As Israeli students departed from Harvard University last month to begin summer break, the usual sense of relief and excitement at having completed another academic year was replaced by fear and uncertainty for many.

Amid the Trump administration’s battle with Harvard — which recently escalated to stripping the university of its ability to enroll foreign students entirely — “see you in the fall” was replaced with  “I hope to see you in the fall” among international students exchanging goodbyes. 

Harvard currently hosts more than 10,000 international students, according to university data. 160 of them are from Israel. On May 22, the White House issued a policy directive meant to completely cut off the university’s ability to admit international students, the first instance of the government doing so. A federal judge has since temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from implementing the policy, although the matter will work its way through the courts. If the White House is successful, international students must transfer schools or lose their visa. 

Jewish students and faculty who conduct biomedical research at Harvard also face grim prospects, after Trump revoked billions of dollars in federal funds to the university. 

“Jewish faculty may have grants, as well, that are being cut or canceled,” said Dr. Richard Schwartzstein, a professor at Harvard Medical School who has worked to raise awareness about antisemitism in medicine, and to incorporate lessons on antisemitism into the school’s anti-racism curriculum. “That has been disconcerting for everyone, because most of us don’t believe that biomedical research has much to do with the issues that the Trump administration seems to be concerned about. It seems to be merely used as a punishment.” 

Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel, told Jewish Insider that “morale is low” among Jewish students planning a career in scientific and medical research, and among Jewish students from abroad.  

“Those are major parts of the Harvard Jewish community, and they are really suffering and concerned about their future,” said Rubenstein. 

At the same time, many Jewish students on campus expressed relief that the antisemitism and anti-Israel activism that was all too common in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks had declined significantly in the previous school year. 

Last year, for instance, hundreds of students and faculty members walked out of the school’s main commencement ceremony in solidarity with 13 anti-Israel student protesters who were denied degrees as a result of their involvement in the school’s illegal encampment that spring.

But last week, Harvard’s 374th Commencement appeared to run smoothly, with just a few subdued reminders of the campus chaos that has been wrought by Israel’s war with Hamas. 

Harvard’s president, Alan Garber — booed at last year’s ceremony over his decision to not allow the demonstrators to graduate — received a standing ovation this year. A banner reading “There Are No Universities Left in Gaza” was briefly unfurled on the steps of the main library before being confiscated by campus police, the Harvard Crimson reported. Another, reading “Harvard Divest From Genocide in Gaza,” was dropped from a window of Sever Hall and taken down minutes later.

Alex Friedman, who just finished his second year at Harvard Law School, said he left Cambridge last month feeling “cautiously optimistic” about the direction in which the university is moving.

“Harvard is moving very quickly and aggressively to eliminate certain sources of anti-Israel bias on campus,” said Jesse Fried, a law school professor at Harvard. “If the Trump administration were not breathing down their neck, I believe progress would have been much slower.” 

“There’s no question that campus was definitely quieter this year than in the previous year. That year was extraordinary, the outburst of antisemitism and anti-Israel activity on campus,” Friedman told JI last week. “The magnitude and consistency were definitely not the same. That, of course, doesn’t mean that the underlying issues have been solved. Antisemitism at Harvard has been a problem for decades, and it’s not going away overnight.”

Jesse Fried, a law school professor at Harvard, attributed to the change to a combination of “natural loss of energy” as students got bored of the topic, and “students’ sense that, ‘Okay, I could get into trouble.’” 

Changes on campus were implemented at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year, when Joe Biden was still president, Fried said, noting that Harvard’s progress in addressing antisemitism and students’ anti-Israel bias was not only a result of pressure from Trump. But once Trump came into office and began threatening Harvard — and then implementing policies that directly targeted the Ivy League university — change happened more quickly, Fried observed.

“Harvard is moving very quickly and aggressively to eliminate certain sources of anti-Israel bias on campus,” Fried said. “If the Trump administration were not breathing down their neck, I believe progress would have been much slower.” 

Last month, under pressure from Trump, Harvard released a long-delayed report on campus antisemitism, which found that the university had “severe problems” in its handling of the issue. In March, before any funding had been revoked, Harvard paused a controversial partnership with a Palestinian university and let go leaders of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies. 

Harvard’s Jewish community is “split” on how Trump is handling the problem, Fried said, although Trump’s revocation of federal research funding and his threat to bar international students from the university have upset many in the Jewish community. 

“There might be some people who are supportive of what Trump is doing, because they see it as a necessary evil: ‘You have to do this in order to fix Harvard,’” said Fried. “But most of the Jewish community is appalled by what he’s doing and the tactics he’s using.”

Rubenstein echoed that the Jewish community has mixed reactions to Trump’s crackdowns. “Federal engagement has been helpful when it’s focused, measured and proportionate,” he said. “The threat of federal funding cuts was important in facilitating different actions throughout the university. For example, Harvard’s counsel was explicit that it wanted to settle the Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964] lawsuits before Trump’s inauguration.” 

Before the government’s actions against Harvard escalated, aspects of the crackdown appeared to address antisemitism that had been pervasive on campus even before the Oct. 7 attacks, according to Rubenstein. 

“Every time there’s an action taken by the Trump administration, an immediate email is sent discussing how Harvard will respond and offering support to students,” said Alex Friedman, who just finished his second year at Harvard Law School. “People are focusing on, ‘Oh, Harvard’s doing great. They’re really standing up,’ and understandably so. But this also shows that Harvard could have done that 18 months ago, after Oct. 7, when they were faced with what was happening on campus and what they were facing in the world, and yet they chose not to.” 

“I’ve heard from faculty that they always felt Harvard has been one settlement away from the antisemitism policy we wanted,” Rubenstein said, “so they are grateful for the settlement [in January] which led to the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism” as part of a resolution to two Title VI lawsuits. 

Even as Harvard has made progress in tackling antisemitism, the university’s blundering response in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks still stings for many Jewish Harvard affiliates, particularly when viewed in comparison to the urgency with which Harvard has responded to Trump’s policies. 

“Every time there’s an action taken by the Trump administration, an immediate email is sent discussing how Harvard will respond and offering support to students,” said Friedman, the Harvard Law student. “People are focusing on, ‘Oh, Harvard’s doing great. They’re really standing up,’ and understandably so. But this also shows that Harvard could have done that 18 months ago, after Oct. 7, when they were faced with what was happening on campus and what they were facing in the world, and yet they chose not to.” 

Looking ahead to the fall, Jewish leaders at Harvard expressed hope that their focus can return to strengthening Jewish life.

Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who leads the campus Chabad, said he intends to stay away from the “politics of the moment” and instead “focus on building and nurturing Jewish life and community … [which] we expect to continue to grow from strength-to-strength.” 

Rubenstein expects “the disproportionate focus on Israel will really dissipate on campus when there’s peace in Israel, the hostages are returned, please God, and Hamas is no longer a threat in the Gaza Strip.”

Still, he predicts “several years of work and ongoing vigilance from the Jewish community, as antisemitism is ascendant in many corners where we didn’t used to think we had to combat it.”

And campus Jewish leaders are cautiously optimistic that the work won’t fall as heavily on them. 

“What we hear consistently from Jewish students is by far the most important thing for their experience of being Jewish in college is the vibrancy of their Jewish community — the Shabbat dinners, friendship, trust, song, laughter. That need is not going anywhere,” Rubenstein said. 

“That need is only growing, and in many ways we’ve lost track of it over the past year as we’ve turned attention to governance of the university, faculty politics and disciplinary procedures,” he continued. “That’s important, but our community needs to recommit to resources for the lives of Jewish students.” 

Good Friday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we cover comments by Zohran Mamdani at last night’s UJA-Federation of New York town hall with the leading Democratic candidates in New York City’s mayoral primary and report on the Trump administration’s move to strip Harvard University of its ability to enroll foreign students. In the aftermath of Wednesday’s deadly shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, we talk to friends of the victims, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, and report on comments by pro-Israel leaders connecting the murder to anti-Israel advocacy on the political extremes and highlight a statement by 42 Jewish organizations urging additional action from the federal government to address antisemitism. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Sen. John Cornyn, Rep. Josh Gottheimer and Ambassador Yechiel Leiter.

Ed. note: In honor of Memorial Day on Monday, the next edition of the Daily Kickoff will arrive on Tuesday, May 27.

What We’re Watching

• The fifth round of nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran will take place today in Rome. Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Mossad Director David Barnea are also set to meet with Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff in Rome to coordinate Israel’s views with the U.S.
• Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) will deliver the keynote address at the 51st commencement ceremony of Touro’s Lander Colleges on Sunday at Lincoln Center.

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD WITH JOSH KRAUSHAAR

In a series of upcoming Democratic primaries, Jewish and pro-Israel groups are deciding whether to press their political case and go on offense behind stalwart allies — or take a more cautious approach, focused on preventing candidates that are downright hostile to Jewish concerns from emerging as nominees, Jewish Insider Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar writes. 

It’s an unusual place to be in. Until recently, most Democratic candidates were reliably attuned to Jewish communal interests, and there wasn’t much of a need for groups to play in primaries, except in rare situations. That changed with the emergence of the anti-Israel Squad of far-left Democrats, which led pro-Israel Democratic groups like DMFI to step up and support mainstream candidates, and pushed AIPAC to launch a super PAC to become much more involved in direct political engagement. 

