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for $21 million. A number of open civil rights investigations into the university alleging harassment of Jewish students will also be settled under the terms of the agreement, according to which the university will also abide by laws banning the consideration of race in admissions and hiring. 

Columbia said it will continue to have “autonomy and authority over faculty hiring, admissions, and academic decision-making.” 

“While Columbia does not admit to wrongdoing with this resolution agreement, the institution’s leaders have recognized, repeatedly, that Jewish students and faculty have experienced painful, unacceptable incidents, and that reform was and is needed,” the university said in a statement.

“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, said in a statement. “The settlement was carefully crafted to protect the values that define us and allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track. Importantly, it safeguards our independence, a critical condition for academic excellence and scholarly exploration, work that is vital to the public interest.”

Brian Cohen, executive director of The Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life, Columbia’s Hillel, called the settlement “an important recognition of what Jewish students and their families have expressed with increasing urgency: antisemitism at Columbia is real, and it has had a tangible impact on Jewish students’ sense of safety and belonging and, in turn, their civil rights.”

“Acknowledging this fact is essential, and along with the new path laid out by the president and trustees, I am hopeful that today’s agreement marks the beginning of real, sustained change,” Cohen said in a statement. “This is not the end of the process, however it is a major step forward.” 

The agreement comes days after Shipman publicized a list of commitments aimed at addressing antisemitism on campus. These included 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 Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of over 80 university student groups that Instagram banned earlier this year for promoting violence. The school announced on Friday that disciplinary action and rules surrounding student protests would be moved out of the purview of the faculty-run University Senate and into the provost’s office, a move called for by pro-Israel students. 

The terms of the settlement — which resulted from months of negotiations — diverge from a list of reforms that was demanded in the Trump administration’s letter to Columbia in March, which was initially agreed upon by the university but never finalized. The list included putting the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies department and the Center for Palestine Studies under the purview of a senior vice provost, who would be appointed by the university to supervise course material and non-tenure faculty hiring; as well as the formation of a presidential search committee to replace Shipman. 

Anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was a prominent leader of the Columbia University protest movement, repeatedly declined to condemn Hamas in a CNN interview on Tuesday. 

“It’s disingenuous to ask about condemning Hamas while Palestinians are the ones being starved now by Israel,” Khalil told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown when asked whether he condemns the U.S.-designated terrorist organization. “It’s not condemning Oct. 6, where 260 Palestinians were killed by Israel before Oct. 7. I hate the selective outrage of condemnation because this wouldn’t lead to a constructive conversation.” 

Khalil also accused the Trump administration of “weaponizing antisemitism” to “silence my speech” and denied that he engaged in any antisemitic activity. 

Khalil, a U.S. green card holder, was detained in March with the Trump administration claiming that he posed adverse foreign policy consequences to the country, though he was never charged with a crime. Last month, Khalil was released from the immigration detention center where he had been held for three months after a district judge said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence. 

In response to Khalil’s remarks, the Department of Homeland Security doubled down on its allegations against him. 

“Mahmoud Khalil refuses to condemn Hamas because he IS a terrorist sympathizer not because DHS ‘painted’ him as one,” DHS wrote on X. “He ‘branded’ himself as antisemite through his own hateful behavior and rhetoric.”

“It is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study in the United States of America,” the DHS post continued. “The Trump Administration acted well within its statutory and constitutional authority to detain Khalil, as it does with any alien who advocates for violence, glorifies and supports terrorists, harasses Jews, and damages property.”

Just one day after his release, Khalil, who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent, appeared at a rally in New York City organized by a group accused of ties to the Iranian regime protesting the U.S.’ airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In a move called for by pro-Israel students at Columbia University, the school announced on Friday that disciplinary action and rules surrounding student protests would be moved out of the purview of the faculty-run University Senate and into the provost’s office.

“This is the most encouraging and commendable action taken by Columbia’s administration to address the systemic problems within the university since [the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks],” Noa Fay, a graduate student entering her last year in Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, told Jewish Insider. 

“Revoking the University Senate’s power over disciplinary and rule-making procedures has been top of the institutional reform list for many Columbians who wish to see our university restored to order and excellence.”

Critics of the University Senate say that since Oct. 7 and the ensuing protests that have roiled Columbia’s campus, the 111-elected member body has blocked discipline against anti-Israel protesters and removed protest regulations aimed at protecting Jewish students. 

Earlier this week, when the university released a list of commitments to address antisemitism on campus, several Jewish students expressed concern that structural reform to the University Senate was missing. 

Fay, a student member of the Columbia-SIPA Anti-Hate Task Force, suggested to JI earlier this week that changes to the University Senate are one of the most important measures that could create a safer climate for Jewish students “as it has served most reliably and forcefully to protect those guilty of antisemitic racism at school.” 

Last August, the University Senate passed revised guidelines for the Rules of University Conduct that removed an interim demonstration policy that the university implemented following disruptive — and sometimes violent — Gaza solidarity encampments that spring, put in place to restrict the location and times that protests were allowed.  

Lishi Baker, a rising senior at Columbia studying Middle East history, wrote in a 2024 Columbia Spectator op-ed that the University Senate had refused to let Jewish students share their experiences of antisemitism on campus when the university’s task force on antisemitism presented its second report to the body. 

“I was one of the students asked by the task force to speak,” Baker wrote. “However, when the task force co-chairs informed members of the Senate leadership of their desire to bring students, those Senate leaders dismissed the idea outright.” 

The Senate has been under university review since April. The decision by Columbia’s trustees to diminish the Senate’s power comes as university leadership is in the final stages of talks with the Trump administration to make a deal that would restore some $400 million in federal funding that was cut by the government in March due to the university’s record dealing with antisemitism.

As Jewish students and alumni at Columbia University await the final details of the university’s prospective deal with the Trump administration, some are expressing skepticism that a list of commitments announced by the school this week to address antisemitism on campus would have a significant impact on protecting Jewish students.

The steps were publicized Tuesday by Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, as the school works to reach a deal with the Trump administration to restore some $400 million in federal funding that was cut by the government in March due to the university’s record dealing with antisemitism since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in Israel. 

On Thursday, The New York Times reported that about 10 Columbia and Trump administration officials, including Shipman, met in Washington for roughly an hour. The White House confirmed that President Donald Trump has been fully briefed on the meeting but that negotiations were not finalized. According to a draft deal, Columbia would be required to pay a $200 million fine and commit to releasing admissions and staffing data to the federal government. 

“The deal as it stands now lets Columbia off the hook relatively without a scratch,” Inbar Brand, who graduated in the spring from Columbia’s dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University, told Jewish Insider. “The school gets its money back without resolving the core issues in its governance and administrative structure that allowed for antisemitism to fester openly for so long on campus.” 

“It’s disheartening that after all the pressure placed on Columbia by the Trump administration, they are pulling back exactly when it matters most,” Brand said.  

The commitments already agreed upon by the university 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 Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of over 80 university student groups that Instagram banned earlier this year for promoting violence. 

These diverge from a list of reforms that were demanded in the Trump administration’s letter to Columbia in March, which were initially agreed upon by the university but never finalized. These included putting the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies department and the Center for Palestine Studies under the purview of a senior vice provost, who would be appointed by the university to supervise course material and non-tenure faculty hiring; changes to the University Senate, which critics say has blocked discipline against anti-Israel protesters and removed protest regulations aimed at protecting Jewish students; and the formation of a presidential search committee to replace Shipman.

“An immense disappointment” is how Noa Fay, a graduate student entering her last year in Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, described the university’s latest commitments and prospective deal.

“Adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism is the only satisfactory aspect, and even that does not solve what has been the paramount issue at school since Oct. 7 — adherence to and enforcement of our own policies, rules and codes of conduct,” said Fay, a student member of the Columbia-SIPA Anti-Hate Task Force who last year received the Anti-Defamation League’s Levenson Family’s Defender of Democracy Award for her work to combat campus antisemitism.

Fay sees the outlines of a Trump administration deal as “largely symbolic” because it “establishes new policies and bureaucratic measures for reporting antisemitism without requiring Columbia to enact institutional reforms that would guarantee their effectuation,” she told JI.  

The only measures that will accomplish a safe climate for Jewish students, Fay suggested, are those that were outlined in the Trump administration’s letter earlier this year, including “discipline [including expulsion] of culpable students and faculty; admissions reform; education and [changes to] the University Senate, as it has served most reliably and forcefully to protect those guilty of antisemitic racism at school.” 

Lishi Baker, a rising senior at Columbia studying Middle East history and co-chair of the pro-Israel campus group Aryeh, echoed a call for the University Senate to be stripped of some of its power. “It’s the primary reason our governance is so bad and cannot continue to exist in its current form,” he told JI. 

Baker said he’d like to see “a strong deal to restore federal funding in exchange for deep institutional reforms.”

“If we want to change our culture, we need the right structures in place to do so. For example, revealing hiring and admissions data is good but it doesn’t fundamentally change culture. We need to actually hire better, more responsible people, and this might require changing the hiring process,” Baker continued. “We need better policies, better accountability measures and stronger moral leadership. Adding antisemitism to a list of micro aggressions doesn’t do it for me — we have to fix the culture of excluding and litmus testing Jews for their connection to Israel.” 

Eden Yadegar, a former president of the Columbia chapter of Students Supporting Israel who graduated in the spring with Middle East studies and modern Jewish studies degrees, told JI that “a deal that abandons reforming the institutions that have fostered antisemitism would be tantamount to abandoning Jewish students.”

“President Trump should not sign a deal of this framework,” Yadegar told JI. She wrote on X that the commitments are “good first steps” but believes her alma mater is “once again vying for a PR win.”

“The strategy?” Yadegar continued, “Elicit praise for quick fixes to pave the way for a deal that abandons the need for structural reform …  I’m sick of being expected to praise the bare minimum from Columbia.”

Eliana Goldin, who graduated in the spring as a political science major with a dual degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary, expressed concern that if the steps are “taken as a win, it will distract from actually dealing with Columbia’s deep-rooted issues and can possibly lead to more antisemitism rather than less,” she told JI. 

Goldin continued, “Essentially, if you don’t treat a problem at its roots, you might never treat the problem.” 

The commitments received praise from Brian Cohen, the executive director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel – the Kraft Center for Jewish Life, as well as Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL.

Cohen welcomed the steps taken by the university, “including the unequivocal recognition that there is an antisemitism problem on campus and that it has had a tangible impact on Jewish students’ sense of safety and belonging,” he wrote on X. “I hope this announcement marks the beginning of meaningful and sustained change,” said Cohen. 

ADL chief Greenblatt wrote on X, “I applaud these commitments made by @Columbia, which will help restore the university as a welcoming place for Jewish and Israeli students and faculty.” 

“Our hope is that Columbia can go from being an example of the worst of antisemitism on campus to being a model for what other colleges can do to combat antisemitism,” Greenblatt said. 

While Trump has not yet responded to Columbia’s latest commitments, last week he told CNN that a deal was likely to happen. “We’re going to probably settle with Columbia. They want to settle very badly. There’s no rush,” Trump said. 

Columbia University announced on Tuesday it would implement several commitments in an effort to reach a deal with the Trump administration to restore the $400 million in federal funding that was cut by the government in March due to the university’s record dealing with antisemitism. 

The steps include the university 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 “Columbia University Apartheid Divest,” a coalition of over 80 university student groups that Instagram banned for promoting violence.    

“Our work toward an agreement with the federal government has put a harsh spotlight on many of the difficult issues regarding discrimination and harassment we’ve seen on our campuses,” Claire Shipman, the university’s acting president, said in a statement. “The fact that we’ve faced pressure from the government does not make the problems on our campuses any less real; a significant part of our community has been deeply affected in negative ways.” 

Shipman said that “any government agreement we reach is only a starting point for change.” 

Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia’s Hillel, welcomed the steps taken by the university, “including the unequivocal recognition that there is an antisemitism problem on campus and that it has had a tangible impact on Jewish students’ sense of safety and belonging,” he wrote on X. 

“I hope this announcement marks the beginning of meaningful and sustained change,” said Cohen. 

Columbia was rocked by several high-profile incidents last academic year, including a sit-in in February at its affiliate, Barnard College, where a staff member was assaulted. In May, more than 100 masked anti-Israel demonstrators stormed the university’s main library — disrupting students studying for finals by banging on drums and chanting “Free Palestine.” Still, the university saw relatively fewer anti-Israel disruptions since it first entered into negotiations to restore federal funding. 

The slashing of Columbia’s funds marked the first time a university faced a suspension of federal funds since the Title VI of Civil Rights Act of 1964 was implemented six decades ago. Several other elite universities, including Harvard and Cornell, followed suit with billions of dollars stripped by the government due, at least partially, to concerns around antisemitism.  

Earlier this year at a symposium in New York City, Jewish scholars gathered to analyze the recent surge of antisemitism on college campuses and debate whether Jewish students still belong at the country’s elite bastions of higher education. 

“I certainly don’t think that we should abandon great citadels of learning or be chased out of them, although to be there takes fortitude that I don’t think should be asked of every student,” Rabbi David Wolpe, a former visiting scholar at Harvard University Divinity School, said during the event’s opening address. “So I’m going to give a selective answer: it depends who.” 

Over the next two months, college freshmen will embark on new chapters at universities around the country. Many Jewish students have found appeal in other top schools, such as Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tenn., and Washington University in St. Louis, where administrators were quick to enforce university rules amid rising antisemitism in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, and therefore avoided much of the chaos that played out on other campuses. 

But some Jewish students are still seeking admission to the country’s most prestigious schools. 

Who are these students making the choice to display the fortitude that Wolpe referenced by attending Columbia and Harvard —- two Ivy League campuses that have been beset by nearly two years of controversy over anti-Israel encampments and classroom disruptions, physical assaults of Jewish students and battles with the federal government, including potential loss of accreditation — over an alleged failure to address antisemitism? 

Leah Kreisler, a recent graduate of Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Md., decided in ninth grade that she wanted to attend Columbia. Kreisler plans to enroll in Columbia’s dual-degree program with the Jewish Theological Seminary and will begin next year, following a gap year in Israel. 

Recent events have only reinforced Kreisler’s dream of attending the storied institution. “Columbia has always had a politically charged environment and I honestly think that fits a part of who I am,” she told Jewish Insider. “I like having those kinds of discussions and engaging with people I disagree with. That spirit drew me to the school.” 

She’s also hopeful that by the time she arrives at Columbia for the 2026-27 school year, “things will get figured out.” The university is in talks with the federal government to restore the institution’s federal funding, which was slashed in March due to the antisemitic demonstrations that have roiled the campus since Oct. 7.

Still, Kreisler admitted she’s “a little bit scared” to face antisemitism, which she hasn’t directly encountered in her tight-knit D.C. suburb with a sizable Jewish community. “There will probably be people in the streets doing antisemitic things,” she said, noting that she often gets “weird looks from Jewish members of the community” when she shares her plans to attend Columbia.

Laura Hosid runs a private business in Potomac guiding high school students through the college admissions process. She works with many students like Kreisler who are “often willing to overlook [antisemitism] at schools like Harvard and Columbia, if they can get in,” Hosid, who is Jewish, told JI.  

“At slightly less selective schools, though, it’s more of a factor,” she said. “Students are willing to look away if there’s too much anti-Israel stuff.” 

“Jewish life at Columbia is Dickens-esque: the best of times and the worst of times,” said a Jewish Columbia alum who requested to remain anonymous. “There are real challenges, but at the same time, you can go to Columbia Hillel, the Kraft Center for Jewish Life, and access the most interesting people in the world. Bob Kraft shows up for events,” he said, referencing the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots for whom the center is named.

“I’m certainly not discouraging students if they are interested in schools like Columbia and Harvard,” Hosid continued. “I’m just making sure that they are well aware of what’s going on there and how it compares to what the climate is like at other schools.”

A Jewish Columbia alum who requested to remain anonymous told JI that he still sees his alma mater as “an amazing New York City school with an incredible alumni network.” So he was supportive when his daughter, an incoming Columbia freshman, committed to the university. 

“Jewish life at Columbia is Dickens-esque: the best of times and the worst of times,” he said. “There are real challenges, but at the same time, you can go to Columbia Hillel, the Kraft Center for Jewish Life, and access the most interesting people in the world. Bob Kraft shows up for events,” he said, referencing the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots for whom the center is named.

In 1967, Columbia’s student body was 40% Jewish, according to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report at the time. But even as Jewish enrollment at Columbia has declined since then, it still has one of the highest percentages of Jewish undergraduates in the Ivy League, at an estimated 22%. “The numbers for this year’s incoming class are quite strong,” Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia Hillel, told JI. 

Cohen said that the center’s “top priority is to make sure that every Jewish student feels seen and supported and part of a vibrant Jewish community from the moment they arrive at Columbia University.”

“Everything we hear anecdotally is that the number of applications of Jewishly involved students to Harvard were stable — if not increased — from last year to this year,” said Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, the director of Harvard Hillel.

That’s been Hillel’s goal for years — even before antisemitism reached record highs on campus. But Cohen noted that for the past two academic years, “everything is ramped up.”