Now, even the issue of fighting or speaking out against antisemitism — far from the more heated debate over Israel policy — is no longer a consensus issue for Democrats. Senate Democrats (when in charge of the upper chamber) hesitated to hold hearings on campus antisemitism, a leading candidate for mayor of New York City declined to sign onto a legislative resolution commemorating the Holocaust and an increasingly credible New Jersey gubernatorial candidate has declined to distance himself from Louis Farrakhan. 

What was once the extreme has now come uncomfortably close to the Democratic mainstream. The urgency of ensuring most candidates condemn antisemitism and anti-Israel radicalism wherever it rears its ugly head was made clear after the horrific murder on Wednesday night of two Israeli Embassy employees by a terrorist with a radical, anti-Israel background. Far too often, the growing number of threats to Jews along with the rise of anti-Israel sloganeering featuring antisemitic hate or adoption of terrorist symbols has been met with a benign acceptance. 

That’s made the tactical decisions from outside Jewish and pro-Israel groups involved in politics a lot more significant. There are a number of Democratic primaries coming up featuring a stalwart ally of the Jewish community, an anti-Israel candidate with checkered history on antisemitism and a middle-of-the-road candidate whose record on these issues is respectable, but not always reliable.

Take next month’s New Jersey governor’s primary. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), seen as the front-runner, has compiled a generally pro-Israel record in Congress but hasn’t stuck her neck out as much as her Democratic colleague, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ). Gottheimer has yet to catch momentum in the crowded primary, and one of the other credible challengers is Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, whose condemnation of Israel’s war in Gaza and praise for Farrakhan is viewed as beyond the pale.

At a certain point, do Jewish groups rally behind the center-left front-runner to block the more problematic candidate, or stick with the most supportive candidate?

The New York City mayoral primary next month provides another key test. State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani is the favorite of the DSA base, and thanks to strong support from that far-left faction, is polling in second place. But due to his high profile and moderate pro-Israel message, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo looks like the clear front-runner — even as Jewish voters haven’t yet consolidated behind him in the crowded field.

To Cuomo’s benefit, New York City mayoral primaries have a ranked-choice system that prevents a candidate with a small but passionate base from winning a small plurality in a crowded field. In theory, that should help Cuomo. But as the leading moderate candidate in the race, he could also benefit from consolidating the centrist vote, which is still up for grabs.

Within the sizable Jewish constituency in New York City, Cuomo faces pushback from some Orthodox voters still angry about the then-governor’s lockdowns and expansive COVID-19 restrictions during the pandemic, making his pitch in support of Israel and against antisemitism far from a slam dunk in certain circles. His resignation from the governorship amid allegations of sexual misconduct is also a factor for some Jewish voters, as well. 

But if pro-Israel, Jewish voters divide their support among other candidates, it could help Mamdani, whose record is the least palatable to these same constituents. 

The fact that many Democrats in New Jersey and New York City, two places with among the largest concentrations of Jewish voters in the Diaspora, are not automatically stalwart allies of mainstream Jewish interests, is itself a sign of the changing political times and the evolving nature of the Democratic Party. It may also explain why there appears to be more of an effort to play defense — a focus on blocking the most objectionable candidates from winning high office — rather than hoping for the best, and seeing where the chips fall. 

TYING IT TOGETHER

Pro-Israel leaders link anti-Israel advocacy to fatal shooting

Pro-Israel leaders and lawmakers in the United States on Thursday connected the killing of two Israeli Embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington to the anti-Israel advocacy seen on the political extremes throughout the country since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, characterizing it as a culmination of such rhetoric and, in some cases, the failure of some politicians to denounce it, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod and Emily Jacobs report.

What they’re saying: Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) told Jewish Insider that the attack should be a signal to the left that it needs to rethink its rhetoric on Israel and Zionism. He compared the anti-Israel movement in the United States to a “cult” that has been stoked online and is using inherently violent slogans while its members “try to hide behind this idea that it’s free speech to intimidate and terrorize members of the Jewish community.” A coalition of 42 Jewish organizations, in a statement, described the murders as “the direct consequence of rising antisemitic incitement in places such as college campuses, city council meetings, and social media that has normalized hate and emboldened those who wish to do harm.”

Read the full story here.

Hill talk: Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) called on the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate the political organizations that Elias Rodriguez, the suspect in the shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum, claims to be an active member of, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports. 

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fondly remembered

Israeli Embassy victims remembered as ‘the perfect diplomat’ and ‘committed to peace’

“The perfect diplomat.” That’s how a former colleague and friend of Yaron Lischinsky remembered him on Thursday, the day after the Israeli Embassy staff member was shot dead alongside his girlfriend, Sarah Milgrim, outside of the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington as the couple was leaving an event for young diplomats and Jewish professionals hosted by the American Jewish Committee. “He was diligent and went to D.C. to pursue his dream,” Klil, who interned with Lischinsky, 29, at the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy and Foreign Relations at Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel, in 2020 and requested to be identified only by her first name, told Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen. 

Cherry blossoms: The pair mostly lost touch after the internship, when Lischinsky moved to Washington to work at the Israeli Embassy after pursuing a masters’ degree at Reichman. But their interest in Japan kept the two connected via social media, where they would share cherry blossom photos — Lischinsky’s came each spring when the Japanese trees bloomed on the Tidal Basin in Washington. Klil shared her cherry blossom photos from London, where she was living after the internship. “We had a shared experience around that,” she said.  Recently, Lischinsky’s Instagram posts featured more than cherry blossoms. Klil took note of the photos he had been posting, posing together with Milgrim. The couple met while both working at the embassy. 

Remembering Milgrim: Milgrim, 26, was remembered by a former colleague and friend as “bright, helpful, smart and passionate.” “Sarah was committed to working towards peace,” said Jake Shapiro, who worked with Milgrim in 2022-23 at Teach2Peace, an organization dedicated to building peace between Palestinians and Israelis. “One small bright spot in all of this is seeing both Israelis and Palestinians that knew Sarah sending their condolences and remembering her together,” Shapiro told JI. That gives him hope that a “more peaceful reality is possible.” 

Read the full story here.

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COMMUNITY CALL

Jewish community urges additional action from federal government following D.C. shootings

A coalition of 42 Jewish organizations issued a joint statement on Thursday urging additional action from the federal government to address antisemitism in the United States following the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, and particularly expanded funding for a variety of programs to protect the Jewish community, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

What they’re asking for: The demands include a call to massively expand funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program to $1 billion, from its current level of $274.5 million. The groups also called for additional funding for security at Jewish institutions, for the FBI to expand its intelligence operations and counter-domestic terrorism operations and for local law enforcement to be empowered to protect Jewish establishments. And they called for the federal government to “aggressively prosecute hate crimes and extremist violence” and hold websites accountable for amplification of antisemitic hate, glorification of terrorism, extremism, disinformation, and incitement.” 

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UNSAID BUT UNDERSTOOD

Mamdani declines to support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state

Zohran Mamdani, a leading Democratic candidate in New York City’s June mayoral primary, declined to say whether he believes Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state, when pressed to confirm his view during a town hall on Thursday night hosted by the UJA-Federation of New York in Manhattan, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.  

Between the lines: “I believe Israel has a right to exist and it has a right to exist also with equal rights for all,” Mamdani said in his carefully worded response to a question posed by JI’s editor-in-chief, Josh Kraushaar, who co-moderated the event. Despite some initial resistance to addressing such questions earlier in his campaign, Mamdani, a Queens state assemblyman and a fierce critic of Israel, has in recent weeks acknowledged Israel has a right to exist. But his remarks on the matter have never recognized a Jewish state, an ambiguity he was forced to confront at the forum — where he avoided providing a direct answer.

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DEFINITION DYNAMICS

Following shooting, Gottheimer urges New Jersey governor candidates to support IHRA bill

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), a candidate for governor of New Jersey, challenged his fellow candidates to pledge to sign bipartisan state legislation to codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism in response to the murder of two Israeli Embassy officials outside the Jewish museum in Washington, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Background: That legislation has become a major dividing line in the gubernatorial race — Gottheimer and Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) support it, while Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop opposes it, but said recently he would not veto it. Other candidates did not respond to requests for comment on the issue earlier this year. Critics of the legislation say that the IHRA definition — which identifies some criticism of Israel as antisemitic — violates free speech protections. “As Governor, I’ll immediately sign New Jersey’s IHRA bill into law, and I’ll push to dismantle antisemitism and hate in any form whenever it rears its ugly head,” Gottheimer said.