“We want to make sure that when we meet students and families face-to-face they already have some idea of who we are and the relationship isn’t starting from square one,” he said, outlining two priorities. “One is that students understand that they are entering into this thriving, diverse Jewish community on campus. [The second is] that, should any problems arise during their time at Columbia, they have trusted resources to go to that are easily accessible and can help support them in navigating the various university processes.” 

Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, the director of Harvard Hillel, is similarly spending the summer preparing for a new class of Jewish students. He’s hearing less concern around antisemitism from incoming students and their parents compared to last year. “I think that’s a combination of all of us adjusting our baselines and knowing what we’re getting into, and that last year was calmer on campus than the year before.” 

Like Columbia, Harvard has had billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts frozen by the Trump administration. The university filed suit against the government in April, claiming that the cuts violate the First Amendment. A 300-page antisemitism report released by the university in April described “severe problems” that Harvard’s Jewish students have faced in the classroom, on social media and through campus protests.

“Everything we hear anecdotally is that the number of applications of Jewishly involved students to Harvard were stable — if not increased — from last year to this year,” Rubenstein said. Ramaz, a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school in Manhattan, for instance, admitted five students to Harvard the past admissions cycle, with four planning to attend. “That’s the highest in living memory,” Rubenstein said.

One of the Ramaz graduates starting at Harvard this fall is Stella Hiltzik, who grew up hearing “incredible stories” from her mother’s time on the Boston campus. “But it wasn’t until I visited Harvard last year that I decided that was the place I wanted to be,” Hiltzik, whose major is undecided, told JI. She was drawn to Harvard “even despite all of the crazy things happening on campus” after seeing “how supportive, warm and comforting Jewish life on campus is — especially the Chabad. It feels like a sense of home,” Hiltzik said. 

“Despite everything going on, when I say I’m going to Harvard, most people are proud of me and supportive,” Hiltzik continued. “But there are some people who ask me, ‘What are you thinking?’ For me, it’s honestly a cool conversation to have, because I get to tell them how I’m excited to be a Jewish voice on campus during these hard times.” 

“Despite everything that has happened at Columbia,” Leah Kreisler, a recent graduate of Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Md., said, “I don’t think that the solution to antisemitism is to remove ourselves from these institutions. That’s been my mentality throughout the college [application] process.”  

“Jewish students are not being dissuaded,” Rubenstein said. “Which is a great thing because some people are chanting ‘Zionists are not welcome here’ and the one thing they most want is Jewish students to not come here.” 

Students like Hiltzik and Kreisler offer a quiet rebuke to the billionaire alums of the Ivies who have begun to withhold their considerable donations. One Israeli venture capitalist went as far as to try to lure Jewish students attending Ivy League schools to transfer to universities in Israel.

“Despite everything that has happened at Columbia,” Kreisler said, “I don’t think that the solution to antisemitism is to remove ourselves from these institutions. That’s been my mentality throughout the college [application] process.”  

“People shouldn’t be afraid to go to any of these schools,” echoed Hiltzik. “At the end of the day, you’re going to get a good education and you’re going to show everyone how cool it is to be a proud Jew. I feel, in a sense, that this is my version of fighting for my people.” 

Claire Shipman, acting president of Columbia University, issued an apology to several members of the campus community for leaked text messages where she suggested that a Jewish trustee should be removed from the university’s board over her pro-Israel advocacy.

“The things I said in a moment of frustration and stress were wrong. They do not reflect how I feel,” Shipman wrote on Wednesday in a private email obtained by Jewish Insider, noting that she was addressing “some trusted groups of friends and colleagues, with whom I’ve talked regularly over the last few months.” 

The text messages, from 2023 and 2024, were obtained by the House Committee on Education and Workforce and published in a letter from the committee’s chairman, Tim Walberg (R-MI), and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to the university on Tuesday as part of the committee’s ongoing investigation into whether the school is violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by allowing harassment of Jewish students. 

Shipman, then co-chair of Columbia’s board of trustees, also wrote in a separate message to the board’s vice chair on Jan. 17, 2024, “We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board.”  

Shipman said in a follow-up message days later that Shoshana Shendelman, a Jewish board member who frequently condemned campus antisemitism, had been “extraordinarily unhelpful” and said, “I just don’t think she should be on the board.” In another communication on April 22, 2024, she expressed belief that Shendelman was a “mole”.

“I have apologized directly to the person named in my texts, and I am apologizing now to you,” Shipman wrote in Wednesday’s email. “I have tremendous respect and appreciation for that board member, whose voice on behalf of Columbia’s Jewish community is critically important. I should not have written those things, and I am sorry. It was a moment of immense pressure, over a year and a half ago, as we navigated some deeply turbulent times. But that doesn’t change the fact that I made a mistake. I promise to do better.” 

Shipman continued, “One thing I hope salacious headlines will not obscure—my deep commitment to fighting antisemitism and protecting our Jewish students and faculty. Board members who have worked with me for more than a decade know that antisemitism, and the culture on our campus, was a priority well before October 7^th, as do colleagues at the university, and personal friends.”

She included a link to steps the university pledged to take to combat antisemitism. Shipman added that she continues to commit to “restoring our critical partnership with the federal government as quickly as possible, so that thousands of our faculty and researchers and students can get back to the essential work they do on behalf of humanity.” The Trump administration canceled approximately $400 million in grants and contracts with Columbia in March. The university has since entered into negotiations with the federal government.

Text messages obtained by the House Committee on Education and Workforce published in a letter on Tuesday revealed that Claire Shipman, acting president of Columbia University, suggested that a Jewish trustee should be removed over her pro-Israel advocacy and called for an “Arab on our board,” amid antisemitic unrest that roiled the university’s campus last year. 

“We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board,” Shipman, then the co-chair of Columbia’s Board of Trustees, wrote in a message to the board’s vice chair on Jan. 17, 2024. “Quickly I think. Somehow.” 

Shipman said in a follow-up message days later that Shoshana Shendelman, a Jewish board member who frequently condemned campus antisemitism, had been “extraordinarily unhelpful” and said, “I just don’t think she should be on the board.”

In another communication on April 22, 2024, according to the texts obtained by the committee, Wanda Greene, vice chair of the board of trustees, asked Shipman — referring to Shendelman — “do you believe that she is a mole? A fox in the henhouse?” Shipman agreed, stating, “I do.” Greene added, “I am tired of her.” Shipman agreed, “so, so tired.”

The messages were referenced in the letter, first obtained by Free Beacon, sent to Columbia on Tuesday by the committee’s chairman, Tim Walberg (R-MI), and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as part of the committee’s ongoing investigation into whether the school is violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by allowing harassment of Jewish students.

The lawmakers wrote in the letter, which was addressed to Shipman, “These exchanges raise the question of why you appeared to be in favor of removing one of the board’s most outspoken Jewish advocates at a time when Columbia students were facing a shocking level of fear and hostility.” 

Columbia responded to the letter, in a statement to Free Beacon, claiming that the text messages were taken out of context. 

“These communications were provided to the Committee in the fall of 2024 and reflect communications from more than a year ago,” the university said. “They are now being published out of context and reflect a particularly difficult moment in time for the University when leaders across Columbia were intensely focused on addressing significant challenges.”

Shipman, a former ABC News reporter, stepped into the role in March after interim President Katrina Armstrong’s abrupt resignation. At the time, Stefanik called the choice of Shipman “untenable.” On campus, the news of Shipman’s hiring was met with cautious optimism from pro-Israel student leaders.

Last April, Shipman testified at a congressional hearing regarding antisemitism at Columbia alongside then-Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who resigned from her post in August, and board co-chair David Greenwald. Shipman told members of the House Committee at the time that she knew Columbia had “significant and important work to do to address antisemitism and to ensure that our Jewish community is safe and welcome.”

One day after former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was released from the immigration detention center where he had been held for three months, the anti-Israel activist appeared at a rally in New York City organized by a group accused of ties to the Iranian regime protesting the  U.S.’ weekend airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“Mahmoud Khalil is a freedom fighter … who refuses to remain silent while watching a genocide in Palestine,” Khalil told a cheering crowd on Sunday, where he led anti-Israel chants including, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free,” at the People’s Forum protest, a demonstration organized by the National Iranian-American Council to protest the U.S. military strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites.

Iranian dissidents and critics of NIAC, a U.S.-based Iranian-American advocacy group that calls for diplomacy with the Iranian regime and was critical of the Biden administration’s approach to Israel and the Middle East, accuse the group of being tied to the regime. 

Khalil, who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent and living in the U.S. on a green card, led last year’s anti-Israel campus protests at Columbia against the war in Gaza and subsequent negotiations with university administrators. He was detained in March and released on Saturday after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence. 

Khalil’s release was met with support from some left-wing lawmakers.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who met Khalil at New Jersey’s Newark-Liberty International Airport a day after he was freed from a federal immigration facility in Louisiana, said that his detention by the Trump administration violated the First Amendment and was “an affront to every American.”

“He has been accused, baselessly, of horrific allegations simply because the Trump administration and our overall establishment disagrees with his political speech,” Ocasio-Cortez added. 

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) wrote on X that he welcomed the decision to release Khalil. “As I have said before, his prolonged detention — without charges — is a chilling, McCarthyesque action in response to the exercise of First Amendment rights to free speech and raises serious constitutional concerns,” Nadler said. 

The Trump administration’s battle with higher education escalated on Wednesday with the announcement that Columbia University is at risk of losing accreditation for violation of the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights “determined that Columbia University acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students, thereby violating Title VI,”  the Education Department said in a statement, noting that the Ivy League institution “no longer appears to meet the Commission’s [sic] accreditation standards.” 

Columbia is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, a voluntary membership organization recognized by the Department of Education. Accreditation is required for a university to receive federal funding, for its students to receive public student loans and to be recognized by employers.

In a statement to Jewish Insider, a spokesperson for Columbia said that the university is “aware of the concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights today to our accreditor… and we have addressed those concerns directly with Middle States.”

“Columbia is deeply committed to combating antisemitism on our campus. We take this issue seriously and are continuing to work with the federal government to address it,” the spokesperson said. 

The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from JI inquiring whether any specific recent incidents led to the determination.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in the department’s announcement that Columbia’s actions on antisemitism since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks have been “immoral” and “unlawful.”

McMahon said the department will work with the accreditor “to ensure Columbia’s compliance with accreditation standards including compliance with federal civil rights laws.”

Columbia University has faced intense scrutiny from the federal government since President Donald Trump returned to the White House earlier this year. 

In February, the Trump administration directed that an investigation into violations of Title VI be opened. A month later, it pulled $400 million from Columbia’s federal funding over its failure to crack down on antisemitism, marking the first time a university has faced a cutoff of federal funds since Title VI was implemented six decades ago. 

Columbia responded by entering ongoing negotiations with the government. The agreement included putting the school’s Middle Eastern studies department under a “receivership,” which involves closer oversight from an external body.

Several other elite institutions faced similar funding freezes in the weeks that followed, including Harvard University, which responded by suing the Trump administration.  

House Democrats urged Education Secretary Linda McMahon not to make cuts to the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights as employees work through the backlog of cases, which includes scores of civil rights complaints from Jewish students alleging discrimination at their universities since the Oct.7, 2023, attacks on Israel. 

After Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) accused McMahon and the Trump administration of being broadly unconcerned with civil rights, citing the Office of Civil Rights and the Education Department “being decimated,” McMahon responded: “It isn’t being decimated. We have reduced the size of it; however, we are taking on a backlog of cases that were left over from the Biden administration.”

Asked why she’d reduce resources to the office given the backlog from the previous administration, McMahon replied, “Because we’re working more efficiently in the department.”

Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL) similarly urged McMahon not to make cuts to OCR “if you are sincere about fighting antisemitism and also all kinds of unlawful discrimination.” Frankel also referenced several other programs she wanted McMahon to protect, a number of which McMahon expressed openness to considering. 

After recounting an experience of a Jewish friend who took their children out of the Washington, D.C., public school system due to its unwillingness to address concerns about antisemitism, Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-OK) offered McMahon an opportunity to speak about the rise of antisemitism in primary and secondary education. 

“Certainly the president has made it very clear that he does not condone any kind of discrimination — racial and especially, we’ve seen religious, we’ve seen it across our college campuses, some of the most elite in the country. We took very strong and very decisive action against those universities who clearly were not protecting Jewish students against antisemitism,” McMahon told the committee. 

“When you see students barricaded in a library, and others pounding on the glass going, ‘Death to Jews. Death to Israel. Death to United States,’ that is unacceptable at our college campuses. And we reacted,” she continued.

McMahon went on to discuss her engagement with Columbia University, praising its acting president, Claire Shipman, for her response to student protesters involved in the takeover of the school’s main library earlier this month.

“We reacted to Columbia first. This incident happened at Columbia, and I met with the president of Columbia. I’ve had two conversations now with the current president of Columbia. We’ve talked about things that we need to do at those universities. We want to be able to be supportive, but those universities, albeit they’re private, do receive federal funding. We have leverage to withhold some of that federal funding or to cancel some of the grants, and we would do that unless it could be proven that these colleges and universities are going to respect all rights and set their policy in place and enforce them,” McMahon said.

“I was complimentary to the acting president now at Columbia, Claire Shipman, when I talked to her last week, and I said, ‘You reacted just as you said you would to the recent uprising on campus. You were looking at whether or not– you’ve suspended students, are you going to expel them?’ And that’s still what she’s looking at. So we’ve seen that that kind of action can deliver results,” she continued. 

After being let go from his post as executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review last week, Sewell Chan pinned the firing — which he called “hasty” and “ill-considered” — in part on a recent interaction he had with a staff member “passionately devoted” to activism in support of Gaza on Columbia’s campus. 

In a statement, Chan wrote that he was informed last Monday of complaints from staff regarding three separate interactions in the past weeks during which he gave what he described as “fair and critical feedback rooted in editorial rigor.” Among those communications, according to Chan, included a talk with a fellow who was “passionately devoted to the cause of the Gaza protests at Columbia.” The student journalist had written an article about the “recent detention of a Palestinian graduate student” for a publication that he had previously covered for CJR. Chan did not disclose the name of the student or the publication. 

“I told him there was a significant ethical problem with writing for an outlet he had just covered,” Chan wrote, adding that the other two interactions involved letting go a staff member who “declined” to come into the office and write at least one story a week, despite the journalism school’s attendance policy; as well as a second conversation with an editor working on a “sensitive” investigation about sexual harassment.

“This was the first time in a 25-year career that I’ve ever been subjected to discipline in a job — much less terminated from one,” Chan wrote. “I have immense respect for Jelani Cobb as a journalist and educator, but the decision to let me go was hasty, ill-considered and quite frankly baffling,” he said, referring to the dean of Columbia’s journalism school and publisher of CJR. Cobb did not respond to a request for comment from Jewish Insider and Chan declined to comment. 

CJR was founded in 1961 “to assess the performance of journalism in all its forms, to call attention to its shortcomings and strengths, and to help define—or redefine—standards of honest, responsible service,” according to its mission statement. 

Chan, a seasoned journalist who previously served as editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune, was selected for the prestigious role at CJR in June following a lengthy search process. He began his tenure in September — as a fresh wave of anti-Israel demonstrations kicked off a new school year on Columbia’s campus. 

In an interview with the student newspaper, The Columbia Spectator, upon assuming the position, he praised the undergraduate student reporting of last spring’s anti-Israel encampment movement and reporting on the occupation of Hamilton Hall.

“I was really, really impressed by the quality of the student journalism, both the radio station and the Spectator, during the Columbia protests,” he said. “I think a lot of that work from them was courageous and happened under very difficult circumstances—and on a story that is about as polarizing and difficult to cover as we could imagine.”

The arrest on Monday of a Palestinian student at Columbia University who helped organize campus anti-Israel demonstrations was the latest front in the Trump administration’s closely scrutinized crackdown on foreign activists who have expressed sympathy for Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups. 

Mohsen Mahdawi, a 34-year-old green card holder born and raised in the West Bank, was arrested and detained by federal immigration officers on Monday after he appeared at a U.S. citizenship interview in Vermont, where he resides.

Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said in an email to Jewish Insider on Tuesday that Mahdawi “was a ringleader in the Columbia protests,” sharing a New York Post article citing anonymous State Department sources claiming that he had used “threatening rhetoric and intimidation” against Jewish students.

“Due to privacy and other considerations, and visa confidentiality, we generally will not comment on Department actions with respect to specific cases,” a State Department spokesperson told JI on Tuesday.

Mahdawi’s lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition on Monday calling his detention unlawful. “This case concerns the government’s retaliatory and targeted detention and attempted removal of Mr. Mahdawi for his constitutionally protected speech,” the petition said.    

Representatives for Columbia declined to comment on Mahdawi’s arrest, citing federal student privacy law.

Like Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian green card holder and recent Columbia University graduate arrested by federal immigration agents last month, Mahdawi has not yet been charged with a crime. Instead, he appears to have been detained on a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act cited by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to justify expelling foreigners who are seen as a threat to U.S. foreign policy and national security, which the petition also challenges.