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EDUCATION ESCALATION

Trump escalates war on Harvard by barring all foreign students

The Trump administration on Thursday stripped Harvard University of its ability to enroll foreign students, citing Harvard’s collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party, in what the Department of Homeland Security described as an act of accountability for the university “fostering violence, antisemitism and pro-terrorist conduct from students on its campus.” The move is an escalation in President Donald Trump’s battle with Harvard, just one front in his war with elite higher education institutions. But this is the first instance of the White House completely cutting off a university’s ability to admit international students, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Israelis on campus: Harvard currently hosts more than 10,000 international students, according to university data, 160 of whom are from Israel. Current students must transfer schools or lose their visa. Harvard Hillel’s executive director, Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, expressed concern about the impact on Israeli students at Harvard. “The current, escalating federal assault against Harvard — shuttering apolitical, life-saving research; threatening the university’s tax-exempt status; and revoking all student visas, including those of Israeli students who are proud veterans of the Israel Defense Forces and forceful advocates for Israel on campus — is neither focused nor measured, and stands to substantially harm the very Jewish students and scholars it purports to protect,” Rubenstein told JI. 

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Worthy Reads

Today’s Blood Libel: Bari Weiss draws a line in The Free Press between anti-Israel vitriol that has pervaded protests, universities and social media in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks and the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers on Wednesday. “Venomous, untrue statements about Israel, its supporters, and the war against Hamas in Gaza chipped away at the old taboo against open antisemitism in America. Constant demonization of American Jews and Zionists is how a democratic state and its supporters have been made into targets. It is how the ‘permission structure’ for violence against Jews in America has been erected. Growing up, learning about Simon of Trent or other medieval blood libels, I wondered how something so unnatural, so deranged, could ever happen. How lies could spread so far, transmogrify into a movement, infect culture so comprehensively, and engender deadly action. … How can anyone honest with themselves not draw a connection between a culture that says Zionists are antihumans — even Nazis themselves — and the terrorists now attacking Jews across the globe?” [TheFreePress]

Israeli Resilience: Tablet’s Armin Rosen writes about the resilience of the Israeli diplomatic corps: “In my experience the diplomats of the Jewish state are among the least Israeli of Israelis. They are restrained and secular and quiet and usually know how to dress themselves; they speak with every possible accent, and it’s hard to imagine them whacking at a matkot ball, fighting their way onto a bus, or davening during halftime of a basketball game. They are the normal and cosmopolitan faces of a rambunctious and inherently tribal country. But it is the tension between the rigors of diplomacy and the character of their homeland that also makes them deeply Israeli: whatever their religious practice and whatever their politics, Israeli diplomats are inevitably Jews among the nations, a tiny sub-tribe that serves as the official foreign representation of the world’s only Jewish state, the first in 2,000 years and one of the most hated and lied-about countries in the entire history of humankind. To carry out this mission for fairly low pay on behalf of an often-dysfunctional foreign ministry, in places far from home where spies and activists and journalists and local Jews are circling you or even actively targeting you at any given moment, requires a typically Israeli mix of creativity, resourcefulness, and optimism” [Tablet]

Yaron the Healer: Mariam Wahba, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, eulogizes her friend Yaron Lischinsky, one of the victims of Wednesday night’s shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum, in The Free Press. “He told me how his family lived in Israel before they moved to Germany, about moving back when he was 16, and knowing, early and without hesitation, that he wanted to be a diplomat and peacemaker. Language came easily to him: Hebrew, Japanese, English, and of course, his native German. He moved through the world with care and thoughtfulness, as if everyone and everything he touched might break. … Yaron was the kind of person who knew the exact year of the First Council of Nicaea and never made you feel small for getting it wrong. His murder leaves a wound in many hearts, one that may never fully heal, for he was the healer. Yaron was sharp, but more importantly, he was kind. He didn’t just want to understand the world. He wanted to mend it. Quietly and gently. Thoughtfully. Steadily.” [TheFreePress]

Bibi, the Bit Player: The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg argues that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put too much faith in a second Trump term and has found himself sidelined from the president’s agenda. “By revealing Netanyahu to be a bit player, rather than an elite operator, Trump has not just put the Israeli leader in his place. He has exploded Netanyahu’s carefully cultivated political persona — an act as damaging to Netanyahu’s standing as the Hamas attack on October 7. Worse than making Netanyahu look foolish, Trump has made him look irrelevant. He is not Trump’s partner, but rather his mark. In Israeli parlance, the prime minister is a freier — a sucker. The third-rate pro-government propagandists on Channel 14 might not have seen this coming, but Netanyahu should have. His dark worldview is premised on the pessimistic presumption that the world will turn on the Jews if given the chance, which is why the Israeli leader has long prized hard power over diplomatic understandings. Even if Trump wasn’t such an unreliable figure, trusting him should have gone against all of Netanyahu’s instincts.” [TheAtlantic]

Word on the Street

Elias Rodriguez, the suspected gunman in the deadly shooting of two Israeli Embassy employees in Washington on Wednesday, was charged with two counts of murder and other federal crimes. Interim U.S. Attorney in Washington Jeanine Pirro said investigators are continuing to investigate the attack as a hate crime and terrorism and additional charges may be brought…

The New York Times drew parallels between Wednesday night’s killing of two Israeli Embassy employees in Washington and another murder of an Israeli diplomat in the Washington area in 1973, a case which was never solved…

Scripps News published archive footage from 2018 from an interview it conducted with Elias Rodriguez, the suspected gunman in the Wednesday night shooting of Israeli Embassy employees, during a protest in Chicago where he identified himself as a member of ANSWER Chicago. ANSWER has held protests against the Israeli war in Gaza, which the organization calls a genocide…

The shooting has stoked safety fears among Israelis and Jews amid a spike in global antisemitism, The Wall Street Journal reports… 

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a briefing that President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “have a good relationship, one that’s built on transparency and trust.” Leavitt said the president “has made it very clear to not just Prime Minister Netanyahu, but also the world, that he wants to see a deal with Iran struck if one can be struck.”…

The Supreme Court, in a 4-4 decision, rejected an Oklahoma Catholic school‘s bid to receive public funds as a religious charter school; the deadlocked ruling lets stand an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision barring the creation of such a charter school. The Orthodox Union had filed a brief in support of the school and said that a favorable ruling would make Jewish education more accessible…

A federal judge in Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration and Education Secretary Linda McMahon from dismantling the Department of Education and ordering them to reinstate department employees who had been fired. The administration said it will challenge the judge’s ruling “on an emergency basis”…

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights announced on Thursday that Columbia University violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by “acting with deliberate indifference towards student-on-student harassment of Jewish students from October 7, 2023, through the present.” Anthony Archeval, acting director of the Office for Civil Rights at HHS, said in a statement, “We encourage Columbia University to work with us to come to an agreement that reflects meaningful changes that will truly protect Jewish students.”…

The Wall Street Journal highlights what it called the “extraordinary blurring of government negotiations and private business dealings” as Zach Witkoff, son of Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, continues to invoke his father’s work and White House connections as he travels the world pursuing deals for his cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial…

Netanyahu on Thursday appointed Maj. Gen. David Zini as the next Shin Bet chief, despite a court ruling that his firing of the previous chief, Ronen Bar, and the determination of the attorney general that the move represented a conflict of interest in light of the agency’s ongoing investigation into Netanyahu’s aides’s ties to Qatar…

The Israeli airstrike that targeted Mohammed Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in Gaza, earlier this month, also reportedly killed several other high-ranking Hamas operatives as they gathered for a meeting…

Iran threatened to “implement special measures” to protect its nuclear facilities and materials if Israeli threats of a strike persist…

A failed Houthi attempt to launch a missile from the vicinity of Sana’a airport caused an explosion this morning, Muammar al-Iryani, Yemen’s information minister, said… 

Globes reports that in closed meetings with Israeli officials, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee conveyed concerns from Washington on several economic issues including initiatives that would affect U.S. energy giant Chevron and streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+…

Pic of the Day

Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. (right), on Thursday stands outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, where two staff members of the Israeli Embassy were killed in a terror attack the night before. With him are (from left) Reps. Brad Schneider (D-IL), Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL).

Birthdays

Actor, voice actor and stand-up comedian sometimes referred to as “Yid Vicious,” Bobby Slayton turns 70 on Sunday…

FRIDAY: Emeritus professor of physics and the history of science at Harvard, Gerald James Holton turns 103… Businessman and attorney, he acquired and rebuilt The Forge restaurant in Miami Beach, Alvin Malnik turns 92… Businessman, optometrist, inventor and philanthropist, Dr. Herbert A. Wertheim turns 86… Former dean of the Yale School of Architecture and founder of an eponymous architecture firm, Robert A. M. Stern turns 86… Founder and chairman of law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, leading DC super-lobbyist but based in Denver and long-time proponent of the U.S.-Israel relationship, Norman Brownstein turns 82… British fashion retailer and promoter of tennis in Israel, he is the founder, chairman and CEO of three international clothing lines including the French Connection, Great Plains and Toast brands, Stephen Marks turns 79… Senior counsel at Cozen O’Connor, focused on election law, he was in the inaugural class of Yeshiva University’s Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, Jerry H. Goldfeder turns 78… Award-winning television writer and playwright, Stephanie Liss turns 75… Israeli diplomat, he served as Israel’s ambassador to Nigeria and as consul general of Israel to Philadelphia, Uriel Palti turns 71… Editor-in-chief of a book on end-of-life stories, she is a special events advisor to The Israel Project, Catherine Zacks Gildenhorn… Israeli businessman with holdings in real estate, construction, energy, hotels and media, Ofer Nimrodi turns 68… President of Newton, Mass.-based Liberty Companies, Andrew M. Cable turns 68… Best-selling author and journalist, whose works include “Tuesdays with Morrie,” he has sold over 42 million books, Mitch Albom turns 67… Resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Reuel Marc Gerecht… Chairman of the board of the Irvine, Calif.-based Ayn Rand Institute, Yaron Brook turns 64… Actor, comedian, writer, producer and musician, H. Jon Benjamin turns 59… Former ski instructor, ordained by HUC-JIR in 1998, now rabbi of the Community Synagogue of Rye (N.Y.), Daniel B. Gropper… Film and television director, Nanette Burstein turns 55… Australian cosmetics entrepreneur, now living in NYC, she is known as the “Lipstick Queen,” Poppy Cybele King turns 53… Prominent NYC matrimonial law attorney, she is the daughter of TV journalist Jeff Greenfield, Casey Greenfield turns 52… Member of the Knesset for the New Hope party, she previously served as Israel’s minister of education, Yifat Shasha-Biton turns 52… Retired attorney, now a YouTuber, David Freiheit turns 46… Executive director of the Singer Family Charitable Foundation, Dylan Tatz… Tech, cyber and disinformation reporter for Haaretz, Omer Benjakob… Professional golfer on the LPGA Tour, Morgan Pressel turns 37… Senior manager of brand and product strategy at GLG, Andrea M. Hiller Tenenboym…

SATURDAY: Co-founder of the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, he is featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers,” Herbert Wachtell turns 93… Professor emeritus of statistics and biomedical data science at Stanford, Bradley Efron turns 87… Biographer of religious, business and political figures, Deborah Hart Strober turns 85… Born Robert Allen Zimmerman, his Hebrew name is Shabsi Zissel, he is one of the most influential singer-songwriters of his generation, Bob Dylan turns 84… Social media and Internet marketing consultant, Israel Sushman turns 77… Member of Congress since 2007 (D-TN-9), he is Tennessee’s first Jewish congressman, Steve Cohen turns 76… Former director of planned giving at American Society for Yad Vashem, Robert Christopher Morton turns 74… Former Mexican secretary of foreign affairs, he is the author of more than a dozen books, Jorge Castañeda Gutman turns 72… President of the Israel ParaSport Center in Ramat Gan and vice chair of Birthright Israel Foundation, Lori Ann Komisar… First-ever Jewish member of the parliament in Finland, he was elected in 1979 and continues to serve, Ben Zyskowicz turns 71… Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer, Michael Chabon turns 62… U.S. ambassador to Singapore during the Obama administration, he is now the managing director and general counsel of KraneShares, David Adelman turns 61… Senior advisor at the MIT Center for Constructive Communication, Debby Goldberg… Ukrainian businessman, patron of the Jewish community in Ukraine, collector of modern and contemporary art, Gennadii Korban turns 55… Film director, in 2019 he became the second-ever Israeli to win an Academy Award, Guy Nattiv turns 52… Swedish criminal defense lawyer, author and fashion model, Jens Jacob Lapidus turns 51… Actor, who starred in the HBO original series “How to Make It in America,” Bryan Greenberg turns 47… Emmy Award-winning host of “Serving Up Science” at PBS Digital Studios, Sheril Kirshenbaum turns 45… EVP and chief of staff at The National September 11 Memorial and Museum, Benjamin E. Milakofsky… Synchronized swimmer who represented Israel at the 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics, Anastasia Gloushkov Leventhal turns 40… Travel blogger who has visited 197 countries, Drew “Binsky” Goldberg turns 34… Member of the Iowa House of Representatives since 2023, Adam Zabner turns 26… Social media influencer and activist, Emily Austin turns 24…

SUNDAY: Academy Award-winning film producer and director, responsible for 58 major motion pictures, Irwin Winkler turns 94… Holocaust survivor as a young child, he is a professor emeritus of physics and chemistry at Brooklyn College, Micha Tomkiewicz turns 86… Co-founder of the clothing manufacturer, Calvin Klein Inc., which he formed with his childhood friend Calvin Klein, he is also a former horse racing industry executive, Barry K. Schwartz turns 83… Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 1986, he is now on senior status, Douglas H. Ginsburg turns 79… British journalist, editor and author, he is a past VP of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Alex Brummer turns 76… Of counsel in the Chicago office of Saul Ewing, Joel M. Hurwitz turns 74… Screenwriter, producer and film director, best known for his work on the “Back to the Future” franchise, Bob Gale turns 74… Los Angeles area resident, Robin Myrne Kramer… Retired CEO of Denver’s Rose Medical Center after 21 years, he is now the CEO of Velocity Healthcare Consultants, Kenneth Feiler… Israeli actress, Rachel “Chelli” Goldenberg turns 71… Professor of history at Fordham University, Doron Ben-Atar turns 68… President of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, Ralph Friedländer turns 66… U.S. senator (D-MN), Amy Klobuchar turns 65… Senior government relations counsel in the D.C. office of Kelley Drye & Warren, Laurie Rubiner… Israel’s ambassador to Lithuania from 2020 until 2022, Yossi Avni-Levy turns 63… Actor, producer, director and writer, Joseph D. Reitman turns 57… Cape Town, South Africa, native, tech entrepreneur and investor, he was the original COO of PayPal and founder/CEO of Yammer, David Oliver Sacks turns 53… Member of the Australian Parliament since 2016, Julian Leeser turns 49… Former Minister of Diaspora Affairs, she is the first Haredi woman to serve as an Israeli cabinet minister, Omer Yankelevich turns 47… Senior political reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Greg Bluestein… COO at Maryland-based HealthSource Distributors, Marc D. Loeb… Comedian, actor and writer, Barry Rothbart turns 42… One of the U.S.’ first radiology extenders at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Orli Novick… Senior communications manager at Kaplan, Inc., Alison Kurtzman… Former MLB pitcher, he had two effective appearances for Team Israel at the 2017 World Baseball Classic qualifiers, Ryan Sherriff turns 35… Olympic Gold medalist in gymnastics at the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics, Alexandra Rose “Aly” Raisman turns 31… Laura Goldman…

The Trump administration on Thursday stripped Harvard University of its ability to enroll foreign students, citing Harvard’s collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party, in what the Department of Homeland Security described as an act of accountability for the university “fostering violence, antisemitism and pro-terrorist conduct from students on its campus.” 

The move is an escalation in President Donald Trump’s battle with Harvard, just one front in his war with elite higher education institutions. He has already revoked billions of dollars in federal funding from Harvard, as well as several other universities. Trump has also sought the deportation of hundreds of foreign students on college campuses over their alleged support for terrorism and antisemitism.

But this is the first instance of the White House completely cutting off a university’s ability to admit international students. Harvard currently hosts more than 10,000 international students, according to university data. 160 of them are from Israel. Current students must transfer schools or lose their visa. 

“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement. 

Last month, Noem asked Harvard to provide data on the disciplinary records of foreign students on campus and their record of participating in protests. Noem said the information shared by Harvard in response was “insufficient.” 

Harvard Hillel’s executive director, Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, expressed concern about the impact on Israeli students at Harvard.

“The current, escalating federal assault against Harvard — shuttering apolitical, life-saving research; threatening the university’s tax-exempt status; and revoking all student visas, including those of Israeli students who are proud veterans of the Israel Defense Forces and forceful advocates for Israel on campus — is neither focused nor measured, and stands to substantially harm the very Jewish students and scholars it purports to protect,” Rubenstein told Jewish Insider. 

A university spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Barak Sella, an Israeli educator and researcher who earned a master’s degree from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2024, said the action will “be detrimental for the entire higher education system.”

“Never did any Jewish [organization] ask to ban the ability to accept foreign students, especially when a lot of the antisemitism is perpetrated by American citizens — aka the shooting last night,” Sella told JI, referring to the killing of two Israeli Embassy officials outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. The alleged perpetrator is an American citizen. 

Harvard is likely to take legal action in response, according to The Crimson. 

Jewish Insider reporter Haley Cohen contributed to this report. 

In his second consecutive day of hearings on Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that he expects that additional Arab countries will join the Abraham Accords by the end of the year, if not earlier.

“We do have an Abraham Accords office that is actively working to identify a number of countries who have lined up and already I think we may have good news, certainly before the end of this year, of a number of more countries that are willing to join that alliance,” Rubio said a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday.

The comments are consistent with other recent remarks by President Donald Trump and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Rubio added that the administration is currently working on selecting an ambassador for the Abraham Accords, as required under law, to submit for congressional confirmation.

He said that there is “still a willingness” in Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel, but “certain conditions are impediments,” including the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing war.

Rubio’s testimony largely reinforced and added on his comments the day before, on issues including Iran and Syria.

He again insisted that all elements of the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Witkoff, are unified behind the position that Iran cannot be allowed to maintain its capacity to enrich uranium.

And he affirmed that U.S. law requires that any deal with Iran be submitted to Congress for review and approval, noting that he had been in Congress when that law was passed.