Last week, a federal judge in Louisiana ordered that Khalil can be deported, determining such arguments are sufficient grounds for his removal, in a decision that is expected to face further challenges.

A federal judge in Vermont ruled on Monday that Mahdawi must be held in the state and cannot be removed from the country for now. 

Mahdawi’s legal team did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.    

Mahdawi had been a key organizer of anti-Israel protests at Columbia that roiled the campus after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. He helped to found Columbia University Apartheid Divest and was a member of the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, which has expressed pro-Hamas rhetoric, among other student anti-Israel groups. 

For his part, Mahdawi, who moved to the U.S. from a refugee camp in the West Bank in 2014, called Hamas a “product of the Israeli occupation” shortly after the attacks and reportedly helped to write a statement released by Columbia student groups on Oct. 14, 2023, claiming that the “Palestinian struggle for freedom is rooted in international law, under which occupied peoples have the right to resist the occupation of their land.”

He also appeared at a rally a month after the attack alongside Nerdeen Kiswani of Within Our Lifetime, a radical group that advocates for armed resistance against Israel. 

In an interview on “60 Minutes” in December 2023, Mahdawi voiced sympathy for Hamas’ terror attacks.

“I did not say that I justify what Hamas has done. I said I can empathize,” he said. “To empathize is to understand the root cause and to not look at any event or situation in a vacuum. This is for me that path moving forward.”

On his Instagram page in August, meanwhile, Mahdawi posted photos commemorating what he called the “martyrdom” of his “cousin,” Maysara Masharqa, a field commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of Fatah, describing him as a “fierce resistance fighter,” according to The Washington Free Beacon. 

“Here is Mesra who offers his soul as a sacrifice for the homeland and for the blood of the martyrs as a gift for the victory of Gaza and in defense of the dignity of his homeland and his people against the vicious Israeli occupation in the West Bank,” Mahdawi wrote.

While the petition filed by his legal team notes that he stepped back from such activism in March 2024, Mahdawi’s public statements drew intense scrutiny from several antisemitism watchdog groups that are pushing the Trump administration to target campus protest leaders.

Mahdawi, who was an undergraduate at Columbia University, was planning to pursue a master’s degree in the fall, according to the petition.

His arrest drew criticism on Monday from Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Peter Welch (D-VT) and Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT), who said in a statement that “he must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released from detention.” 

After Columbia interim President Katrina Armstrong’s abrupt resignation on Friday, several of the university’s congressional antagonists quickly jumped in to criticize Armstrong’s successor, former ABC News journalist Claire Shipman, the co-chair of Columbia’s board. 

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the former chair of the House Education Committee, said that Shipman’s tenure as interim president would be “short-lived.” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), freshly returned to Capitol Hill after President Donald Trump withdrew her nomination to be U.N. ambassador, called the choice of Shipman “untenable.” 

But a different reaction came from the White House: subtle praise. The Trump administration’s antisemitism task force called Columbia’s Friday night actions an “important step,” which an administration official confirmed to Jewish Insider was in reaction to Shipman’s appointment. News reports last week indicated that days before her resignation, Armstrong had promised the Trump administration she would enforce a mask ban on campus while telling faculty privately that she would not. 

On Columbia’s campus, the news of Shipman’s hiring was met with cautious optimism from pro-Israel student leaders.

“We’re in desperate need of strong leadership willing to make the deep-seated reforms necessary to save the university at this pivotal moment,” said Eden Yadegar, a senior studying Middle East studies and modern Jewish studies who last year testified before Congress about the antisemitism she has faced on Columbia’s campus. Yadegar declined to elaborate on whether she believes Shipman will bring about those reforms. 

Lishi Baker, a junior studying Middle East history and co-chair of the campus Israel advocacy group Aryeh, also said he would take a wait-and-see approach to Shipman. Baker expects university leadership to bring “deep structural and cultural changes at Columbia [that] are necessary to restore our campus to its primary mission of teaching, learning, and research,” he said. 

“Some of these changes can happen immediately and some will take longer,” Baker told JI. 

The university’s Hillel director, Brian Cohen, praised Shipman in a statement to JI, saying that she “is deeply committed to Columbia University and has consistently demonstrated concern for the well-being and needs of its Jewish community.”

“I look forward to working with her in this new role,” Cohen said.    

Major Jewish organizations have largely avoided weighing in on Shipman’s appointment. The Anti-Defamation League told JI that it was “too early.” 

Shipman, a veteran reporter and author with no academic leadership experience, has publicly stood by the university’s leadership as co-chair of Columbia’s board of trustees in response to the antisemitism that exploded on campus after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and ensuing war in Gaza. 

From the beginning of her tenure, Shipman will be contending with a complex campus landscape: Many liberal faculty and students are angry about the university’s decision to acquiesce to Trump’s demands as a way to regain access to $400 million in federal funding that his administration pulled in March, citing Columbia’s failure to properly address antisemitism. 

She will also face a tough negotiating partner in Washington, and pressure from Jewish students and alumni to take a stronger stance against a campus culture in which anti-Israel protests have thrived, with little consequences for rule-breaking activists until recently.

“In an existential crisis, they need to collaborate and to be candid in the exchanges with the Trump administration and what they’ll do, and they need to stick with that,” Mark Yudof, former president of the University of California, offered as advice for Shipman. “You need good faith implementation of what you agree with with the administration, that you’re not looking for loopholes.”

In a message sent to the Columbia community on Monday, Shipman expressed a desire to meet with people across Columbia’s campus as she navigates this “precarious moment” for the university. She did not reference the circumstances of her appointment, nor did she discuss antisemitism on campus, although she hinted at the seriousness of the task before her. 

“My request, right now, is that we all — students, faculty, staff and everyone in this remarkable place — come together and work to protect and support this invaluable repository of knowledge, this home to the next generation of intellectual explorers, and this place of great and continuing promise,” Shipman wrote. 

Last April, Shipman testified at a congressional hearing about antisemitism at Columbia alongside then-Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who resigned from her role in August, and board Co-Chair David Greenwald. Shipman told members of the House Committee on Education and Workforce that she knows Columbia has “significant and important work to do to address antisemitism and to ensure that our Jewish community is safe and welcome.” 

The hearing generally avoided the splashy headlines that followed testimony from the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania in December 2023. (Shipman reportedly described that hearing as “capital [sic] hill nonsense,” according to a congressional report published in October.) 

But her Capitol Hill appearance with Shafik and Greenwald was followed by the erecting of Columbia’s anti-Israel encampment — the first such protest in the country, which touched off dozens of others. Columbia’s response to the encampment earned criticism from bipartisan lawmakers, even as Shipman and her fellow board members stood by Shafik’s handling of the protests, which turned violent when students occupied a campus building. 

Choosing a university president from outside of academia is an unusual choice, even for an interim position. Shipman, who grew up in Columbus, Ohio, graduated from Columbia College in 1986 and returned to earn a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in 1994. She reported from Moscow for CNN, covered the Clinton administration at NBC News and spent 15 years covering politics and international affairs at ABC News. 

Shipman, notably, also spent time earlier in her career covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on assignment in the Middle East. 

Ramping up its pressure campaign against Ivy League schools, the Trump administration notified Harvard University on Monday in a letter that it is reviewing the school’s billions of dollars in federal funding. 

The newly formed Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism will review $255.6 million in contracts and $8.7 billion in multiyear grant commitments between the government and Harvard, first reported by The Free Press and later announced by the Department of Education.

“Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from anti-semitic discrimination — all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry — has put its reputation in serious jeopardy,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Harvard can right these wrongs and restore itself to a campus dedicated to academic excellence and truth-seeking, where all students feel safe on its campus.”

Harvard President Alan Garber argued in a statement on Monday that the university has “devoted considerable effort to addressing antisemitism” for the past 15 months. 

Those efforts, Garber said, have included “strengthen[ing] our rules and our approach to disciplining those who violate them, training and education on antisemitism across our campus and [the introduction of] measures to support our Jewish community and ensure student safety and security.”

Garber said that the university will “engage with members of the federal government’s task force to combat antisemitism to ensure that they have a full account of the work we have done and the actions we will take going forward to combat antisemitism.” 

The crackdown comes days after Columbia University agreed to enter into ongoing negotiations with the Trump administration, which cut $400 million from the university on March 7, citing the academic institution’s “ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students.” The set of demands that Columbia agreed to include putting the school’s Middle Eastern studies department under a “receivership,” which would involve closer oversight from an external body.

As an apparent preemptive measure to avoid a fate similar to Columbia’s, two heads of Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies were let go from their roles last Wednesday. 

Task force member Sean Keveney, acting general counsel at the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement that the task force is “pleased that Harvard is willing to engage with us.” 

Harvard University did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Jewish Insider about the investigation. 

On March 10, the Department of Education sent letters to 60 universities, including Harvard, warning them of “potential enforcement actions” if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students. 

The Instagram page of the anti-Israel coalition Columbia University Apartheid Divest was disabled on Monday for the second time since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, a spokesperson for Meta confirmed to Jewish Insider. 

The account belonging to CUAD, a coalition of at least 80 Columbia student groups that was formed in 2016 and has gained renewed support since Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, was initially suspended in December 2024. 

Columbia’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, a member of the coalition, was banned from Meta in August 2024. At the time, a spokesperson for Meta, the company that owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, told JI that the account was disabled for repeated violations of Meta’s dangerous organizations and individuals policies. 

According to Meta’s policies, the company does “not allow organizations or individuals that proclaim a violent mission or are engaged in violence to have a presence on our platforms.”

The coalition has ramped up its anti-Israel demonstrations, as the university entered into ongoing negotiations with the Trump administration over its handling of antisemitism on campus. The White House cut $400 million from Columbia’s federal funding earlier this month over its failure to address campus antisemitism. 

Meta declined to comment on its latest decision to remove CUAD from the platform on Monday. CUAD remains active on several other social media platforms, including X and Telegram. 

“This comes after a long and concerted effort from corporations and imperial powers to erase the Palestinian people,” CUAD wrote on X, claiming that this time around Meta is giving “no option for appeal.” 

Pro-Israel students returned to Columbia University from spring break on Monday cautiously optimistic that ongoing negotiations between university leaders and the Trump administration would herald an end to the anti-Israel demonstrations that have roiled the campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza. 

Instead, students were greeted with familiar protests and disruptions. Dozens of masked demonstrators overtook campus, hanging a large “Free Palestine” sign from a building and chanting so loudly it could be heard from inside classrooms. 

The negotiations, which were announced on Friday and include rules around the wearing of masks on campus as well as oversight of the school’s Middle Eastern studies department, are a first step toward restoring $400 million in federal funding, according to both the university and the White House. 

The reforms agreed upon between Columbia and the federal government include a policy that administration can ask those covering their faces with masks on campus to present identification; clarification of time, place and manner restrictions to clearly state that protests in academic buildings are prohibited; the hiring of 36 “special officers who will have the ability to remove individuals from campus and/or arrest them”; advancing Columbia’s Tel Aviv Center; and putting the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies department and the Center for Palestine Studies under the purview of a senior vice provost, who will be appointed by the university and will supervise course material and non-tenure faculty hiring. 

On Sunday, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon told CNN that Columbia is “on the right track” to restore the $400 million that the federal government cut from the university on March 7, but she declined to confirm that the canceled grants and contracts would be reinstated. 

Jewish leaders, both on and off Columbia’s campus, remain skeptical over whether the concessions will bring a new normal to campus — noting that any changes will come down to the implementation of the agreed upon terms. 

Eden Yadegar, a senior studying Middle East studies and modern Jewish studies who has testified before Congress about the antisemitism she has faced on Columbia’s campus, called the government’s list of reforms “not only constructive but necessary.” 

“Until Columbia effectively implements these reforms, though, there is no judgement to be made. Contrary to much reporting, Columbia has not implemented the vast majority of these reforms — such as banning masks when used to intimidate or conceal identity, or instituting common time, place and manner protest guidelines,” Yadegar told Jewish Insider. “This is not a value judgement but rather a fact — despite talks with the federal government, Columbia has yet to take meaningful action in comprehensively implementing their list of reforms.” 

Eliana Goldin, a fourth-year political science major and co-chair of the campus pro-Israel group Aryeh, argued that this is “definitely not” a moment of reform for the university. 

Goldin expressed that she believes that Columbia was “intentionally vague” in its document provided to the federal government on updates to its priorities. “It’s not a done deal,” she said. 

“It is promising that Columbia has articulated a plan to address antisemitism,” Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia Hillel, told JI. Cohen said that the plan could “move us in the right direction,” noting that “there is a lot of work to be done to change the culture of Columbia.” 

Next steps between the university and the government remain unclear, Cohen said.

“The effectiveness of these changes will depend entirely on their implementation and enforcement,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement. “Columbia must be held accountable for putting these commitments into action. Such practices must protect free speech and academic freedom but not extend to rule breaking actions.” 

On Monday, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism said in a statement that Columbia’s “compliance with the Task Force’s preconditions is only the first step in rehabilitating its relationship with the government, and more importantly, its students and faculty.” 

The task force added that “the decisive steps” should “serve as a roadmap for universities with similar problems across the country.” 

“Columbia’s early steps are a positive sign, but they must continue to show that they are serious in their resolve to end anti-Semitism and protect all students and faculty on their campus through permanent and structural reform,” Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner and Task Force member Josh Gruenbaum said in a statement. “Other universities that are being investigated by the Task Force should expect the same level of scrutiny and swiftness of action if they don’t act to protect their students and stop anti-Semitic behavior on campus.”

Representing one of the most heavily Jewish congressional districts in America — California’s 30th, which encompasses Hollywood, Burbank and Glendale — freshman House Democrat Laura Friedman has made the issue of antisemitism a priority in her political life. 

As a legislator in the California Statehouse, she and her fellow Jewish caucus members had supported establishing an ethnic studies program, and later fought back against efforts to include antisemitic material in it, working with other identity caucuses in the state Legislature. And she authored a bill, which passed, requiring Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs to include education on antisemitism and the Jewish experience.

Now, as Friedman confronts the issue from Washington, as a member of the minority party, she is taking a nuanced view. Noting the gravity of the issue, she told Jewish Insider in an interview last week, “I don’t think we can take the threats of rising antisemitism too seriously.” But while saying that the seriousness of the antisemitism problem in the United States can’t be overstated, she also argued that some of the Trump administration’s high-profile moves responding to campus antisemitism, especially at Columbia University, are not the right approach.

Friedman, who is Jewish, told JI that the Trump administration’s move to revoke hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of grant funding from Columbia University in response to its failure to address campus antisemitism is “the absolute wrong approach.”

“It’s not going to make antisemitism any better on campuses,” Friedman said. “In fact, it’s going to make Jews responsible for the defunding of programs to deal with cancer research, with science, [which] has nothing to do with antisemitism. I don’t believe that this is a serious attempt to combat antisemitism. I think it’s a way to punish schools that this administration thinks ideologically are not in lockstep with MAGA.”

Friedman said that if there are specific programs at issue, those could and should be evaluated, “but don’t take away money from medical researchers. Don’t take money away from scholarships to students that might be going to Jewish students. … That is counterproductive and it’s not going to help.”

In the immediate aftermath of the arrest of former Columbia student and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil over his involvement in anti-Israel and alleged pro-Hamas activities on Columbia’s campus — before the details of his arrest became clear — Friedman said that he deserves due process and that the high legal standards for revoking his residency must be met, adding that she was concerned about the way the arrest was conducted.

She said that expressing sympathy or support for Palestinians in Gaza is not sufficient ground to merit deportation.

As a general matter, Friedman said that laws around immigration and green cards should be applied fairly and consistently, and that it would set a “dangerous precedent” to specifically target students involved in certain types of activities if others violating similar laws under circumstances unrelated to anti-Israel protests aren’t also facing deportation.

“We need to be consistent across the board. We can’t cherry-pick certain types of protest that we don’t like,” Friedman said. “And believe me: I’m not on the side of the protesters in many of these cases, but we need to make sure that we’re applying whatever law it is around deportations equally.”

She said that attention must also be focused on the ways that antisemitism has emerged from conspiracy theories and extremist rhetoric, particularly on the political right.

“We’re seeing this, I believe, from this administration. And I don’t even believe that the motions they make toward Israel — it doesn’t mean that there’s not antisemitism there as well,” Friedman said. “I just don’t see a good-faith effort to really combat antisemitism.”

To her, a good-faith effort “means to stop using the Jews as the scapegoats,” Friedman said, to stop indulging conspiracy theories, to not platform or bring into the administration individuals who express antisemitic views and to publicly condemn antisemitic conspiracy theories.

“If you’re not outwardly saying that this is antisemitic and it’s wrong and it’s a conspiracy theory that has no basis in fact, then you’re tacitly encouraging it,” Friedman said, addressing the hiring of antisemitic commentator Kinglsey Wilson at the Pentagon and the platforming of Holocaust deniers and other antisemites in right-wing media spaces like the Joe Rogan podcast.

Asked about specific policy approaches for the federal government, Friedman highlighted the DEI legislation she passed in California requiring such programs to include education on antisemitism and the Jewish experience, which she said would make academics better aware of the issues and of what antisemitism is.

She also highlighted legislation that passed in California requiring students entering universities to sign a code of conduct affirming that they are aware of their schools’ rules and the punishments for violating them, so that they cannot later plead ignorance if they break them.

Friedman additionally emphasized the importance of educating people about the Holocaust, the founding of Israel and antisemitic tropes, so that they can identify when criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism and understand the history of Jewish connections to Israel.

Looking toward the Middle East, before Israel had resumed military operations in Gaza, Friedman said that freeing as many hostages as possible must be the “paramount consideration” for Israel and the United States.

In the longer term, she said the U.S. and Israel should work with Arab partners to help stabilize Gaza and the region as a whole.

“I’m not an expert. I don’t live in Israel. I don’t want to be the American to tell Israel what to do and how to keep itself safe, but Israel has to think about its long-term stability and having normalized relationships with as many countries as possible, as it seemed like was happening,” Friedman said. 

She noted that Hamas was likely seeking to foil those peace efforts through its Oct. 7 attacks, and that further normalization and stabilization must be a central goal going forward “so that Israel doesn’t have this kind of situation happen over and over again.”

Friedman said that Hamas must be removed from power in Gaza and that a “regional solution” is likely going to be necessary to accomplish that goal and achieve further peace. “I don’t know that Israel can do this alone as much as I’d like for them to be able to.”

The path to peace, Friedman continued, will likely need to go beyond just a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, and will now require a “regional solution” where Israel commits to allowing self-governance for the Palestinians, and the Palestinians and other countries in the region also agree to support and guarantee Israeli security.

She added that she wants to avoid war with Iran, but “we need to keep Iran from having nuclear weapons,” calling it unquestionably “the most destabilizing and the most threatening outcome for the whole region, not just for Israel.”

The emergence of a new regime in Syria and the U.S.’ efforts to influence that government, Friedman argued, highlight why the Trump administration was wrong to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

She said that USAID and other diplomatic tools provide the U.S. with powerful ways to incentivize other governments to have positive relationships with the U.S. and ensure outcomes friendly to it and its allies, like Israel.

Friedman emphasized that she’s been deeply involved in Jewish advocacy issues since the beginning of her political career, having been one of the first candidates endorsed by the then-nascent California Legislative Jewish Caucus. She said that, in office, she came to work closely with Jewish groups in California.

One particular issue of focus for her in California was the state’s controversial ethnic studies curriculum. She said the Jewish caucus had advocated for establishing an ethnic studies program, and later fought back against efforts to include antisemitic material in it, working with other identity caucuses in the state Legislature.

Friedman is now a member of the newly formed Congressional Jewish Caucus. From her experience in California, she said she envisions the group can be helping to provide a resource and advocacy for Jewish communities around the country that do not feel that they have a representative who is looking out for their needs or standing up against antisemitism.

She said that the group can also play an important role by being “very clear when things are being done by this administration in our name that don’t align with our values.” 

And she said the Jewish caucus can build relationships with other identity based caucuses to support shared issues as well as educate other groups about Jewish issues and values, so that they can call upon them to help fight antisemitism — such as when the Jewish Caucus in California enlisted the support of other ethnic caucuses to combat problematic material in the ethnic studies program.

The field of modern Middle Eastern studies was born at Columbia University in the 1970s under the influence of Edward Said, the prominent Palestinian-American literature scholar and political activist. 

Now, the discipline as it currently exists may die there, too, as President Donald Trump seeks to rein in a field that has come under immense scrutiny following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks — an event that some ideologues in Middle Eastern studies departments at Columbia and other elite institutions praised as “resistance” against the “settler-colonial” Israeli state. Critics of the field have long alleged that it teaches students a one-sided history of the Middle East, flattening the region’s complexities into an overly simplistic story in which Israel is the perpetual villain. 

In a letter to Columbia’s president and trustees last week, the Trump administration issued a set of demands that it described as a pre-condition for beginning talks about Columbia’s “continued financial relationship with the United States government,” after $400 million in federal grants and contracts were pulled in response to Columbia’s alleged inaction against antisemitism. 

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Columbia was close to agreeing to meet Trump’s demands, which include banning masks, creating stronger campus disciplinary procedures, giving campus police more power and — most controversially, at least according to academics — putting the school’s Middle East, South Asian and African Studies department under something the Trump administration described as an “academic receivership.” 

Doing so would be an unusual step, with management of the department transferred from its faculty to an external figure. Receiverships are already extraordinarily rare within academia; to have one mandated by the federal government is unprecedented.

Whether that person would come from inside Columbia, from another academic institution or from the government is not clear; spokespeople for Columbia, the White House and the Education Department declined to comment on Wednesday. 

The push to put the department under receivership has lit a fuse under academics, many of whom — including some who are deeply critical of the increasingly radical tilt of the Middle Eastern studies field — worry that the move reeks of government censorship. One prominent Jewish studies professor at an East Coast university said it rivaled Joseph Stalin’s rewriting of Russian history. 

“I don’t think this is a great solution because it creates this adversarial situation,” said the writer Dara Horn, who has a doctorate from Harvard and served on Harvard’s antisemitism task force in late 2023. “I would like these institutions to change without outside pressure. But I don’t see that happening.”

“When a government steps in to say what an institution of higher education can be teaching, that is, to me, a signal of authoritarianism and fascism, actually not only on the right, but also this is exactly what the communists did in terms of the Soviet Union,” said the professor, who requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions. 

But after a year and a half of prestigious institutions like Columbia failing to take the concerns of Jewish students and faculty members seriously, even some skeptics of Trump’s meddling in higher education acknowledge that it might take unprecedented action to jolt universities leaders into action. 

“I don’t think this is a great solution because it creates this adversarial situation,” said the writer Dara Horn, who has a doctorate from Harvard and served on Harvard’s antisemitism task force in late 2023. “I would like these institutions to change without outside pressure. But I don’t see that happening.” A 2024 report from the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance took aim at the school’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies and other academic departments for taking the view that “the Palestinian people are innocent victims of Jewish (white) oppression and that known terrorist groups are simply ‘political movements.’”

Miriam Elman, a former political science professor at Syracuse, expressed concern that last week’s letter from the Trump administration made the receivership sound like “a hostile takeover.”

But that may be the price Columbia must pay for its handling of campus events since Oct. 7, Elman conceded. “I always come back to this — that if the universities don’t get their house in order, internally on their own, the outside will come for them,” said Elman, who is now the executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, which organizes faculty to oppose anti-Israel trends on their campuses. 

Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East historian who is a longtime critic of the broader Middle Eastern studies field, said, “This is not a violation, to my mind, of free speech. It’s a matter of looking at national security matters that are taking place here, given how these departments and how these institutions have allowed terrorism to thrive in lieu of scholarship and legitimate education.”

The Trump administration’s letter to Columbia last week made the argument that government scrutiny is necessary because “taxpayers invest enormously” in American colleges, so federal officials have a duty to make sure the money is spent responsibly. 

Given the way some Columbia faculty members have described the Hamas attacks — such as Professor Joseph Massad, who called the scenes of violence on Oct. 7 “awesome” — Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East historian who is a longtime critic of the broader Middle Eastern studies field, described the receivership as a necessary course corrective, taken with national security concerns in mind. 

“I see no problem at all,” said Romirowsky, executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa. “This is not a violation, to my mind, of free speech. It’s a matter of looking at national security matters that are taking place here, given how these departments and how these institutions have allowed terrorism to thrive in lieu of scholarship and legitimate education.”

David Myers, the chair of Jewish history at the University of California, Los Angeles, conceded that the field of Middle Eastern studies is “highly politicized” and that it should be “more open to diversity of perspectives.” But he doesn’t think Trump’s proposal is the way to fix that. 

“Is our assumption that money is so fungible that to the extent to which I’m at all financially supported by the federal government, then Uncle Sam owns that much piece of whatever I’m doing across the board? That seems to be the implicit argument here,” said a Zionist Middle Eastern studies professor at a New England university. “For an administration that touts the virtues of the free market, it’s a little totalitarian.”

“Does the malady merit this proposed remedy? I really don’t think so,” Myers said. “It’s really saying, ‘We the government can and should have control over not only your teaching agenda, but really about how you conduct research.’”

The impact of what will happen next with Columbia’s Middle Eastern studies department will extend far beyond the Morningside Heights campus and the confines of a single academic discipline. Those watching closely include not just other academics in the field of Middle East studies, but professors and researchers across all disciplines, wary that their funding may come under threat, or that their writings and syllabi may be subjected to an additional, unexpected degree of scrutiny from government officials. 

“Is our assumption that money is so fungible that to the extent to which I’m at all financially supported by the federal government, then Uncle Sam owns that much piece of whatever I’m doing across the board? That seems to be the implicit argument here,” said a Zionist Middle Eastern studies professor at a New England university. “For an administration that touts the virtues of the free market, it’s a little totalitarian.”

The Justice Department’s newly formed Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism filed a statement of interest in court on Monday night supporting Jewish students and a professor in their case alleging that the University of California Los Angeles permitted antisemitism on campus. 

According to the suit, in the spring of 2024 UCLA violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by knowingly allowed members of an anti-Israel protest encampment to physically prevent students and faculty from accessing portions of the campus if they were wearing items that identified them as Jewish if they refused to denounce Israel. The filing comes as the task force is separately investigating the University of California system for Title VI violations. 

The brief filed on Monday marks the first time the federal government has filed a statement of interest in court to argue that a university should be held accountable for the campus antisemitism that has skyrocketed across the country since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel.  

Leo Terrell, head of the antisemitism task force, said in a statement that “the President, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the Task Force know that every student must be free to attend school without being discriminated against on the basis of their race, religion or national origin.” 

The Trump administration’s new multi-agency task force to combat antisemitism announced earlier this month that it would visit 10 university campuses that have experienced an increase of antisemitic incidents. 

The task force already announced it will cut $400 million from Columbia University’s federal funding due to antisemitic demonstrations unless the university agrees to a number of conditions by Thursday. At the time, Terrell said that was “only the beginning” of university funding cuts.

The intense scrutiny that the Trump administration has placed on Columbia University for failing to address rising campus antisemitism escalated last week in several incidents that culminated in Department of Homeland Security agents raiding two dorm rooms on Thursday night and arresting one student, and another student having their visa revoked by the State Department. 

Leqaa Korda, a Palestinian from the West Bank who has been active in anti-Israel protests on campus, was arrested for allegedly overstaying her expired visa, which terminated in January 2022. Korda had previously been arrested for her involvement in the protests last year, according to DHS. 

A second student, Ranjani Srinivasan, a Ph.D. candidate from India, had her student visa revoked on March 5 for “advocating for violence and terrorism,” DHS said in a statement Friday. Srinivasan has already “self-deported” to Canada.

Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, said in a statement that she was “heartbroken” by the raid, adding that “no one was arrested or detained,” which DHS contradicted with its statement. DHS agents served Columbia with two warrants to access the dorms, where Armstrong said “no items were removed, and no further action was taken.”

The search came as Columbia University faces mounting pressure from the Trump administration to address the antisemitic demonstrations that have roiled the campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks. The university became the focal point of a national debate on free speech last week when immigration officers arrested and threatened to deport recent graduate Mahmoud Khalil over his role in anti-Israel activism on campus.

Earlier this month, the White House cut $400 million from Columbia’s federal funding over its failure to crack down on antisemitism. The Wall Street Journal reported the decision is under a 30-day review period. 

The Trump administration followed up last week with a series of preconditions and policy changes that Columbia must implement in order to restore the federal funding. Demands from the federal government — which the university must agree to by March 20 — include the termination of the University Judicial Board, the implementation of a mask ban and the granting of “full law enforcement authority, including arrest and removal of agitators” to public safety officers. The letter stated that Columbia has “fundamentally failed to protect American students and faculty from antisemitic violence and harassment in addition to other alleged violations of Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

Also on Thursday, the university issued expulsions, multiyear suspensions and degree revocation for students who participated in the anti-Israel encampment and occupation of the university’s Hamilton Hall last spring, after the University Judicial Board found that the participants violated university policy. 

A university official told Jewish Insider that Columbia began the disciplinary process against these students immediately following the takeover of the campus building last April — which initially included interim suspensions of several participants. 

The official added that new revisions — including a designated rules administrator and the development of an Office of Rules Administration — will “allow the Rules process to operate more expeditiously” going forward. The university declined to provide the number of students impacted by these latest actions.

Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia Hillel, called the disciplinary action “an important first step in righting the wrongs of the past year and a half.”

“I am grateful to the Rules Administrator and other members of the Administration for their roles in ensuring these cases were resolved,” Cohen wrote on X. 

As questions swirl about the Trump administration’s legal authority to revoke the green card of Columbia University protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt offered an answer on Tuesday — a federal statute that permits removing anyone with a U.S. visa or green card whose actions are “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America.”

Leavitt was referring to a passage in the Immigration and Nationality Act, the 1952 law that governs immigration, which says that if the secretary of state has “reasonable grounds” to believe that a migrant poses “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” to the United States, that person is able to be deported. When asked if a green card holder must be charged with a crime in order to be eligible for deportation, Leavitt — in stating plainly that Secretary of State Marco Rubio already retains the power to deport individuals — suggested the answer is no.

“Secretary Rubio exercised that authority, and we fully believe that we are going to move forward with more arrests,” Leavitt said. A White House official told The Free Press that Khalil is not currently being charged with a crime: “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law,” the official said.

Khalil, a 30-year-old of Palestinian descent who grew up in Syria, was detained by immigration authorities on Saturday in Manhattan. He had been a leader of the anti-Israel encampment protesting the war in Gaza on Columbia’s campus last spring, and served as its lead negotiator with university administrators. 

“This is an individual who organized group protests that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus, but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda flyers with the logo of Hamas,” said Leavitt.

Many on the left, including the leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have rallied around Khalil as a symbol of overreach by President Donald Trump. But Khalil’s arrest has also drawn scrutiny from some legal experts who see it as an attempt to bypass due process protections and target anti-Israel speech. Some have cheered the move, saying that Khalil’s leadership in the encampment movement is evidence enough of his involvement in criminal acts. 

Trump administration officials have made clear that Khalil is just the first foreign student activist likely to face immigration consequences. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security have been working together since Trump signed an executive order on antisemitism in January to identify other people to deport.

“They have been using intelligence to identify individuals on our nation’s colleges and universities, on our college campuses, who have engaged in such behavior and activity, and especially illegal activity,” Leavitt said. She stated that Columbia has received the names of other “pro-Hamas” students that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to deport, but Columbia is not cooperating with them. 

A Columbia spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, sent an email on Monday to university affiliates that said she “understand[s] the distress” around ICE officers on campus but didn’t mention Khalil.

“SHALOM, MAHMOUD.” That’s how the White House announced the detention and planned deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate who was an organizer of last year’s anti-Israel encampment on campus. 

President Donald Trump called Khalil, who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent, “a radical foreign pro-Hamas student,” and said the former graduate student’s arrest was the “first arrest of many to come” as his administration began to target “terrorist sympathizers.” The move escalated Trump’s long-standing commitment to deport foreign students who support terrorism, which he made a priority in a January executive order on combating antisemitism. 

While Khalil, who is 30, first came to the U.S. on a student visa, he later received a green card. As a lawful permanent resident, Khalil has a stronger claim to due process protections than he would as a foreign national in the U.S. on a time-bound student visa — which has raised questions for some legal experts about the legality of Trump’s move to arrest and deport Khalil. On Monday, a federal judge in New York blocked his deportation pending further proceedings. 

“I consider myself on the right, and I wouldn’t have any objection to student visa action,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former Republican Department of Homeland Security official and a national security lawyer. “Maybe this guy shouldn’t have gotten a green card in the first instance. But he’s got one now, and that means he has rights.” 

Central to the issue is a debate over whether Khalil’s activism — as one of the encampment’s lead negotiators and an advocate for divestment from Israel — should be considered free speech, protected by the First Amendment, or whether it should be viewed as support for terrorism. 

“There is some obvious ambiguity about what counts as expressing support for terrorism. You could define that narrowly or broadly,” said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University. “When we talk about pro-terrorist speech or other kinds of categories of objectionable speech, a lot of them have a high degree of fuzziness about their meaning.” 

A DHS spokesperson said on Sunday that Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” The Trump administration had not yet outlined the details of their allegations, such as whether Khalil himself made any concerning comments or if he participated in unlawful activity, like the violent occupation of a campus building last April. Khalil also hadn’t been charged with a crime. Spokespeople at the State Department and DHS did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.

Federal immigration law states that a foreigner is “inadmissible” if they have endorsed or espoused “terrorist activity” or persuaded others to do so, or if they “support a terrorist organization.” They are also deemed ineligible to be in the U.S. if officials have “reasonable ground to believe” someone “is a representative of a terrorist organization or a political, social or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity.” But what is considered support for terrorism is a difficult legal question, particularly as it relates to immigrants and visa holders.  