At an afternoon hearing with the House Appropriations Committee, Rubio again said that sanctions relating to Iranian proxy terrorism or other malign activities will not be impacted by a nuclear deal that does not address those subjects. Republicans in the past have questioned the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear sanctions, particularly as part of the original 2015 nuclear deal, which took a similar approach. And they’ve argued that any sanctions relief would allow Iran to expand its support for regional terrorism.

Rubio said the administration is continuing to ramp up sanctions on Iran, and said that European parties to the deal are “on the verge” of implementing snapback sanctions on Iran. He said that the administration would support legislation to implement additional sanctions on Iran’s oil sector.

He denied knowledge of a Tuesday leak by administration officials that Israel was making plans to strike Iran’s nuclear program, adding, “I also don’t think it’s a mystery, though … that Israel has made clear that they retain the option of action to limit Iran from ever gaining a nuclear capability.”

Expanding on comments he made the day before, Rubio said that he favors moving the mission of U.S. security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian territories under the authority of the U.S. ambassador to Israel so that it can be a better-integrated part of the U.S.’ Israel policy. But he vowed that the core function of the office will continue.

Rubio denied reports of talks between the United States and Saudi Arabia about potential nuclear cooperation outside of a “gold standard” deal, which would include banning domestic enrichment.

The secretary of state reiterated comments about the critical necessity of providing sanctions relief to Syria to help contribute to stability, but he said that continued sanctions relief “does have to be conditioned on them continuing to live by the commitments” that the Syrian government has made verbally, including to combat extremism, prevent Syria from becoming a launchpad for attacks on Israel and form a government that represents, includes and protects ethnic and religious diversity.

He indicated that the U.S. is not actively working to shut down the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, but pledged that the United States will not be providing any further aid to or through that organization and will use its power and funding to look for alternatives.

He said it will be up to other countries whether they continue working with UNRWA, though he noted that the U.S. has been the agency’s largest donor.

Rubio said that he would be supportive, in concept, of legislation to expand current U.S. anti-boycott laws to include compulsory boycotts imposed by international organizations. That legislation was pulled from a House floor vote after right-wing lawmakers falsely claimed it would ban U.S. citizens from boycotting Israel.

Pushing back on calls for the U.S. to withhold weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates over its support for one of the parties involved in the Sudanese Civil War that the U.S. has found is committing genocide, Rubio said that the U.S. is not fully in alignment with the UAE but argued that it’s critical for the U.S. to continue engaging with and maintain a strong relationship with the UAE for its broader foreign policy goals in the Middle East.

He said that maintaining such a relationship and expanding the U.S.’ diplomatic and economic relationship with Abraham Accords countries is also important to ensuring that the Accords continue to be successful.

Rubio said that the State Department had approved restarting aid programs for Jordan that remained frozen — though he noted most were initially exempted from the administration’s blanket freeze. He acknowledged that the frozen programs had been “a source of frustration for [Jordan], and frankly for me.” He continued, “Ultimately, we’re going to get all those programs online, if they’re not online already.”

In a heated back-and-forth with Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who was brandishing a pocket Constitution, Rubio again defended the administration’s policy of revoking student visas from individuals accused of involvement in anti-Israel activity on college campuses, saying that they are coming to the United States to “tear this country [apart]” and “stir up problems on our campuses.”

Addressing the case of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University graduate student that supporters have said was detained solely for writing an op-ed in a student newspaper criticizing Israel, Rubio claimed the situation is not as has been represented. “Those are her lawyers’ claims and your claims, those are not the facts,” Rubio said.

Asked by Jayapal about a comment — “Jews are untrustworthy and a dangerous group” — made by an Afrikaner refugee recently admitted to the United States from South Africa, Rubio said that he would “look forward to revoking the visas of any lunatics you can identify.”

But when presented with the fact that the individual in question was admitted as a refugee, not on a visa, Rubio said that refugee admissions are “a totally different process,” adding “student visas are a privilege.”

Good Tuesday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff we interview religious freedom experts about the significance of President Donald Trump’s visit to the UAE’s Abrahamic Family House last Friday, and speak with strategists about the state of the Illinois Senate race following Rep. Lauren Underwood’s announcement that she will not be running. We also report on the threat by France, the U.K. and Canada to impose sanctions on Israel and a letter by a group of top House Republicans to Harvard University, questioning alleged connections to Iran and China. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Ronald Lauder, Sydney Altfield and Omer Shem Tov.

What We’re Watching

• NORPAC’s annual mission to Washington is bringing 1,000 allies to Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and John Fetterman (D-PA) will be speaking to attendees as part of the morning session.
• The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a hearing with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the State Department’s 2026 budget request. Rubio will also attend a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs subcommittee on the president’s 2026 budget request for the State Department.
• The Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs will hold a hearing on the Department of Homeland Security’s 2026 budget request with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
• Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Jim McGovern (D-MA) will co-chair a congressional hearing of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission to conduct a global review of antisemitism. Speakers will include Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee; Marina Rosenberg, senior vice president for international affairs at the Anti-Defamation League; Eric Fusfield, director of legislative affairs at B’nai B’rith International; and Stacy Burdett, a consultant on antisemitism response and prevention.
• Tonight, the ADL will host its reception in Washington celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month. The National Museum of American Jewish Military History, along with AJC and Jewish War Veterans of the USA, will host a discussion in Washington, moderated by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, with three Jewish-American WWII veterans.
• The Qatar Economic Forum, sponsored by Bloomberg, kicked off in Doha today with an opening address delivered by Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani. Other speakers today include Elon Musk; former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus; Morgan Ortagus, the U.S. deputy special envoy to the Middle East; Mohammed Saif Al-Sowaidi, the CEO of the Qatar Investment Authority; and Marc Nachmann, global head of asset and wealth management at Goldman Sachs. 
• The Middle East Forum 2025 Policy Conference continues today in Washington. 
• The World Jewish Congress 17th Plenary Assembly concludes today in Jerusalem. 

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’s Matthew Kassel

As Pittsburgh’s bitterly contested mayoral primary concludes on Tuesday, the election represents the first major front in a broader proxy battle between moderate and progressive Democrats clashing over Israel and antisemitism, which could shape a range of developing contests at the state and federal levels.

The primary pits Mayor Ed Gainey, the progressive first-term incumbent whose record of commentary on Israel’s war in Gaza and handling of antisemitic activity have sparked backlash from Jewish leaders, against Corey O’Connor, a centrist challenger who is touting his long-standing ties to Pittsburgh’s sizable Jewish community and highlighting his support for Israel.

In recent weeks, the race has grown increasingly nasty, turning in part on escalating tensions over Israel’s war with Hamas that have coincided with a glaring uptick in antisemitic incidents. Pittsburgh police said on Monday, for instance, that they were investigating the distribution of antisemitic flyers in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Squirrel Hill — following high-profile acts of vandalism last year at several Jewish buildings in the city.

While Gainey has condemned antisemitism, he has otherwise drawn criticism for declining to challenge efforts by far-left activists to bring an Israel boycott and divestment referendum to Pittsburgh voters. He has also stirred controversy for signing a joint statement addressing the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that made no mention of Hamas and used insensitive language that alienated even some of his closest Jewish allies on the far left.

During a candidate forum hosted last month by Pittsburgh’s Jewish Federation, which has publicly expressed disappointment with Gainey’s record on such issues, the mayor defended his approach to the failed ballot measures while acknowledging that his statement had caused offense. “I apologize for those mistakes,” he said, noting that if given the chance to redo the letter, he would first seek input “to discover exactly what’s wrong with the wording.”

Despite his contrition, many Jewish community members remain skeptical of the mayor, whose allies have spread false accusations that national pro-Israel groups such as AIPAC are spending to boost O’Connor, the Allegheny County controller. Last week, meanwhile, supporters of Gainey also circulated a letter in Squirrel Hill alleging that the Israel-Hamas war has been imported into the race as a pretext for “fake accusations of antisemitism” now being “used as a political tool to try to pry Mayor Gainey out of office.”

Jeremy Kazzaz, executive director of the Beacon Coalition, a local Jewish advocacy group whose political arm has donated to O’Connor’s campaign, said that even as most voters have been “focused on the basics” of city governance, “we can’t ignore that antisemitism has cast a shadow over this election.”

“The Jewish community isn’t imagining things,” he told Jewish Insider on Monday. “We’re responding to real, overt bigotry from voices elevated at the center of Mayor Gainey’s campaign.”

For his part, O’Connor, who grew up in Squirrel Hill and whose late father served as mayor, has said his relationship with the local Jewish community instilled in him a commitment to defending Israel and speaking out against antisemitism. In his discussion with the Jewish federation, he drew contrasts with Gainey on key issues, noting, for example, that he “absolutely” would have opposed the Israel divestment proposal. 

“You need a mayor,” he argued, “who is going to be vocal to support and fight against antisemitism.”

While earlier polling had shown O’Connor with a wide lead over Gainey, who has struggled to assert himself in his race for reelection, some more recent surveys indicate the embattled mayor has narrowed the gap in the final stretch of the primary. Still, local political observers who spoke with JI predicted that O’Connor — who has outraised Gainey while locking up key endorsements — would ultimately prevail on Tuesday.