“They’ll try to say, ‘Oh, this remark or that remark is espousing terrorism and encouraging other people to do so,’” said Elizabeth Keyes, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. She argued that the terrorism argument may be a way for Trump to target anti-Israel speech. 

“What they’re really doing is trying to make sure people are afraid to express their political viewpoints, and that’s a First Amendment problem,” Keyes continued. “Even though this will be litigated in some way, shape or form in immigration court, there’s also going to be First Amendment challenges.” 

The key question, according to Will Creeley, a First Amendment attorney and the legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, is whether Khalil engaged in unlawful conduct in the course of his participation in last year’s encampment. The Trump administration has not provided answers on that front.

“The way I’ve been thinking about it today is that, just as the First Amendment protects your right to wear, for example, the KKK’s white sheets or fly the communist flag, so, too, does it protect your right to distribute pamphlets about Hamas,” Creeley told Jewish Insider. “You don’t have the right to break into a library. You don’t have the right to prevent access and egress to a campus and so forth. But without that information, we just can’t tell what’s at issue here.” 

Some have argued that simply participating in the encampment rises to the level of criminal activity. Khalil was under investigation by Columbia University for alleged misconduct last year, but he was ultimately cleared and allowed to graduate in December.

“This was not mere protest activity, but involved some degree of criminality,” said Ken Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which litigates civil rights cases alleging antisemitism at U.S. universities. “The federal government is not prosecuting people for engaging in political speech. The federal government is addressing criminality, violation of school rules and violation of the terms of either green cards or student visas.” 

Revoking student visas is a much less onerous process than doing so for a green card. Revocation of a green card requires the holder to appear before an immigration judge — unlike the arrest and deportation of undocumented immigrants, another priority of the Trump administration, which has dispatched Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents to major cities to deport immigrants who lack legal status. 

“Sometimes courts are reluctant to infringe upon the liberties of green card holders in a way that they’re not reluctant if it’s somebody who’s here temporarily or somebody who’s here without status at all,” said Keyes. That is not to say that a person with a green card must be convicted of, or even charged with, a crime to have their legal status revoked. 

“Many of the grounds don’t require convictions. It’s just the administration saying this person is trying to get other people to support a terrorist organization, and they have enormous latitude to determine who’s a terrorist organization,” added Keyes. 

A petition filed by Khalil’s lawyer alleges that the four DHS agents who arrested him at his home on Saturday night told him they were there to revoke his student visa, suggesting they were not aware that he now holds a green card. When he showed them documents proving he has a green card, they said they were revoking that, too. 

“It’s much easier to revoke those visas than to revoke green cards. And it may be that they initially thought that he only had a student visa, when, in reality, he had a green card,” said Somin. “Green cards can only be revoked for a relatively narrow set of specified reasons. Whether providing support to terrorism or expressing such support can qualify as such a reason is a question that perhaps will now be litigated.”

Left-wing lawmakers condemned the Trump administration’s decision to detain Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University student who was a leader in anti-Israel campus protests, while several pro-Israel Democrats were taking a wait-and-see approach, underscoring the scourge of campus antisemitism while also acknowledging the need for due process. 

The administration accused Syrian-born Khalil, a green card holder, of organizing pro-Hamas protests, although the precise legal justification for his detention and potential deportation remained unclear. A federal judge temporarily halted Khalil’s deportation pending a legal challenge.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, repeatedly defended Khalil, posting “Free Mahmoud Khalil” and accusing the administration of arresting Khalil because administration officials “didn’t agree with what he said” in his legitimate exercise of free speech rights.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) characterized the arrest and detention as a potential overreach, stating that the university disciplinary process should handle any violations of Jewish students’ rights.

“In the context of the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, DHS must produce facts and evidence of criminal activity. Absent evidence of a crime, such as providing material support for a terrorist organization, the actions undertaken by the Trump administration are wildly inconsistent with the United States Constitution,” Jeffries said in a statement. “A judge has blocked this egregious removal pending further action and, along with [New York] Attorney General Letitia James, we will continue monitoring this developing situation closely.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) posted, “If the federal government can disappear a legal US permanent resident without reason or warrant, then they can disappear US citizens too.” Other progressive lawmakers also suggested that U.S. citizens could be targeted next.

According to ICE, Khalil was transferred to a Louisiana facility; his whereabouts had been unclear earlier on Monday.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) collected signatures from fellow lawmakers on a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, which she planned to send on Tuesday morning, a source familiar with the situation told Jewish Insider.

A draft version of the letter obtained by JI accuses the administration of having “effectively disappeared” Khalil and demands his immediate release and a halt to any further similar detentions. It also characterizes him as a “political prisoner” and victim of “anti-Palestinian racism.” Khalil is of Palestinian descent.

“Khalil has not been charged or convicted of any crime,” the letter reads. “As the Trump administration proudly admits, he was targeted solely for his activism and organizing as a student leader and negotiator for the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on Columbia University campus, protesting the Israeli government’s brutal assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza and his university’s complicity in this oppression.”

The Tlaib letter further states that “if unchecked, this authoritarian playbook will be applied to any and all opposition to his undemocratic agenda” and that the arrest is a threat to all Americans. It also calls on universities to “protect their students from this vile assault on free thought and expression.”

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) expressed concern about the situation but said he needed to be briefed on the details. “I’m alarmed. I don’t know the facts, but I’m alarmed,” Schatz told JI. 

“It was never about free speech, it was about controlling the kind of speech they like,” Schatz said when asked about the move coming from the Trump administration, which campaigned on protecting free speech. “Last I checked, it’s still legal to have unpopular or even offensive political opinions and so I’d like to understand the facts a little bit, but this seems like a pretty big screw up.”

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), a co-chair of the House Jewish Caucus, said he’s monitoring the situation but added that “the warrantless arrest of any legal permanent resident seemingly solely over their speech is a chilling, McCarthyesque action in response to the exercise of First Amendment rights to free speech” and an illegal move that will not protect Jewish students.

Some pro-Israel moderate Democrats told JI they didn’t know enough about the situation to weigh in, while others sounded cautiously supportive of the policy in general terms.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) told JI that more details on the case are necessary and that everyone should receive due process.

As a general matter, he continued, “If you’re here as a foreign student … and you’re attending Hamas rallies, then yes, your tourism visa or your student visa should be looked at. I don’t know the particulars of this case, but he should be getting due process.”

“We need the details,” Moskowitz reiterated. “If he turns out that he’s organizing Hamas rallies, then it’s something that needs to be looked at.”

Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY) told JI she was “very concerned about violence on college campuses … I think that we have to treat people who behave that way with the seriousness it requires.”

House Republicans largely backed the move.

“We’ve all seen the appalling groups of masked pro-Hamas protestors terrorizing college campuses and intimidating American students. I do not think the State Department is out of bounds by revoking the visas of individuals that are breaking the law,” Rep. Craig Goldman (R-TX), a Jewish House Republican, told JI. “It is a privilege to come into the United States and participate in our higher education system — this does not give a foreign individual the right to commit crimes, support terrorism, promote antisemitism, and intimidate American students.”

Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, described Khalil as a terrorist sympathizer and an enemy of the United States.

“If Mahmoud Khalil told customs officers when he entered the U.S. that he was coming here to intimidate and harass American Jews, shout death to America, promote Hamas, and occupy campus buildings they would have not let him in,” Mast said in a statement.

“We only have one nation and if we don’t defend it from all enemies foreign and domestic — nobody else will,” he continued. “I applaud President Trump and Secretary Rubio for leading with common sense and kicking terrorist sympathizers out of our country. It’s time for them all to leave.”

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) said that the deportation is “long overdue.”

“Being a foreign student or having a green card is a privilege, not a right,” Lawler said. “If you are going to engage in antisemitic protest and violate the rights and freedoms of other students, your visa and/or green card can and should be revoked.”

Some Senate Republicans are taking a more cautious stance, saying they’re waiting for the details of the case to play out.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who spoke at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week in favor of deporting visa holders involved in pro-Hamas activity, said he didn’t know the details of the case or whether Khalil had committed illegal activity or violated the terms of his green card.

“The question would be, did he violate the terms of his status? I just don’t know the answer,” Hawley said, asked if the case raises First Amendment concerns. “I’d have to go look, as a legal matter … It depends on what the terms are that you agree to come into this country.”

More broadly, Hawley continued, he is “all for revoking visas of students who commit unlawful activity” such as vandalism, assault and trespassing. “If they are protesting peacefully, that’s fine. I don’t like what they’re saying in these cases, but that’s the First Amendment.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said in a CNN interview that Khalil would receive due process and that non-citizens who support terrorist groups were subject to deportation, but acknowledged that Khalil said he does not support Hamas and had denied involvement in illegal or discriminatory behavior on Columbia’s campus.

“We’ll find out who’s right,” Kennedy said. “The Immigration and Naturalization Act, though, is fairly broad. And if the administration can show acts directly and probably indirectly supporting Hamas, they’ll deport him, and he should be deported, if that’s what’s shown in court.”

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is so far staying silent with regard to the arrest by federal agents on Sunday of a Palestinian student activist who played a leading role in anti-Israel protests at Columbia University last year — as several primary rivals for New York City mayor condemn the move.

A spokesperson for Cuomo, a Democrat who announced his mayoral bid a week ago, did not return requests for comment from Jewish Insider on Monday. He has otherwise declined to publicly address the matter.

His hesitation to weigh in on the politically charged issue suggests that Cuomo — who has been courting Jewish and pro-Israel voters — is taking a cautious approach to the Trump administration’s polarizing crackdown on campus protests even as he indicates that combating rising antisemitism is among his top priorities.

“The law must be aggressively enforced and our New York should go even further and be at the forefront, leading the fight against the global rise of antisemitism,” Cuomo said in a 17-minute kickoff video, which featured an image of an anti-Israel demonstration outside of Fordham University.

The former governor has also pledged to stand up to President Donald Trump, characterizing him as “the bully in the schoolyard” who “puts his finger in your chest.”

Cuomo’s opponents in the June primary election, meanwhile, have almost unanimously denounced the arrest as a violation of due process and called for the release of Mahmoud Khalil — a green card holder who was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents days after the Trump administration said it would slash $400 million in federal funding from Columbia over the university’s handling of alleged antisemitic protests.

Brad Lander, the progressive-minded city comptroller and a Jewish Democrat, called the arrest “an unconstitutional and egregious violation of the First Amendment, and a frightening weaponization of immigration law.”

“I disagree strongly with things that were said in the protests he reportedly led,” Lander said on Sunday. “But it will not make Jews — or any of us — safer for the federal government to deport people for saying things we may find hateful.”

In a statement to JI on Monday, Scott Stringer, the former comptroller and a Jewish Democrat, said it is “absolutely absurd for the government to arrest people they don’t agree with.”

“While I disagree with many of the tactics and rhetoric of the protests at Columbia, the Trump administration detaining a green card holder for engaging in speech they don’t like is a clear violation of First Amendment rights,” Stringer added.

Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens and the most outspoken critic of Israel in the mayoral race, also denounced the arrest as “a blatant assault on the First Amendment and a sign of advancing authoritarianism under Trump,” he wrote on social media. “He must be released now.”

Mamdani added in a separate post that Cuomo’s continued avoidance of the issue shows he is “not prepared to stand up to Donald Trump.”

“This chilling action by the Trump administration crosses another line towards authoritarianism,” said Zellnor Myrie, a Brooklyn state senator who is one of several progressives in the race. “ICE has no right to detain a green card holder who has not been convicted of, or even charged with, any crime. This is profoundly un-American, and Khalil must be released.”

Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker who officially launched her mayoral bid on Saturday, likewise characterized Khalil’s arrest as an act of “blatant authoritarianism.”

“This is a civil rights issue and an astounding overreach that disregards the U.S. Constitution,” she said on Monday. “It should concern every American and cannot be allowed to stand.”

In a statement shared with JI on Monday, Jessica Ramos, a state senator from Queens, said that the Trump administration had “offered no serious legal justification for Khalil’s detention, instead citing a Trump executive order.”

“We know from history that abuse of detention powers are a hallmark of authoritarian regimes,” Ramos added. “Contrary to his own belief, Trump is not a king. His actions are a threat to all of us, even those who disagree with Khalil’s speech. I demand the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil.”

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Sunday that Khalil had been arrested “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism,” claiming the former Columbia graduate student “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”

“ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump’s executive orders and to protecting U.S. national security,” the statement added. 

Khalil, who has not been formally charged with a crime, is being held in an immigration detention facility in Louisiana, according to an online ICE database. His attorney has vowed to challenge the arrest in court.

Trump, in comments posted to social media on Monday, said that Khalil’s detention “is the first arrest of many to come.”

“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” he wrote. “Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”

A spokesperson for New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who had aggressively targeted Columbia protestors last year, declined to comment on the arrest. “We don’t have a lot of information on this beyond what has been reported,” the spokesperson told JI, adding that Adams’ team “doesn’t work with ICE on civil immigration enforcement.”

The mayor has in recent weeks faced widespread calls to resign over accusations, which he denies, that he negotiated a deal with the Department of Justice to dismiss his federal corruption charges in exchange for enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.

Jim Walden, a former federal prosecutor who is running as an independent, shared a more skeptical view of Khalil on Monday, even as he called for due process in handling his arrest. “I cannot lend my voice to someone who strikes me as an antisemitic terrorist sympathizer,” he told JI in a statement. “He deserves due process of law in the United States — unlike the repressive regimes he supports.”

“Offering support to terrorists, attacking Jewish students, and engaging in hate speech seem like valid reasons for authorities to take a closer look at pro-Hamas organizers,” Walden said.

The Trump administration announced on Friday it will cut $400 million from Columbia University’s federal funding due to antisemitic demonstrations that have roiled the campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks.

The announcement comes in the wake of the Trump administration saying it would conduct “a comprehensive review of the more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments to Columbia University to ensure the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities.” The review included a multiagency assessment of the federal government’s $51.4 million in contracts with Columbia University, citing the academic institution’s “ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students.”

The cut announced on Friday, first reported by The Free Press, comes days after Trump posted on social media that “all Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests.” 

A Columbia University spokesperson told Jewish Insider that the university is “reviewing the announcement from the federal agencies and pledge[s] to work with the federal government to restore Columbia’s federal funding.”

“We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously and understand how serious this announcement is and are committed to combatting antisemitism and ensuring the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff,” the university said. 

Leo Terrell, the head of the Department of Justice’s newly formed antisemitism task force, said in a statement that the funding cuts are “only the beginning.” 

“Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who was sworn into her new role on Monday, said in a statement. “For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus.”

Columbia has recently been rocked by several high-profile antisemitic incidents, including a sit-in last week at its affiliate Barnard College where a staff member was assaulted. 

The cut on Friday marks the first time a university has faced a cutoff of federal funds since the Title VI of Civil Rights Act of 1964 was implemented over six decades ago. 

The Trump administration announced on Monday a multi-agency review of the federal government’s $51.4 million in contracts with Columbia University, citing the academic institution’s “ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students.”

As part of a federal task force combating antisemitism created by President Donald Trump, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services and the General Services Administration will consider whether to end the contracts “in light of ongoing investigations for potential violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act” facing the school.

A press release on the review stated that the agencies “will also conduct a comprehensive review of the more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments to Columbia University to ensure the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities.”

The announcement came shortly after Education Secretary Linda McMahon was sworn in to her new role, having been confirmed by the Senate on Monday evening.

“Americans have watched in horror for more than a year now, as Jewish students have been assaulted and harassed on elite university campuses. Unlawful encampments and demonstrations have completely paralyzed day-to-day campus operations, depriving Jewish students of learning opportunities to which they are entitled,” McMahon said in a statement on the review. 

“Institutions that receive federal funds have a responsibility to protect all students from discrimination,” she continued. “Columbia’s apparent failure to uphold their end of this basic agreement raises very serious questions about the institution’s fitness to continue doing business with the United States government.”

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement that, “Anti-Semitism – like racism – is a spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history’s most deadly plagues. In recent years, the censorship and false narratives of woke cancel culture have transformed our great universities into greenhouses for this deadly and virulent pestilence.”

“Making America healthy means building communities of trust and mutual respect, based on speech freedom and open debate,” he added.

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, praised the Trump administration and the task force for launching the review.

“For more than a year, Columbia’s leaders have made public and private promises to Jewish students, faculty, and Members of Congress that the university would take the steps necessary to combat the rampant antisemitism on Columbia’s campus. Columbia has failed to uphold its commitments, and this is unacceptable,” Walberg said in a statement.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will teach a course at Columbia University this spring on diplomacy, decision-making and organizational leadership at the school’s Institute of Global Politics, a prominent conservative hire for the embattled Ivy League school.

“The Academy cannot be an ivory tower,” Keren Yarhi-Milo, the dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, told The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the appointment. “We should engage with the world because we learn a lot from engaging with practitioners with differing positions and ideologies who also ultimately can learn from us.”

The announcement comes as Columbia faces ongoing scrutiny from the administration and Congress over antisemitic activity on campus since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and ensuing war between Israel and Hamas, and amid long-running accusations from some conservatives that elite institutions are silencing and sidelining conservative voices.

“I suspect that [Columbia’s] outreach was intentional in the sense that they were seeking to bring onto campus … someone with a view that is very different than most of the faculty on their staff,” Pompeo told the Journal.

Pompeo said that he seeks to “teach the next generation about the greatness of our nation” and that he wants to hold “fair, reasoned and fact-based discourse.”

Prior to serving as President Donald Trump’s second secretary of state, Pompeo led the Central Intelligence Agency and served as a member of Congress. He took a hard-nosed approach to the Iranian regime as secretary of state and was a vocal supporter of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Pompeo fell out of favor with Trump after he didn’t endorse the president’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged and condemned the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Last month, Trump revoked Pompeo’s security detail that had been put in place to protect him from assassination attempts by the Iranian government. 

Members of Bowdoin University Students for Justice in Palestine who set up an anti-Israel encampment last week inside the college’s student union building are now facing disciplinary action from the school — including prohibition from attending classes pending permission from the dean’s office.

At Columbia University last month, administrators launched an investigation — together with law enforcement — just hours after anti-Israel demonstrators used cement to clog the sewage system in the School of International and Public Affairs building and sprayed the business school with red paint. 

Days before that, Columbia suspended a student who participated in a masked demonstration in which four people barged into a History of Modern Israel class, banged on drums, chanted “free Palestine” and distributed posters to students that read “CRUSH ZIONISM” with a boot over the Star of David.  

The University of Michigan announced last week that Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, the campus’ SJP chapter, would be suspended for up to two years. Weeks earlier, George Mason University barred the leaders of its SJP chapter from campus for four years after they were caught vandalizing a university building.  

The recent crackdowns on SJP and its affiliated groups — along with other episodes of anti-Israel extremism on campus — are the latest indication that university administrators are approaching antisemitic incidents with a new seriousness since the Trump administration issued executive orders aimed at deterring campus antisemitism.   

Several campus leaders welcomed the shift. For too long “there were no consequences,” said Mark Yudof, chair of the Academic Engagement Network and the former president of the University of California system. “The new Trump administration is very serious and I’ve told [certain universities] they are in jeopardy.” 

“Many of these campuses are at risk,” Yudof told Jewish Insider. In response, “they are saying SJP can have chapters, but they’re violating rules by preventing people from crossing campus or doing overnight encampments or occupying the library.”

Yudof called the Title VI settlements that came in the final days of the Biden administration “relatively weak” and noted that university requirements could “become much stricter in terms of what they need to do by way of enforcement” if the remaining complaints are settled. 

Even with the recent investigation and suspension at Columbia, the university’s Hillel director, Brian Cohen, noted that other university investigations remain open, such as ones against students involved with the encampments and the takeover of Hamilton Hall last April. “These cases should have been resolved months ago, and many of the students involved in those cases remain on campus and continue to break university rules,” Cohen said. “Complicating this all is that despite the best efforts of Columbia’s Public Safety Department to identify students who violate university rules and policies, they are hamstrung by university policies that allow students to conceal their identities.” 

Trump claimed during his 2024 campaign that, if reelected, U.S. universities that failed to address antisemitism would lose accreditation and federal support. In the weeks leading up to Trump’s return to the White House, a number of universities rushed to settle antisemitism complaints with the Biden administration’s DOE in its final days. 

Weeks after Inauguration Day, Trump issued an executive order calling on every federal agency and department to review and report on civil and criminal actions available within their jurisdiction to fight antisemitism. 

Under the executive order, the Department of Justice is directed to review existing antisemitism cases and prepare to more actively bring legal action against those who commit acts of antisemitism in violation of federal civil rights laws. The Department of Education is directed to conduct a thorough review of pending Title VI complaints and investigations. The order also “demands the removal of resident aliens who violate our laws,” according to a White House fact sheet. 

Days later, the DOJ announced a new multi-agency task force whose “first priority” will be to “root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses,” according to an announcement by the department. The DOE also took its first major action under the new administration to combat antisemitism by launching investigations into alleged antisemitic discrimination at five universities — Columbia University; the University of California, Berkeley; Portland State University; Northwestern University and University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. 

“Any student group that openly and continually violates campus rules and/or the law must be held accountable,” Sara Coodin, American Jewish Committee’s director of academic affairs, told JI. “We are glad to see administrators taking steps to enforce their rules and regulations that are meant to foster campus environments welcoming to all students.” 

A spokesperson for the Anti-Defamation League echoed that the group is “pleased that many universities are now holding student organizations accountable for violations.” 

“We have been calling for the last 16 months for universities to enforce their policies and codes that govern conduct of students, faculty and student organizations,” the ADL said in a statement to JI, noting that because these types of disciplinary cases often take some time to move through the processes, “it is difficult to attribute recent action to the new administration.”

“But as we have said, fighting antisemitism requires a whole-of-society approach and we welcome the focus and actions from the Trump administration to combat antisemitism on campus,” the statement said. 

Cary Nelson, former president of the American Association of University Professors, emphasized that cracking down on SJP activity does not suppress political speech. “An SJP chapter that has its campus recognition withdrawn can still post messages on Instagram or X, so its group speech rights remain intact,” Nelson told JI. “Students and faculty remain free to endorse SJP messages.” 

“Moreover, some banned SJP chapters continue to organize campus events,” Nelson said. “But the bans cancel campus funding and send the message that violating laws or campus regulations have consequences, including public condemnation.” Nelson also pointed out that even with the new rules, on many campuses, SJP’s faculty partners, Faculty for Justice in Palestine, retain recognition and can function as SJP surrogates.

The Department of Education is taking its first major action under the new administration to combat antisemitism, launching investigations into alleged antisemitic discrimination at Columbia University; the University of California, Berkeley; Portland State University; Northwestern University and University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

The Department of Education under the Biden administration pursued antisemitism cases after complaints had been filed by students and organizations representing them. These new cases, however, are being launched proactively, giving the Department of Education broader investigative latitude.

“Too many universities have tolerated widespread antisemitic harassment and the illegal encampments that paralyzed campus life last year, driving Jewish life and religious expression underground,” Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary of education for civil rights, said in a statement. “The Biden Administration’s toothless resolution agreements did shamefully little to hold those institutions accountable.”

Trainor said the announcements serve to put “universities, colleges, and K-12 schools on notice: this administration will not tolerate continued institutional indifference to the wellbeing of Jewish students on American campuses, nor will it stand by idly if universities fail to combat Jew hatred and the unlawful harassment and violence it animates.”

In a press release, the Department of Education described the new investigations as a response to the Trump administration’s executive order last week on combating antisemitism, and said they would “build upon the foundational work” done by the House Education and the Workforce Committee since the Oct. 7 attack.

In a letter to the interim president of Columbia University obtained by Jewish Insider, Trainor noted that the university has been accused of a “longstanding pattern of tolerating antisemitic harassment, intimidation, and acts of violence” and of failing to implement disciplinary policies. He noted that Columbia faculty allegedly had “extensive” involvement in campus encampments and the break-in at the school’s Hamilton Hall.

A Columbia spokesperson said in a statement that the school is reviewing the letter and that the school “strongly condemns antisemitism and all forms of discrimination,” adding that “calling for, promoting, or glorifying violence or terror has no place at our University.”

“Since assuming her role in August, Interim President Armstrong and her leadership team have taken decisive actions to address issues of antisemitism, including by strengthening and clarifying our disciplinary processes,” the spokesperson said. “Under the University’s new leadership, we have established a centralized Office of Institutional Equity to address all reports of discrimination and harassment, appointed a new Rules Administrator, and strengthened the capabilities of our Public Safety Office. We look forward to ongoing work with the new federal administration to combat antisemitism and ensure the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff.”

Kenneth Marcus, the founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and a former assistant secretary of education for civil rights in the first Trump administration, told JI that the investigations are “a big deal … every bit as important as the executive orders.”

He said he repeatedly pressured the Department of Education under the Biden administration to open such proactive cases, to no avail.

“There’s a world of difference between simply waiting for complaints to pile up versus proactively announcing initiatives,” Marcus explained. “They’re viewed very differently within the higher education community and also among OCR investigators. When the secretary of education decides to highlight an issue by developing a proactive initiative, it sends a clear message that the department is prioritizing the matter.”

He said that opening a proactive investigation also gives the department more latitude to pursue its case “in any way that it thinks is appropriate,” instead of relying on the sometimes-incomplete information presented by individual complainants.

He added that administration’s choice of schools to investigate signals it will be scrutinizing both elite institutions with highly publicized antisemitism issues and less prominent ones such as Portland State and the University of Minnesota.

“This is a way of making sure that every university president realizes that if they don’t clean up their act, they could be next,” Marcus said.

Prior to the announcement, the Department of Education had open investigations into alleged antisemitism at the University of Minnesota, as well as alleged anti-Palestinian discrimination at Columbia, Portland State and Northwestern. It previously dismissed an antisemitism case at Berkeley, deferring to pending litigation on the subject in federal court.

Marcus said he anticipates the administration will open more proactive investigations, as well as potentially seek to renegotiate some of the “controversial” settlement agreements the Biden administration inked to close antisemitism cases before the end of its term.

The announcements of new investigations come even as Trump administration officials are reportedly considering pathways to shrink or eliminate the Department of Education entirely.

He said the Department of Justice may also get more involved in campus antisemitism — it has the ability to join pending lawsuits against schools, can file its own complaints against schools, can go to court to enforce existing settlements with schools and can get more involved in a law enforcement capacity on campuses.

In a possible sign that the Department of Justice does plan to be more aggressive, the Department of Justice announced on Monday that it was launching an interagency task force, to include the Department of Education, which would focus on campus antisemitism.

Columbia University’s administration has launched an investigation — together with law enforcement — to identify the perpetrators of an act of vandalism on Wednesday in which anti-Israel demonstrators clogged the sewage system in the School of International and Public Affairs building with cement and sprayed the business school with red paint.

Columbia defined the spray-painting as an “act of vandalism” in a Wednesday statement, adding that the graffiti “included disturbing, personal attacks.” It said it was “acting swiftly to address this misconduct” and “to identify the individual perpetrators and address their actions.” 

“The university has done a better job [responding to antisemitic incidents] compared to in the past year, but at the same time, the actions of these perpetrators has gotten a lot worse,” a second-year graduate student in SIPA who requested to remain anonymous told Jewish Insider. “This went from antisemitic vitriol to cementing toilets and causing staff to be there overnight scrubbing fecal matter out of the toilets.” 

In a Wednesday night email to SIPA students, the school’s dean, Keren Yarhi-Milo, wrote that the women’s restrooms on four floors of the building were “vandalized with a cement-like substance causing the toilets to clog.” The walls of the 15th floor restroom were also spray-painted, as was the business school’s Kravis Hall, according to the email.

The Columbia Spectator reported that the graffiti included the phrase “Keren eat Weiner,” a reference to Yarhi-Milo and Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, as well as “5.3.2018-1.29.2024 Hind called we must answer” and “Im scared please help – HIND AGE 6,” a reference to Hind Rajab, a Palestinian girl killed during the war in Gaza.

In April of last year, at the start of the illegal anti-Israel encampment movement, protesters occupied Hamilton Hall and unfurled a banner that read “Hind’s Hall,” announcing that they had renamed the building in her honor. New York City Resists with Gaza, Columbia University Apartheid Divest and Students for Justice in Palestine claimed responsibility for the vandalism in a social media post. 

Columbia’s response comes as the university has reacted more quickly to  antisemitism in recent weeks — a sharp contrast compared to what lawmakers and Jewish students and faculty have called a slow, or nonexistent, response to the frequent antisemitism occurring on campus since the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. Last week, the university suspended a university affiliate for participation in a masked demonstration in which four people barged into a History of Modern Israel class, banged on drums, chanted “free Palestine” and distributed posters to students that read “CRUSH ZIONISM” with a boot over the Star of David.  

Columbia’s Office of Student Affairs also mandated on Wednesday that a SIPA group chat, intended to distribute campus-related information to students, be restricted to “administrator-only” mode after several incidents of students espousing antisemitic rhetoric in conversations, a student familiar with the situation told JI. 

“We have been monitoring the chats closely and while the discussions are warranted, we have been mandated by the OSA to pause all cohort group chats temporarily till we convene to find a resolution to the ongoing discussions. … I would urge everyone to reflect on how we can reinforce civility in our discourse as we navigate this,” an administrator wrote in one cohort chat, according to messages obtained by JI.

The SIPA graduate student described antisemitic rhetoric in the students’ chat to JI as “a constant stream of pretty outrageous messages.” 

“It quickly devolved into the same two or three students from our cohort invoking the Holocaust,” he said. “OSA is getting the handcuffs on these [perpetrators] more quickly than they were last year.” 

Asked whether the perpetrators of Wednesday’s vandalism would be suspended or expelled once identified, a spokesperson for Columbia told JI that the university won’t comment further.

Columbia University students learning about the history of Israel found their first day of class thrown into chaos Tuesday after four masked demonstrators barged into the classroom, banged on drums, chanted “free Palestine” and distributed posters to students that read “CRUSH ZIONISM” with a boot over the Star of David.  

The masked demonstrators also held up, and tried to plaster the walls of the classroom, a sign featuring an illustration of Hamas terrorists pointing guns titled “THE ENEMY WILL NOT SEE TOMORROW.”

“They started throwing fliers at us all and talking about how terrible it is that this class is even happening and that we have an Israeli professor,” Lishi Baker, a junior studying Middle East history and a student in the History of Modern Israel course, told Jewish Insider. Baker praised the professor, Avi Shilon, a visiting professor from Israel, for responding “calmly.” 

“He said to them we’re here to learn [and] offered for them to learn, [otherwise] if they don’t want to learn, they should leave,” Baker recalled. “They did not listen, they kept banging their drums and [trying to] put up their posters. It was clearly a performative disruption meant to intimidate and disrupt. After they were finished with that, they marched out, yelled ‘Free Palestine’ and went to join up with larger demonstrations outside and inside [of the Columbia entrance] gates.”

Dozens of protesters, with their faces covered by keffiyehs and masks, also took to Columbia’s main quad, as well as the entrance of the Morningside Heights campus, on Tuesday afternoon to chant for an “intifada revolution” and other antisemitic slogans. 

The classroom demonstrators were presumably students or other university affiliates. At the start of this academic year — in an effort to crackdown on protests — Columbia locked down its gates, which had been long open to the public. The tall iron entrance gates are now guarded 24/7, with security officers only allowing Columbia affiliates with a valid school ID and their pre-approved guests inside.  

The disruption was immediately condemned by Columbia University Interim President Katrina Armstrong, as well as Columbia Hillel’s executive director, Brian Cohen. 

“Today a History of Modern Israel class was disrupted by protesters who handed out fliers. We strongly condemn this disruption, as well as the fliers that included violent imagery that is unacceptable on our campus and in our community,” Armstrong said in a statement.

“No group of students has a right to disrupt another group of students in a Columbia classroom. Disrupting academic activities constitutes a violation of the Rules of University conduct and the nature of the disruption may constitute violations of other University policies.”

Armstrong said that Columbia will “move quickly to investigate and address this act. We want to be absolutely clear that any act of antisemitism, or other form of discrimination, harassment, or intimidation against members of our community is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.” 

Cohen noted on X that the demonstration not only violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 but is also “a clear violation of University rules.” 

He called for the university to “act quickly and strongly to hold these individuals accountable.” 

The incident comes two days after the implementation of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, which campus anti-Israel demonstrators have demanded since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks and ensuing war began.  

“This was never about ceasefire and it was never about the war in Gaza,” Baker said. “It was always about a broader existential mission to eradicate the state of Israel. If that wasn’t clear before, it better be clear now.” 

“One of the main talking points of the [anti-Israel campus] movement has been a defense of the things that they say on the grounds of academic freedom,” Baker continued. “Well, so much for academic freedom when you barge into a classroom and interrupt it and intimidate the students and the professor.”  

A Columbia University adjunct professor announced his resignation on Monday, citing the university’s decision to allow a longtime professor who described the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel as “astounding,” “awesome” and “incredible” to continue teaching a course on Zionism.

In his resignation letter, Lawrence “Muzzy” Rosenblatt, an adjunct professor of international and public affairs, wrote that having Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history, teach a course on Zionism was “akin to having a White nationalist teach about the US Civil Rights movement and the struggle for Black equality.” 

“Columbia has lost not only its moral compass, but its intellectual one,” Rosenblatt wrote.

As antisemitism roiled Columbia’s campus over the past 14 months, including the burning of Israeli flags and physical assaults of Jewish students, Rosenblatt said that he felt it was important to stay to teach. “I believe the Institution was not aligned with the hateful and destructive values of some who teach and study here, and that by staying I would not be ceding the Academy to those who spew evil, but instead be a model for thoughtful, responsible and professional learning,” he wrote. 

But that changed with the continuation of Massad’s class in light of his comments about Oct. 7, according to Rosenblatt. 

Massad is scheduled to teach the undergraduate course “History of the Jewish Enlightenment in 19th century Europe and the development of Zionism,” as he has done every spring since 2016. The class typically fills up, drawing between 30-60 students each semester. The class is limited to 60 students and is not a required course, but rather one of three courses Columbia students can elect to take next semester on the subject of Zionism and the history of Israel, two of which are offered through Columbia’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. 