The heated race is a particularly vivid microcosm of intra-Democratic conflicts over Middle East policy that are poised to inflect House and Senate races in Illinois and Michigan next year. The gubernatorial primary in New Jersey and the mayoral race in New York City next month have also featured prominent divisions over Israel, now emerging as a top issue in the final weeks of the race.

RIPPLE EFFECT

Will Trump’s visit to UAE’s Abrahamic Family House inspire a regional shift?

Before President Donald Trump departed the Middle East last week, his motorcade made one final stop in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, before heading to the airport: a visit — the first by a U.S. president — to the Abrahamic Family House, a multifaith complex with Muslim, Christian and Jewish houses of worship. His tour, with stops inside the mosque, church and synagogue, underscored the message of tolerance that he shared in an address at a Saudi investment forum earlier in the week. Trump used the speech to call for Saudi Arabia to normalize ties with Israel, following the lead of the UAE, as well as Bahrain and Morocco. So could the Saudis similarly follow suit by creating an Abrahamic Family House of its own, or something similar to advance religious pluralism? Religious freedom experts tell Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch that’s highly unlikely. 

Charting a course: “I think you won’t see a version of the Abrahamic Family House in another country. I think what you will see is each country, in their own way, doing similar things in the years to come,” said Johnnie Moore, an evangelical leader who met with MBS in 2018 as part of the first delegation of evangelical leaders to Saudi Arabia. “Obviously in Saudi Arabia, the baseline is different.” As the home of Mecca, the birthplace of Islam, Saudi Arabia has long been viewed as the standard-bearer for the Muslim world. In the UAE — a much smaller nation, where nearly 90%  of residents are foreigners there for business purposes or as laborers — Islamic law has never been applied as strictly. 

Read the full story here.

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FORWARD FOCUS

Ronald Lauder defends his engagement with Qatar, hails Trump for ‘opening up’ Middle East to U.S.

After visiting Qatar with President Donald Trump last week, newly reelected World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder insisted on Monday on the need to engage with the controversial Gulf state to use whatever leverage it has to secure the release of the remaining Israeli hostages and work toward a resolution to the war in Gaza and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more generally, despite its past support for terrorism and anti-Israel advocacy. Speaking to eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross on the sidelines of the WJC meeting in Jerusalem, Lauder praised Trump for bringing Middle Eastern countries closer to the United States, which he said would also benefit Israel.

Qatar questions: “What Qatar did – what anyone did — is in the past. We can’t eliminate what was done in the past. The question is, can Trump and the emir, [Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani] — and I know the emir very well — can Trump and the emir turn things around and make it work? That’s the question,” said Lauder, who was reelected for another four-year term as president of the WJC on Monday. Asked if that engagement with Qatar has been effective so far, Lauder refrained from speculating. “I don’t know, but it didn’t hurt,” he said. “What I think that Trump did was open up the entire Middle East to America, and what’s good for America is also good for Israel. That’s the operative message there.”

Read the full story here and sign up for eJewishPhilanthropy’s Your Daily Phil newsletter here.

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NOT RUNNING

Illinois Senate primary likely a toss-up, experts say, after Underwood declines to run

Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL) said on Monday that she would pass on an anticipated run for the Illinois Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) in 2026, leaving what’s likely to be a three-way race among Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton and Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) and Robin Kelly (D-IL), Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

State of play: Stratton is backed by billionaire Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, as well as Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), while Krishnamoorthi has $19 million in the bank for the race and members of the Congressional Black Caucus are backing Kelly. Pritzker could put significant funding behind Stratton’s run and reportedly worked behind the scenes to block Underwood and other candidates from entering the race. Underwood, on CNN, denied that Pritzker had forced her to stay out of the race. A Jewish Democratic strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the race candidly, told JI they see the Chicagoland Jewish vote — a sizable community — as largely still up for grabs given that none of the candidates have particularly deep ties to the Jewish community coming into the race. They said Jewish voters will likely take time to evaluate each of the candidates.

Read the full story here.

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MOUNTING PRESSURE

France, U.K., Canada threaten sanctions against Israel

The United Kingdom, France and Canada threatened on Monday to take “concrete actions” and impose sanctions against Israel if it does not change its policies on humanitarian aid and the war in Gaza, as well as settlements in the West Bank. The statement from the three countries came in response to Israel’s announcement that it had begun an escalation in the fighting in Gaza, while allowing in a limited amount of food, 11 weeks after blocking all aid in an attempt to pressure Hamas to free more hostages, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports.

What they said: The countries said they “strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. The level of human suffering is intolerable. Israel’s denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable and risks breaching International Humanitarian Law.” In addition, they said that the “basic quantity of food” to be allowed into Gaza “is wholly inadequate,” and that Israel must work with United Nations agencies. Israel and the U.S. have been working on an alternative mechanism to distribute aid rather than rely on U.N. agencies, which have not prevented Hamas from pocketing large quantities of aid and in some cases employed Hamas terrorists.

Read the full story here.

Making waves: Yair Golan, leader of the Israeli left-wing Democrats party, sparked backlash when he said in a radio interview this morning that Israel is on its way to becoming a pariah state, criticizing the war in Gaza: “A sane country does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies for a hobby, and does not set goals involving the expulsion of populations.” His comments drew condemnation from both coalition and opposition members as well as President Isaac Herzog.

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HARVARD IN THE CROSSHAIRS

Senior House Republicans question Harvard over Iran connections

A group of top House Republicans wrote to Harvard University on Monday, questioning the school about alleged work on research funded by the Iranian government, as well as members of the Chinese government, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. The letter accuses Harvard researchers of working with Chinese academics on research funded by the Iranian National Science Foundation, an entity chartered by the Iranian government and ultimately controlled by the Iranian supreme leader. It states that such work occurred at least four times since 2020, as recently as last year.

Signed on: The letter was signed by Reps. John Moolenaar (R-MI), Tim Walberg (R-MI) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY). Moolenaar is the chair of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Walberg chairs the Education and Workforce Committee and Stefanik is the chair of House Republican Leadership.

Read the full story here.

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TAKING THE HELM

Teach Coalition taps Sydney Altfield as national director

Sydney Altfield, a champion of STEM education, has been tapped as national director of Teach Coalition, an Orthodox Union-run organization that advocates for government funding and resources for yeshivas and Jewish day schools, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen has learned. She succeeds Maury Litwack, who founded the coalition in 2013 and served as its national director since.

Background: Altfield, who has held various roles with Teach Coalition for the past seven years, most recently served as executive director of its New York state chapter. In that position, she spearheaded STEM funding for private schools in the state and helped establish state security funding programs — two areas she intends to expand on a national level in the new role, which encompasses seven states: New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Florida, Pennsylvania, California and Nevada. “We’re at a very pivotal moment in Jewish day schools where the continuity of the Jewish people relies on Jewish education and having access to such. That also has to come at a quality education,” Altfield told JI in her first interview since being selected for the position. “It’s so important to understand that it’s not just about STEM but it’s about the entire Jewish education being high quality, something that’s accessible for everyone.” 

Read the full story here.

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Worthy Reads

What JD Vance Means: The Atlantic’s George Packer profiles Vice President JD Vance and speculates on the significance of his rapid political ascent. “Vance illuminates the larger subject of contemporary America’s character. In another age, his rise might have been taken as proof that the American dream was alive and mostly well. But our age has no simply inspiring and unifying tales, and each chapter of Vance’s success is part of a national failure: the abandonment of American workers under global neoliberalism; the cultural collapse of the working class; the unwinnable forever war; a dominant elite that combines ruthless competition with a rigid orthodoxy of identity; a reaction of populist authoritarianism. What seems like Vance’s tragic wrong turn, the loss of real promise, was probably inevitable — it’s hard to imagine a more hopeful plot.” [TheAtlantic]

Columbia Unbecoming:New York magazine’s Nick Summers catalogues Columbia University’s collapse amid antisemitism and pressure from the Trump administration. “As recently as October 6, 2023 — the day before Hamas attacked Israel — Columbia seemed a juggernaut. After decades of growth, the endowment was a fat $14 billion and buildings named for a new generation of megadonors were rising across 17 acres of new campus. After a global search, the university had selected a cosmopolitan new president, Minouche Shafik of the London School of Economics, to lead it into the future. But since that golden moment, the turmoil has been almost too much to catalogue. Endless protest and counterprotest. Campus lockdowns. Police raids. A president paraded before Congress. Students dragged before secretive discipline panels. One canceled commencement, two presidential resignations, and countless students wondering if ICE is inside their dorms. The strife is ongoing, and the campus is as miserable as ever. Columbia is a broken place.”[NYMag]

The Cuomo Conundrum:Politico’s New York editor Sally Goldenberg explains why former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is the odds-on favorite to become the next New York City mayor. “Among Cuomo’s rivals, no one has successfully zeroed in on why he’s so unpopular, or how to chip away at his strengths: Executive experience in a time of uncertainty, universal name recognition when few people are dialed into local politics, a trademark toughness that appeals to Democrats desperate to take on President Donald Trump. The candidates’ anti-Cuomo messages have yet to stick, but they are starting to put money behind them in TV ads and ramping them up on the campaign trail. Lander is calling him corrupt — a reference to his nursing home order during Covid and an attorney general’s report finding he sexually harassed women on his gubernatorial staff. Cuomo denies all wrongdoing and is pursuing aggressive legal recourse.” [Politico]