One day after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack, Massad wrote, “Perhaps the major achievement of the resistance in the temporary takeover of these settler-colonies is the death blow to any confidence that Israeli colonists had in their military and its ability to protect them.” 

He went on: “The sight of the Palestinian resistance fighters storming Israeli checkpoints separating Gaza from Israel was astounding, not only to the Israelis but especially to the Palestinian and Arab peoples who came out across the region to march in support of the Palestinians in their battle against their cruel colonizers,” Massad wrote of the Oct. 7 massacre. “No less awesome were the scenes witnessed by millions of jubilant Arabs who spent the day watching the news, of Palestinian fighters from Gaza breaking through Israel’s prison fence or gliding over it by air.”

He went on to say that Oct. 7 has “both shaken Israeli society and struck Palestinians and Arabs as incredible.” 

Massad’s anti-Israel activism on Columbia’s campus dates as far back as 2004, during the Second Intifada, when an Israeli student who served in the IDF said that Massad demanded to know how many Palestinians he’d killed. He has promoted the boycott Israel movement on campus since 2016. 

During April’s congressional hearing about antisemitism at Columbia University, the university’s then-president_, Manouche Shafik, said Massad was “under investigation” after his outspoken support for the Oct. 7 attacks. Massad later claimed he was never reprimanded.

Neither Rosenblatt nor Massad responded to requests for comment from Jewish Insider. 

In a statement to JI, a Columbia spokesperson acknowledged that Massad’s statements following Oct. 7 “created pain for many in our community and contributed to the deep controversy on our campus.”

“We remain committed to principles of free expression and the open exchange of viewpoints and perspectives through opportunities for constructive dialogue and understanding throughout our campus community, and we seek to provide a learning environment and classrooms that promote intellectual inquiry and analytical thinking along with civility, tolerance and respect,” the spokesperson said. 

Clifford Stein, a professor of industrial engineering and computer science at Columbia, said he applauds Rosenblatt’s “courage.” 

“I fully support allowing a diverse set of viewpoints, but having Professor Massad, who has called for the destruction of the state of Israel and who publicly celebrated the Oct. 7 attacks, teach the history of Zionism is insulting,” Stein told JI. “Professor Massad has a documented history of intimidating students with pro-Israel viewpoints. He does not support an objective evaluation of the material. Why have someone like that teach a course on the history of Zionism?” 

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote on X that allowing Massad to teach a course on Zionism “would be offensive at any time, but after his post-10/7 comments, it’s incomprehensible & indefensible.”  

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) also condemned Columbia’s decision to allow Massad to teach the course, writing on X, “why should U.S. taxpayers subsidize ideological indoctrination that glorifies the mass murder, maiming, mutilation, rape, and abduction of Jews and Israelis?” 

 “What’s next at Columbia? David Duke teaching a course on antiracism,” Torres wrote on X. 

On Friday morning, the National Republican Campaign Committee shared an audio clip on X that appeared to depict Sue Altman, the Democratic candidate challenging Rep. Tom Kean (R-NJ) in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, endorsing antisemitic campus protests at Columbia University.

But the full clip tells a very different story, in which Altman clearly condemned the protests as antisemitic and unacceptable.

The post is the latest of Republicans’ efforts to portray Altman, a longtime progressive activist who led the Working Families Party in New Jersey, as too radical to represent the New Jersey swing district — a line of attack that has sometimes focused on questions about Altman’s record on Israel.

Based on a clip of the exchange obtained by Jewish Insider, Altman was asked at an event by a Jewish high schooler about how she would address antisemitism on college campuses and keep the Jewish community safe.

“I am extremely concerned and worried about the rise in antisemitism,” Altman said. She mentioned that she’d read a recent report by Columbia University’s antisemitism task force, which she described as “truly appalling. No student, Jewish or anything, should have to ever experience antisemitism or any kind of bias against them.”

Altman, a Columbia alumna, highlighted a Sept. 3 tweet she sent in response to that report, in which she said that “glorifying despicable acts of terror and subjecting Jewish students to harassment or intimidation does absolutely nothing to advance the interests of innocent Palestinians — nor does it advance the broader mission to secure peace.”

Altman, in the excerpt from the event posted by the NRCC said, in general terms, that “an anti-war movement is something that is honorable and part of Columbia’s history, and I’ve always respected good old protests.”

But she went on to say that at Columbia and many other schools, “what should have been an anti-war movement and a movement for [a] peace that is sustainable, which would have included returning the hostages, not just a one-sided unilateral peace had, in my opinion bled over into antisemitism.”

She said that she’s been “very disappointed and appalled” at the activity of the protesters at Columbia, describing their push to relitigate the founding of Israel and question the Jewish people’s right to a state as “a nonstarter for me.”

Altman’s campaign had, in its early days, drawn questions about her positions on Israel, given that the national Working Families Party has been a long-standing critic of the Jewish state.

Altman said at the event that she had publicly broken with the group on Israel “because I do feel as though the Israeli people have a right to defend themselves,” noting that Israel continues to face attacks by its neighbors.

The congressional candidate said she’s had conversations with local Jewish leaders about the fear that they are feeling, adding that she feels that antisemitism has long been “left unchecked and left unexamined,” going back to the time of the Holocaust and before.

She said that many in the U.S. have forgotten or glossed over the fact that the U.S. turned away Jewish refugees and turned a blind eye to the atrocities the Nazis were committing in the Holocaust, or in some cases attended pro-Nazi rallies.

“The conversation around antisemitism in our country has a long way to go, in scholarship, in popular culture, in the way we talk about the ways antisemitism affects regular people,” Altman said, arguing the U.S. hasn’t had a proper reconging with antisemitism in the way it has in recent years with racism and sexism.

“I would encourage us all, whether Republican or Democrat … or unaffiliated, to look very closely at the ways in which antisemitism exists in this country, alongside the other ills that we are more conversant around — gender and race,” Altman said.

Asked about its characterization and presentation of Altman’s remarks, the NRCC accused her of trying to disguise her record.

“Sue Altman has been trying to hide her radical past from voters this entire election cycle — from deleting tweets to a full on attempted rebrand that even leftists acknowledge,” NRCC spokesperson Savannah Viar said. “She has spent her career associating with anti-Israel activists and no number of rambling answers will cover that up.”

The NRCC has gone after Altman in the past for her ties to the WFP, for her support for former Ohio congressional candidate Nina Turner, a critic of Israel, and for taking endorsements from progressive Israel critics in Congress. Conservatives have also accused her of being slow to speak out in support of Israel and against the chaos at Columbia.

More broadly, Kean and the NRCC say Altman is trying to walk back her progressive record to win election in a swing district.

Altman fired back, “instead of recognizing an opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to affirm our support for the Jewish people” at a time of heightened fear and antisemitism, “Kean and the NRCC have deceptively manipulated a recording of me to lie to voters — because their only goal is to win an election at any cost.”

Kean’s campaign reposted the NRCC video on its X account. It declined to comment.

“The insinuation that I have anything less than absolute contempt for antisemitism and hate in all its forms is disgusting,” Altman continued. “As my record clearly shows, I have and always will stand with the Jewish community — and unlike Tom Kean Jr., I’m not looking to score cheap political points by spreading dangerous and false lies.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called on Columbia University and other elite academic institutions to tackle the “great deal of work to do to earn back the trust of students, parents and alumni, alike” over the handling of last year’s anti-Israel campus protests. 

Speaking on the Senate floor on Tuesday, McConnell urged university faculty and administrators not to tolerate “the tantrums of campus radicals” this fall that “made some elite schools so inhospitable to learning – particularly for Jewish students.” The top Senate Republican said that “[a]s students head back to school, college campuses across the country are hoping this academic year begins more calmly than the last one ended.”

“Unfortunately, what used to be a reliable path to the middle class appears to have turned into breeding ground for childish radicalism,” McConnell said.

McConnell said he welcomes the resignations last month of Columbia University President Minouche Shafik and three deans who were placed on leave after exchanging antisemitic text messages, describing them as “steps in the right direction for an Ivy League institution that professes a commitment to thoughtful, rigorous debate and a campus culture free of bigotry, intimidation, and harassment.”

Still, McConnell expressed concern that Columbia was taking counterproductive measures, citing the school’s decision to allow a Marxist doctoral student to teach contemporary Western civilization to undergraduates despite her role in occupying Hamilton Hall alongside violent anti-Israel protesters. 

“The decline in the Ivy League’s academic rigor is well-documented,” McConnell said of Columbia doctoral student Johannah King-Slutzky. “But it would seem that at a bare minimum, its instructors ought to be able to distinguish between civilization and barbarism, and to act accordingly.”

He also pointed to a Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression survey conducted over the summer that found a rise in support from students for establishing encampments and defacing school property. 

“I have to wonder whether a survey of the parents of college students, or for that matter, the campus staff who clean up after their misbehavior, wouldn’t paint a different picture,” McConnell mused. 

More than 1,000 new students kicked off their freshman year at Columbia University this week. But even with all the institutional changes that took place over the summer, including the naming of a new president, several aspects at the prestigious New York school are already reminiscent of the chaos last academic year — one that was marred by occasional violent anti-Israel disruptions, amid scrutiny of university leaders for not enforcing rules that would keep Jewish students safe. 

Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia Barnard Hillel, told Jewish Insider that he expects to see “plenty of activism again on campus, at least some of which will be highly disruptive.” 

The disruptions have already started, with a week left before classes begin. At a convocation event to welcome incoming freshmen on Sunday, about 50 members of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, wearing masks and keffiyehs and holding megaphones and drums, disrupted the event from just outside of the campus gates with chants of “Free Palestine.” 

The group, which labels itself a “student intifada,” distributed fliers around the convocation that told students they were sitting “through propaganda being delivered to you by war criminals of an administration.” A Columbia University spokesperson told JI that the NYPD was present at the protest in case it was needed. The spokesperson did not respond to a follow up question about how the university is preparing to handle larger demonstrations this year. 

CUAD, a coalition formed in 2016 that has gained renewed support since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, with at least 80 student groups at Columbia joining the coalition, also published an op-ed in the Columbia Spectator on Sunday, attempting to rally freshmen to join in on the demonstrations. CUAD “will not sit quietly and watch our campus turn into a microcosm of the settler-colonial state we are protesting, and we need your help to prevent that,” the group wrote.  

CUAD wrote that it is “working toward achieving a liberated Palestine and the end of Israeli apartheid and genocide by urging Columbia to divest all economic and academic stakes in ‘Israel.’” 

Amid an “overall spirit of excitement for the coming school year,” the demonstration was “noisy and loud,” Julia Zborovsky-Fenster, whose son is a freshman at Columbia and daughter graduated from Barnard in the spring, told JI. Zborovsky-Fenster, who was walking on campus during the demonstration, said that she has “not seen anything that has given me a very clear message as to what we can expect” from university leadership this year.

“If I was to look at move-in day and the convocation, and base my judgment only on what happened on that one day, I would say I am optimistic,” she said, noting that law enforcement was abundant on campus and the protest remained relatively small, without turning violent.  

During summer break, Columbia made leadership changes and set new guidelines that some are optimistic will protect Jewish students. 

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik announced her resignation on Aug. 14, months after she testified before Congress about antisemitism and her handling of the disorderly fallout of the first anti-Israel encampment in the nation. 

Days before Shafik’s resignation, in an attempt to prevent activists from occupying buildings, destroying property and engaging in the kind of physical violence that overtook Columbia’s campus last year, the school’s COO, Cas Holloway, said that campus access will now be restricted to affiliates with a valid campus ID. Holloway said that this move would “keep our community safe given reports of potential disruptions at Columbia.”

Zborovsky-Fenster said the changes could lead to an “ushering in not only of a new year but a new era with this new leadership that would show we have learned lessons from a very challenging, divisive period last year.” 

But she added that parents and students deserve more transparency than they received last year. “I would love to see specific messaging as to what the policies are, specifically how they are going to be enforced, by whom, in what timeframe and how that is going to be communicated to the student body,” she said. 

As questions remain around whether the Columbia administration will crack down on disruptions from anti-Israel groups this year, outside organizations have already started doing so. On Monday, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine announced that its Instagram page had been permanently deleted.

A spokesperson for Meta, the company that owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, told JI that the account was disabled for repeated violations of Meta’s dangerous organizations and individuals policies. According to Meta’s policies, it does “not allow organizations or individuals that proclaim a violent mission or are engaged in violence to have a presence on our platforms.” 

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce has also raised concern about the climate on Columbia’s campus and unwillingness of the administration to enforce its rules. Last Wednesday, the committee issued six subpoenas to Columbia University officials for documents related to the committee’s investigation into campus antisemitism. 

According to a summary of Columbia disciplinary hearings from the end of last semester that was released earlier this month by the committee, of the 40 students arrested when Columbia brought police dressed in riot gear to the campus to remove a student encampment on April 18, just two remain suspended. The remaining students are in good standing and can enroll in classes while waiting for their disciplinary hearings, although roughly half are on “disciplinary probation.”

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chair of the committee, said in a statement that the lack of consequences for students was “reprehensible.” 

“Following the disruptions of the last academic year, Columbia immediately began disciplinary processes, including with immediate suspensions,” a university spokesperson told JI last week. “The disciplinary process is ongoing for many students involved in these disruptions, including some of those who were arrested, and we have been working to expedite the process for this large volume of violations.”

The subpoena demands that Columbia provide, by noon on Sept. 4, all communications between the school’s leaders about antisemitism and the anti-Israel encampment since Oct. 7, all records of Board of Trustees meetings since April 17, all records of Board of Trustees meetings since Oct. 7 relating to antisemitism or Israel and any documents relating to allegations of antisemitism on Columbia’s campus since Oct. 7.

In a letter to Dr. Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, Foxx said the subpoenas were issued because “Columbia has failed to produce numerous priority items requested by the Committee, despite having months to comply and receiving repeated follow-up requests by the Committee.” Jewish Insider’s senior congressional correspondent Marc Rod contributed reporting.

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce issued six subpoenas to Columbia University officials on Wednesday for documents related to the committee’s investigation into campus antisemitism.

This is the second round of subpoenas issued by the committee in its antisemitism investigation, coming just days before Columbia begins classes for its fall semester, and as the campus prepares for renewed anti-Israel protests.

The committee chair, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), threatened such a move on Aug. 1, accusing the school of failing to provide documents the committee had requested in spite of repeated warnings.

The subpoena demands that Columbia provide, by noon on Sept. 4, all communications between the school’s leaders about antisemitism and the anti-Israel encampment since Oct. 7, all records of Board of Trustees meetings since April 17, all records of Board of Trustees meetings since Oct. 7 relating to antisemitism or Israel and any documents relating to allegations of antisemitism on Columbia’s campus since Oct. 7.

In a letter to Dr. Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, Foxx said the subpoenas were issued because “Columbia has failed to produce numerous priority items requested by the Committee, despite having months to comply and receiving repeated follow-up requests by the Committee.”

Foxx’s letter also instructs Columbia to preserve all documents created or held by former Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who abruptly resigned last week, that relate to the antisemitism investigation.

A recent report by the committee, based on some documents provided by Columbia, revealed that most students involved in the occupation of Hamilton Hall in late April had not been disciplined, despite Columbia’s public threats of expulsion.

“Columbia should be a partner in our efforts to ensure Jewish students have a safe learning environment on its campus, but instead, university administrators have slow rolled the investigation, repeatedly failing to turn over necessary documents,” Foxx said in a statement. “The information we have obtained points to a continued pattern of negligence towards antisemitism and a refusal to stand up to the radical students and faculty responsible for it.”

The committee has, to date, not publicly taken action to implement or enforce its first subpoena, to Harvard University.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, issued a new call for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to hold a hearing addressing antisemitism on college campuses, following the resignation on Wednesday of Columbia University President Minouche Shafik.

Cassidy said in a statement provided exclusively to Jewish Insider that Sanders, who chairs the committee, “has refused to hold a hearing to address the antisemitism against Jewish students.” The Republican senator has been urging Sanders to hold a hearing on the matter since late last year. “In the last ten months since October 7, we’ve seen antisemitic demonstrations take over college campuses,” the statement reads. 

“The Columbia president clearly mishandled the protests and the threats to Jewish students. The outrage over antisemitism in higher education is not going away. Jewish students coming back to campus this fall need assurance that their schools and the Department of Education will protect them from attacks and discrimination,” Cassidy said of Shafik, arguing that the problem of campus antisemitism goes beyond her tenure as president of Columbia.

“I urge HELP Democrats to reconsider their opposition to holding a hearing to ensure schools and the Biden-Harris administration uphold their legal responsibility to maintain a safe learning environment for all students,” he continued. “The time for accountability is now.” 

Cassidy told JI in November that Sanders had declined to call a hearing on campus antisemitism, so he instead organized a bipartisan roundtable on the issue, which the HELP chairman did not attend. 