Desperate Diplomacy in Doha: The Wall Street Journal’s Anat Peled reports on a whirlwind effort by hostage families to meet with President Donald Trump and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani during Trump’s Middle East tour, as part of a wider global effort to talk to anyone who will listen — and has the power to help. “Tears edged down Idit Ohel’s face as she showed U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and a senior Qatari official the video of her son, Alon, being kidnapped by Hamas into Gaza. An aide to the Qatari official, wearing a traditional Arab thawb, slid a box of tissues toward her. The gesture, at a hastily arranged meeting in Doha, encapsulated the awkward position the families of remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza found themselves in last week: They were dependent on a country that harbors Hamas to secure the freedom of loved ones captured in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. “It was a sensitive human moment between people where we put politics aside and there were only two human beings,” Ohel said of the encounter. “There was a lot of emotion, empathy and respect in it.” [WSJ]

Word on the Street

The Senate confirmed yesterday real estate developer Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, to be ambassador to France. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) was the only Democrat to vote in favor…

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) introduced a bill on Monday to prevent foreign planes from being used as part of Air Force One’s fleet, Axios reported…

Democratic Majority for Israel is out with a new digital ad titled “Trojan Horse,” hitting President Donald Trump over his plan to accept a $400 million plane from Qatar. The ad will run on digital platforms in the Washington area… 

The Trump administration reportedly first approached Qatar about the possibility of acquiring a Boeing 747 for use as Air Force One, contrary to Trump’s claims of it being offered as a gift…

Speaking at the annual Jerusalem Post conference in New York City on Monday, Special Envoy for Hostage Response Adam Boehler said about a hostage release deal, “I do think we’re closer than we ever were”….

Chabad social media influencer Yossi Farro wrapped tefillin with Boehler and prayed for the immediate and swift release of the hostages…

Also during the conference, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced the formation of a new New York City-Israel Economic Council to boost business ties. Israel’s efforts on the council will be headed by Economy and Industry Minister Nir Barkat…

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) didn’t attend a committee hearing in 2025 until this month, according to a Bloomberg Government analysis…

Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) will be speaking at Yeshiva University graduation on Thursday… 

Ishan Daya stepped down from the Chicago Fiscal Sustainability Working Group just hours after being appointed and after Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reported on his selection on Friday. Daya sparked backlash after he was filmed ripping down Israeli hostage posters shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks…

Leo Terrell, head of the DOJ Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun sent a letter yesterday to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, accusing her of alleging that her “alarming campaign of letters targeting institutions that support or invest in the state of Israel” are “defamatory, dangerous, and a flagrant abuse of your office”…

Bloomberg journalist Jason Kao was one of the individuals arrested after storming Columbia University’s Butler Library earlier this month. An NYPD spokesperson confirmed to The Washington Free Beacon that Kao was charged with a crime, suggesting he was not covering the event in his journalistic capacity…

Eden Yadegar spoke to the Columbia Spectator about her experience becoming the face of pro-Israel activism at Columbia University after the Hamas terror attacks. She said, “It felt like I was experiencing, in many ways, a different university after Oct. 7, but I also felt like I was a different person experiencing that university”….

Britain plans to strengthen its powers to target state-sponsored terrorist threats after several Iranian-backed security incidents in recent weeks, U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said yesterday…

The New York Times spotlights the role of Israel and antisemitism policy in the New York City mayoral race, after candidate Zohran Mamdani rushed to correct reports that he refused to condemn the Holocaust…

A Washington Examiner analysis found that foreign agents working on behalf of Qatar have significantly increased their outreach to right-wing media, from just over 10% of their media engagement between January-November 2024 to more than half since Election Day…

A Haaretz exposé found that a pro-Qatar online influence campaign allegedly crafted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aides continued even after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza…

The Times of Israel interviews Orthodox Jewish musician Lenny Solomon, the subject of a new documentary “The King of Shlock,” which will be screened on Thursday at the DocAviv film festival in Tel Aviv…

Former hostage Omer Shem Tov threw the first pitch at the Boston Red Sox game on Monday during the team’s Jewish Heritage Night at Fenway Park…

Pic of the Day

Israeli-Russian IndyCar driver Robert Shwartzman, 25, on Sunday became the first Indy 500 rookie to win the pole since 1983. He used his win to call for peace in both Israel, where he was born, and Russia, where he was raised. “I just want peace in the world,” Shwartzman said. “I want people to be good, and I don’t want the separation of countries, saying, ‘This is bad country. This is good country.’ There is no bad or good. We’re all human beings, and we just have to support each other.” The Indy 500 will be held on Sunday, Memorial Day weekend.

Birthdays

Born in upstate New York as Michael Scott Bornstein, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and then member of the Knesset, Michael Oren turns 70… 

CEO at Kings’ Care – A Safe Place, operator of multiple drug and alcohol rehabilitation and treatment centers, Ilene Leiter… Canadian businesswoman and elected official, she served in the Ontario Assembly and in the Canadian House of Commons, Elinor Caplan turns 81… Former member of the New York State Assembly until 2020, representing the 97th Assembly District in Rockland County, Ellen Jaffee turns 81… Former member of the U.S. House of Representatives (D-CT-2) for 20 years, he was born in a DP camp in Germany after World War II, Sam Gejdenson turns 77… Chagrin Falls, Ohio, attorney, Robert Charles Rosenfeld… CEO emeritus of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Michael S. Miller… Seamstress and weaver, Bernice Ann Penn Venable… Retired in 2022 as a federal judge for the Southern District of Texas, she is now a mediator and arbitrator, Judge Nancy Ellen Friedman Atlas turns 76… Five-time Emmy Award-winning producer and writer who has worked on “Saturday Night Live,” PBS’ “Great Performances” and “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show,” Alan Zweibel turns 75… U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) turns 74… Former director of international affairs, policy and planning at the Conference of Presidents, Michael Alan Salberg… Professor at Tulane and former president of the Aspen Institute and CEO of CNN, Walter Isaacson turns 73… Actress and singer, known for her work in musical theater, Judy Kuhn turns 67… CEO and founder of Abrams Media, chief legal analyst for ABC News and the founder of Mediaite, Dan Abrams turns 59… NYC location scout and unit production manager for feature films and television commercials, David Brotsky… Co-founder and CEO of Breitbart News, Larry Solov turns 57… Partner and head of public affairs at Gray Space Strategies, Ami Copeland… French singer and actress, at 13 she became the youngest singer to ever reach No. 1 in the French charts, Elsa Lunghini turns 52… Co-president of Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays, Matthew Silverman turns 49… Emmy Award-winning singer and songwriter, Rachel Platten turns 44… Manager of privacy issues for Amazon’s public policy team, Philip Justin (PJ) Hoffman… Program officer at the Michigan-based William Davidson Foundation, Vadim Avshalumov… Founder and CEO of Berkeley, California-based Caribou Biosciences, a genome engineering company, Rachel Haurwitz, Ph.D…. Director of federal policy and strategy for the ADL, Lauren D. Wolman… Executive communications leader, Susan Sloan… VP of digital advocacy at McGuireWoods Consulting, Josh Canter… Beauty pageant winner who was awarded the title of Miss Israel 2014, Doron Matalon turns 32… Political consultant, Aylon Berger turns 25… Political activist, he is a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Kyle Kashuv turns 24…

Sydney Altfield, a champion of STEM education, has been tapped as national director of Teach Coalition, an Orthodox Union-run organization that advocates for government funding and resources for yeshivas and Jewish day schools, Jewish Insider has learned. She succeeds Maury Litwack, who founded the coalition in 2013 and served as its national director since. 

Altfield, who has held various roles with Teach Coalition for the past seven years, most recently served as executive director of its New York state chapter. In that position, she spearheaded STEM funding for private schools in the state and helped establish state security funding programs — two areas she intends to expand on a national level in the new role, which encompasses seven states: New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Florida, Pennsylvania, California and Nevada. 

“We’re at a very pivotal moment in Jewish day schools where the continuity of the Jewish people relies on Jewish education and having access to such. That also has to come at a quality education,” Altfield told JI in her first interview since being selected for the position. “It’s so important to understand that it’s not just about STEM but it’s about the entire Jewish education being high quality, something that’s accessible for everyone.” 

Amid rising concerns about security in Jewish schools, Altfield said she looks forward to taking “the wins we’ve had in places like Florida,” referring to universal tax credit scholarships, to ensure that funds are effectively used to protect Jewish students and staff. 

Soon after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, Teach Coalition launched Project Protect to write and implement federal- and state-level security grants. 

“A lot of people thought that after Oct. 7 the rise in hate crimes and antisemitism, and specifically the rise in security threats, would go down but we’re seeing just the opposite,” Altfield said. “It’s very important for us to realize what is ahead and what is needed … to ensure that the financial burden of an antisemitism tax is halted as soon as possible.” 

According to a Teach Coalition survey published in April, security spending among 63 of the coalition’s member schools in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida increased a staggering 84% for the 2024-2025 school year, with these schools now spending $360 per student more on security than before Oct. 7. The costs ultimately get passed on to families in the form of security fees or increased tuition. 