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), who has been pushing for a HELP hearing alongside Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), told JI in May that Sanders told him that he planned to hold a hearing on antisemitism and Islamophobia, but such a hearing hasn’t materialized. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) accused Republicans during the November roundtable of ignoring the difficulties being faced by Muslim and Arab students.

“I’m hearing about the 400% increase in antisemitism since Oct. 7 on my [state’s] campuses,” Kaine said at the time. “But I’m also hearing from students who are Arab American or Muslim American or Palestinian American or who express any support for Palestinians — that they’re being targeted too… They’re afraid for their safety, they’re afraid for their livelihood and we’re not including them in this discussion.”

Sanders hasn’t responded to questions about his plans on the subject, and the three senators told JI that they have not received any updates on announcing or scheduling a hearing. 

Asked by JI in May about organizing such a hearing, Sanders replied that, “The issue of bigotry on campus is something that we are concerned about” before abruptly entering a senators-only elevator. 

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik announced her resignation on Wednesday, days before the start of the school year — and months after the end of a chaotic school year that saw her testify before Congress about antisemitism and navigate the unruly fallout of the first anti-Israel encampment in the nation. 

Dr. Katrina Armstrong, CEO of Columbia’s Irving Medical Center, will serve as interim president, a university spokesperson confirmed to Jewish Insider. A source familiar said Armstrong has already been in touch with Hillel leadership at Columbia. 

News of Shafik’s resignation was first reported by the Washington Free Beacon’s Eliana Johnson. Shafik is the fourth Ivy League president to step down in the last year amid rising anti-Israel activism on campuses, following the University of Pennsylvania’s Elizabeth Magill, Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Cornell University’s Martha Pollack.

“I have had the honor and privilege to lead this incredible institution, and I believe that — working together — we have made progress in a number of important areas,” Shafik, who only started in the role in July 2023, wrote in an email to the Columbia community. 

“However, it has also been a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community. This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community. Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead,” she wrote.

Following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Columbia, like other American universities, saw an uptick in antisemitism and targeting of Zionist students. But in an April hearing before the House Education and the Workforce Committee, Shafik avoided the kind of viral moment that dogged her colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

But when she went back to Manhattan, she faced the first anti-Israel encampment at an American university. Her decision to call in the police to break up the demonstration set off a wave of anger among many students and faculty members on campus and sparked dozens of other solidarity encampments at other universities. 

From there, her leadership was under a microscope. Following a number of antisemitic incidents related to the encampment, several members of Congress from both parties went to Columbia to speak to Jewish students and show solidarity.

In a statement, the Anti-Defamation League said it is “saddened that the leadership of another flagship university has crumbled under the weight of antisemitism on its campus,” calling on the school to move quickly to fill the leadership vacancy before the fall semester.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), in a statement first shared with JI, cheered Shafik’s decision to step aside: “As a result of President Shafik’s refusal to protect Jewish students and maintain order on campus, Columbia University became the epicenter for virulent antisemitism that has plagued many American university campuses since Hamas’ barbaric attack on Israel last fall.” 

“I stood in President Shafik’s office in April and told her to resign, and while it is long overdue, we welcome today’s news. Jewish students at Columbia beginning this school year should breathe a sigh of relief…We hope that President Shafik’s resignation serves as an example to university administrators across the country that tolerating or protecting antisemites is unacceptable and will have consequences,” Johnson added.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said that, under Shafik’s leadership “a disturbing wave of antisemitic harassment, discrimination, and disorder engulfed Columbia university’s campus” and students were allowed to break the law with impunity.

“Columbia’s next leader must take bold action to address the pervasive antisemitism, support for terrorism, and contempt for the university’s rules that have been allowed to flourish on its campus,” Foxx continued, 

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), a prominent member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, crowed, “THREE DOWN, so many to go,” adding that her “failed presidency was untenable and that it was only a matter of time before her forced resignation.”

She added, “We will continue to demand moral clarity, condemnation of antisemitism, protection of Jewish students and faculty, and stronger leadership from American higher education institutions.”

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) told JI that the resignation was “long overdue.”

“I have been calling for President Shafik to be ousted or resign ever since her abysmal failure to condemn Columbia’s antisemitic outbursts or ensure the safety of Jewish students on her campus,” Lawler said. “Let this be a lesson to all who waver in the face of evil.”

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) said that “when President Shafik failed to enforce the code of conduct and protect Jewish students just trying to walk to class safely, she failed at her job and allowed a hostile, antisemitic environment to escalate.”

He asserted that similar treatment of any other minority group would have been quickly stopped by school administrators and that signs reading “go back to Poland” displayed just outside Columbia’s gates when he visited the campus have stuck with him.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) called Columbia “ground zero for campus antisemitism in NYC,” urging the new leadership to “summon the moral clarity and the moral courage to confront the deep rot of antisemitism at Columbia’s core.”

But Columbia’s problems didn’t stop with the encampment. In late April, student protesters occupied a campus administrative building, leading to hundreds of arrests by police. (The charges have since been dropped against most student protesters.) 

Two days later, President Joe Biden condemned unlawful protests at U.S. universities. “Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduation — none of this is a peaceful protest,” he said in a White House address in May. “It’s against the law.”

In May, the faculty of arts and sciences — which was mostly supportive of the anti-Israel encampment — approved a vote of no confidence in Shafik. 

Columbia made news earlier this month when three deans who had been placed on leave over exchanging antisemitic text messages resigned. 

And as recently as this week, lawmakers demanded that the school reimburse the New York Police Department for costs incurred in clearing the encampment on the Columbia campus.

Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, declined to comment on Shafik’s departure but praised Armstrong’s appointment as interim president. 

“I think very highly of Dr. Armstrong and I know many colleagues feel the same way,” Cohen told JI. “She is a strong leader — when there were issues that needed to be addressed at the Medical Center, Dr. Armstrong was quick to respond and to address the issues.”

Jewish Insider Congressional correspondent Emily Jacobs contributed to this report.

The three Columbia University deans who were placed on leave in June after exchanging antisemitic text messages will resign, a university official confirmed to Jewish Insider on Thursday.  

The resignations come more than one month after several students told JI that the original announcement from Columbia administration was “confusing” and “intentionally ambiguous.” The June 20 announcement from President Minouche Shafik referenced the “permanent removal” of the three — Susan Chang-Kim, vice dean and chief administrative officer; Cristen Kromm, dean of undergraduate student life; and Matthew Patashnick, associate dean for student and family support — but added that they “remain on leave.” 

The controversial texts, first reported by The Free Beacon, occurred during a May 31 panel titled “Jewish Life on Campus: Past, Present and Future.” In the exchange, the administrators seemed to belittle the concerns of Jewish students amid a sharp rise in antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment on campus. 

The text messages, which have since been published by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which opened an investigation into the incident and demanded a full transcript of the texts, included a message from Chang-Kim at 1:46 p.m. reading, “Comes from such a place of privilege … hard to hear the woe is me, we need to huddle at the Kraft center. Huh??” At 2:06 p.m., Kromm wrote, “Amazing what $$$$ can do” during a speech about an October 2023 Columbia Spectator op-ed by a campus rabbi.

A fourth administrator, Dean of Columbia College Josef Sorett, also participated in the exchange but to a lesser extent. Shafik said at the time that disciplinary action would not be taken against Sorett, as “he has apologized and taken full responsibility, committing to the work and collaboration necessary to heal the community and learn from this moment, and make sure nothing like this ever happens again.” 

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement on Thursday that it was “about time” the deans step down. “Actions have consequences and Columbia should have fired all four of these deans months ago,” Foxx said. 

Foxx condemned Columbia for sending “mixed signals” by allowing Sorrett to remain on staff. 

A spokesperson for Columbia University confirmed to JI that the three deans are resigning but declined to provide further detail. 

The resignations, which were first reported by The New York Times come as the Columbia community is bracing for another surge of anti-Israel and pro-Hamas activity, which overtook the campus throughout the 2023-24 academic year. 

Several incidents have already occurred this week — before the fall semester begins. Early Thursday morning, vandals attacked the Brooklyn Heights apartment building of the university’s chief operating officer, Cas Holloway, who is Jewish, splashing the building with painted red triangles, a symbol associated with Hamas terrorists. 

The perpetrators also released insects into the building and distributed posters throughout the lobby that read, “You signed off on police brutality. Now you want to expel us?” a reference to the illegal anti-Israel encampments and subsequent disciplinary action — including the shutdown of the university —  that took place in the spring.  

On Monday, five Columbia students and graduates filed a class action lawsuit against students and activists involved with the encampments, which reportedly consisted of weeks of threatening chants such as “Death to Israel,” “Death to America,” “Death to Jews,” and “Hamas we love you.”  The case includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) as defendants. 

Earlier this week, the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest wrote in an Instagram post that it is “fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.” CUAD, a coalition formed in 2016, has gained renewed support since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, with at least 80 student groups at Columbia joining the coalition. 

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, threatened to subpoena Columbia University on Thursday, accusing the school of failing to provide documents the committee requested as part of its antisemitism investigation.

“In many cases, these items were requested months ago. Columbia’s continued failure to produce these priority items is unacceptable, and if this is not promptly rectified, the Committee is prepared to compel their production,” Foxx wrote in a letter to Columbia President Minouche Shafik and board of trustees co-chairs Claire Shipman and David Greenwald.

Foxx said that if the school does not fulfill her requests by noon on Aug. 8 — one week from Thursday — the committee “is prepared to issue subpoenas.”

A Columbia spokesperson told JI that the school has “received the Chairwoman’s letter and we are reviewing it. We are committed to combatting antisemitism and all forms of hate.”

The letter outlines a series of document requests and warnings provided to Columbia, which Foxx said the school has repeatedly failed to properly fulfill.

Foxx said the school has only provided text messages from two of the eight administrators and two of the 10 trustees the committee had designated as priorities, and that the provided messages did not cover the requested time period. She said Columbia has also refused to confirm whether it has collected messages from the other individuals.

She said Columbia has also failed to produce records from board of trustees meetings and a list of disciplinary cases relating to antisemitism, instead largely providing information that is already public, which Foxx described as of “limited value.”

Columbia would be the second school after Harvard University to receive a subpoena from the committee. Foxx said that Harvard had failed to properly fulfill that subpoena, but no further public action has been taken in response to that alleged obstruction.

Jewish student leaders at Columbia University were flummoxed on Monday following a “confusing” and “intentionally ambiguous” announcement by President Minouche Shafik that three administrators had been removed from their posts for text messages that veered into antisemitism during a May panel on Jewish life at the university.

The statement from Shafik and Provost Angela Olinto referenced the “permanent removal” of the three — Susan Chang-Kim, vice dean and chief administrative officer; Cristen Kromm, dean of undergraduate student life; and Matthew Patashnick, associate dean for student and family support — but added that they “remain on leave.”

Eliana Goldin, a rising fourth-year political science major pursuing a dual degree at the Jewish Theological Seminary, told Jewish Insider that the wording “was intentionally left ambiguous so that students would think some sort of concrete action was being taken by the university.”

“This mirrors the lack of equivocal condemnation of the antisemitic condemnation of the antisemitic administrators,” Goldin, co-chair of Aryeh, a pro-Israel club associated with Hillel on campus, continued. “In reality, the university is trying to skirt responsibility and using bureaucratic measures to avoid taking real responsibility.”

A Columbia University spokesperson told CNN that the three officials are still employed by the university.

The controversial texts occurred during a May 31 panel titled “Jewish Life on Campus: Past, Present and Future,” and in the exchange the administrators seemed to belittle the concerns of Jewish students amid a sharp rise in antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment on campus. 

The text messages, which have since been published by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which has opened an investigation into the incident and demanded a full transcript of the texts, included a message from Chang-Kim at 1:46 p.m. reading, “Comes from such a place of privilege… hard to hear the woe is me, we need to huddle at the Kraft center. Huh??” At 2:06 p.m., Kromm wrote, “Amazing what $$$$ can do” during a speech about an October 2023 Columbia Spectator op-ed by a campus rabbi.

A fourth administrator, Dean of Columbia College Josef Sorett, also participated in the exchange but to a lesser extent. Shafik said that disciplinary action would not be taken against Sorett, as “he has apologized and taken full responsibility, committing to the work and collaboration necessary to heal the community and learn from this moment, and make sure nothing like this ever happens again.” The other three administrators were placed on leave on June 20 and were under university investigation for their participation in the exchange. 

A spokesperson for Columbia University declined to elaborate to JI on the wording of Shafik’s statement. 

“This incident revealed behavior and sentiments that were not only unprofessional, but also, disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes,” Shafik wrote on Monday. “Whether intended as such or not, these sentiments are unacceptable and deeply upsetting, conveying a lack of seriousness about the concerns and the experiences of members of our Jewish community that is antithetical to our University’s values and the standards we must uphold in our community.”

Shafik also wrote that the university “will launch a vigorous program of antisemitism and anti discrimination training for faculty and staff this fall, with related training for students under the auspices of University Life.” The university will release more information about the training throughout the summer, Olinto wrote. 

“I am encouraged that President Shafik removed the deans, but I am confused by the wording,” Noah Lederman, a rising sophomore studying philosophy and pre-law who was part of the delegation of Jewish students who attended a Congressional hearing on antisemitism at Columbia in the spring, told JI. 

In February, Lederman was heading back to his dorm from a pro-Israel demonstration, wearing a shirt with an Israeli flag, when he was “physically assaulted by a masked individual right outside of the Northwest Corner Building on Broadway and 120th Street,” he told JI at the time. 

Lederman, who is the student president of Columbia’s Meor chapter, which runs campus social events tied to study of traditional Jewish texts, added of Monday’s announcement, “This reads to me as every other email has; very performative. It sounds like this was phrased in a way to make people believe the administrators were being fired… the ambiguity is unprofessional. Be forthright about what’s going on.” 

A spokesperson for Virginia Foxx, (R-NC) who oversaw the House Committee on Education and the Workforce investigation into the texts, told the Columbia Spectator on Monday that the removals are “not enough” and that Columbia is “far from off the hook.” 

Columbia University administrators mocked concerns in the Jewish community about antisemitism and anti-Israel activity on campus, as well as accused the community of using the issue for financial and other gain, in private text messages released on Tuesday by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Some of the text messages, exchanged between administrators during a panel on Jewish life on campus, were revealed last month in a Washington Free Beacon report, which included images of the text chat captured by an onlooker. The full text chat, requested by the committee, reveals a further level of vitriol.

Speakers on the panel included former Columbia Law School Dean David Schizer, who leads the school’s antisemitism task force; Brian Cohen, the executive director of Columbia’s Kraft Center for Jewish Life; Ian Rottenberg, the school’s dean of religious life; and Rebecca Massel, a journalist with the Columbia Daily Spectator. 

The exact context of some of the messages, many of which appear to be in response to specific comments made by members of the panel, is not clear.

Susan Chang-Kim, the chief administrator of Columbia College; Cristen Kromm, dean of undergraduate student life; and Matthew Patashnick, associate dean of student and family support, have all been placed on leave following the Free Beacon’s original report regarding the messages. The texts from the officials appeared to downplay and denigrate the concerns expressed by the Jewish campus leaders and students. Josef Sorett, the dean of Columbia College, was also involved in the chain, and remains in his post.

“Comes from such a place of privilege… hard to hear the woe is me, we need to huddle at the Kraft center. Huh??” Chang texted the group.

Kromm agreed, emphasizing the needs and interests of anti-Zionist Jews. “Yup. Blind to the idea that non-Israel supporting Jews have no space to come together.”

Chang responded that she was “trying to be open minded to understand but the doors are closing.”

At the end of the panel, Kromm sent two vomiting emojis into the chat, to which Chang-Kim responded, “I’m going to throw up.”

Kromm added, “amazing what $$$$ can do.”

Kromm and Patashnick mocked at least one of the speakers for, they suggested, trying to portray himself as a “hero,” a notion that Sorett laughed at.

The administrators also dismissed the concerns raised by Columbia Hillel’s Cohen as disingenuous or a ploy for other interests.

“He knows exactly what he’s doing and how to take full advantage of this moment. Huge fundraising potential,” Patashnick said, a sentiment that was endorsed by Chang-Kim and Kromm.

“He is such a problem!!!” Chang-Kim said of one of the speakers. “Painting our students as dangerous.”

Patashnick also complained that speakers were “laying the case to expand physical space!” adding, “they will have their own dorm soon.”

Kromm lamented, “if only every identity community had these resources and support.”

The officials also dismissed the notion that Jewish students were expelled from clubs for their identities, and largely brushed off accusations that some Columbia students had expressed support for Hamas.

Chang-Kim called the panel “difficult to listen to,” with which Sorett agreed, while Kromm called one of the speakers “strategic” in his portrayal of events on campus.

Chang-Kim also appeared to question why the issue was a subject of discussion for Columbia’s board of trustees.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the chair of the House committee, condemned the officials in a statement.

“Jewish students deserve better than to have harassment and threats against them dismissed as ‘privilege,’ and Jewish faculty members deserve better than to be mocked by their colleagues,” said Foxx. “These text messages once again confirm the need for serious accountability across Columbia’s campus.”