Altfield credits herself with building “very strong” multifaith coalitions while overseeing the New York chapter. 

“I feel that New York is just scratching the surface,” she told JI. “I really do believe that our struggles as a Jewish community in ensuring a quality Jewish education is the same when it comes to Islamic education or Catholic schools, and if we have a united voice we can work together and move the needle faster. It makes our voice that much louder.” 

Under Litwack’s leadership, Teach Coalition ran several successful voter mobilization initiatives in Westchester and Long Island elections. Altfield said that while she plans to work with Litwack on some initiatives, “Teach will be going back to the basics of quality, affordable education.” 

Meanwhile, “there’s a new wave of needing a Jewish voting voice across the nation,” Altfield said, noting that the transition will allow Litwack to continue that effort in a separate organization he has formed, Jewish Voters Unite. 

“It has been a privilege founding and building Teach Coalition into the powerhouse organization that it is today,” Litwack told JI. “I’ve had the privilege of working alongside Sydney for years — someone whose vision, integrity, and dedication have helped shape what the organization has become.”

“The Orthodox Union community — along with other faith communities — is committed to educate its students in our day schools and yeshiva, where their faith and values are nurtured while they receive a well-rounded education. Especially as our community faces record antisemitism, that high-quality Jewish education needs to be made more accessible,” Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, said in a statement, adding that Altfield’s promotion “represents the redoubling of our commitment to helping Jewish Day School and Yeshiva families and those that aspire to attend these schools.” 

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams also took note of the work Altfield has done locally. “Governor Hochul has forged a close partnership with Teach NYS throughout years of advocacy and collaboration, continuing this administration’s ironclad commitment to fighting antisemitism and supporting Jewish New Yorkers,” a spokesperson for Hochul said in a statement.

“Sydney is a true bridge-builder and her leadership at Teach NYS helped deliver real results for our families,” Adams said. 

Altfield said she takes the helm of the organization at a time when it is “becoming even more important and more visible” than ever.

On a federal level, for instance, “it’s very interesting to see where the Trump administration is going when it comes to education funding,” she said.

“They are very supportive of educational freedom and choice and that’s what we’re about so we’re very excited to see the changes that are coming, whether that be through the administration or even through a federal tax credit program that’s currently being discussed in Congress,” Altfield continued. 

Last week, the topic of Jewish education was brought to an international stage when podcast host and author Dan Senor said that Jewish day schools are one of the strongest contributors of a strong Jewish identity — one that provides the tools that are needed at this precarious moment to “rebuild American Jewish life” — as he delivered the 45th annual State of World Jewry address at the 92NY. 

“I’ve been saying this for so long and Dan gets the credit for it — as he should,” Altfield said with a laugh. 

“People always ask me why I do what I do,” she continued. “Even before Oct. 7, I said I believe that the continuity of the Jewish people lies within Jewish education. You cannot stress that any more than what has been seen after Oct. 7.”

Altfield pointed to increased enrollment in Jewish day schools nationwide. “A lot of what the Jewish community is going through is under a microscope,” she said. “Now that microscope is blowing up the understanding that Jewish education is basically the savior of what’s going to help us through these next few years.”

A group of top House Republicans wrote to Harvard University on Monday, questioning the school about alleged work on research funded by the Iranian government, as well as members of the Chinese government.

The letter accuses Harvard researchers of working with Chinese academics on research funded by the Iranian National Science Foundation, an entity chartered by the Iranian government and ultimately controlled by the Iranian supreme leader.

It states that such work occurred at least four times since 2020, as recently as last year.

The letter was signed by Reps. John Moolenaar (R-MI), Tim Walberg (R-MI) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY). Moolenaar is the chair of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Walberg chairs the Education and Workforce Committee and Stefanik is the chair of House Republican Leadership.

“As you may know, under the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations, the Office of Foreign Assets Control has specifically disallowed transactions incident to publication when they involve the Iranian government and its instrumentalities,” the letter reads. “This funding from an Iranian government agent raises serious concerns and may violate U.S. law.”

The lawmakers emphasized that the 2024 research took place following the imposition of wide-ranging U.S. sanctions on Iran, after Iranian proxies killed U.S. servicemembers and in the midst of intense U.S. government attention on Iran’s malign activities.

They requested a list of all collaborations between Harvard affiliates and anyone receiving funding from the Iranian government or Iranian government entities.

The letter as a whole focuses primarily on alleged connections between Harvard and Chinese researchers and programs, characterizing such work as a national security threat. 

Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Good Monday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at the state of relations between Washington and Jerusalem ahead of President Donald Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates this week, and report on how Capitol Hill is reacting to Qatar’s plans to gift a $400 million luxury jet to Trump. We also do a deep dive into the ‘123 Agreement’ being pushed by GOP senators wary of nuclear negotiations with Iran, and report on the University of Washington’s handling of recent anti-Israel campus protests. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Iris Haim, Natalie Portman and Nafea Bshara.

What We’re Watching

• Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff is in Israel today following the announcement that Hamas will release Israeli American hostage Edan Alexander today. Adam Boehler, the administration’s hostage affairs envoy, arrived in Israel earlier today along with Alexander’s mother, Yael. More below.
• President Donald Trump is departing later today for his three-country visit to the Middle East. More below.
• An Israeli delegation will reportedly travel to Cairo today to renew negotiations with Hamas.
• Israeli President Isaac Herzog is in Germany today, where he is marking 60 years of German-Israeli relations.
• This afternoon in Tel Aviv, hostage families will march from Hostage Square to the U.S. Embassy Branch Office to call for a “comprehensive” agreement to free the remaining 59 hostages.

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD WITH Melissa Weiss

“Donald, Bring Them Home” reads a sign in the window of a clothing boutique on Tel Aviv’s busy Dizengoff Street. It’s been in the store window since January, when a temporary ceasefire freed dozens of Israeli hostages, including two Americans, who had been held in captivity in Gaza for over a year. It’s a smaller sign than the billboard that read “Thank you, Mr. President” and for weeks was visible to the thousands of motorists driving on the busy thoroughfare next to the beach. 

Returned hostages and hostage families have appealed to the Trump administration for assistance in securing their loved ones’ releases, expressing sentiments conspicuously absent in meetings between former hostages and Israeli government officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s a situation that underscores how the American efforts to secure the release of the remaining hostages have at times been done not only without Israeli buy-in, but with Israel finding out only after the negotiations concluded.

Such was the case yesterday, when Trump announced that Edan Alexander, the last living American hostage in Gaza, would be released.

The negotiations over the release of Alexander underscore the Trump administration’s “America First” approach to the region that has sidelined Israeli priorities on a range of issues, from the Houthis to Iran to the war in Gaza. It’s a splash of cold water in the face of a nation that largely celebrated Trump’s election six months ago.

The announcement of Alexander’s expected release came after a firehose of news in the days leading up to Trump’s visit to the Middle East, which begins tomorrow. First, the move toward allowing Saudi Arabia to have a civilian nuclear program. Then, the news, confirmed on Sunday by Trump, that Qatar is gifting the president a luxury plane to add to the Air Force One fleet, amid yearslong Boeing manufacturing delays. (More below.)

The Qatari gift alarmed Washington Democrats, with Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) writing to Trump administration officials to express “alarm,” saying Qatar has a “deeply troubling history of financing a barbaric terrorist organization that has the blood of Americans on its hands. In the cruelest irony, Air Force One will have something in common with Hamas: paid for by Qatar.”

Only hours after the news of the gifted jet broke, Trump announced that the U.S., along with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, had reached an agreement to secure Alexander’s release, which he referred to as “the first of those final steps necessary to end this brutal conflict.” Israel was not mentioned a single time in the announcement.

Netanyahu himself conceded that the Americans had reached the deal absent Israeli involvement. “The U.S. has informed Israel of Hamas’s intention to release soldier Edan Alexander as a gesture to the Americans, without conditions or anything in exchange,” Netanyahu said on Sunday evening.

The news stunned observers and offered a measure of renewed hope to the families of remaining hostages, including the four Americans whose bodies remain in Gaza, but opened a deluge of questions about the diplomatic dance that led to an agreement over Alexander’s release.

The timing of the announcement – shortly after news of the gifted Qatari jet broke — raised questions about the potentially transactional nature of the discussions, and deepened concerns that the Trump administration could reach agreements that run counter to Israeli security priorities while the president travels the region (a trip that does not include a stop in Israel, despite Netanyahu’s two visits to the White House since Trump returned to office).

As Trump travels to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates this week, the world will be watching closely. But perhaps nobody will be watching as closely — from more than 1,000 miles away — as Netanyahu.

FIRM FRIENDS?

Trump, Netanyahu administrations downplay rift despite disagreements on Iran, Saudi Arabia

The headlines in the Hebrew media, on the eve of President Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East this week, played up what some see as an emerging rift between Israel and the U.S. “Concerns in Israel: The deals will hurt the qualitative [military] edge,” read one. The Trump administration has already made a truce with the Houthis and cut a deal with Hamas to release Israeli American hostage Edan Alexander — without Israel — and the concern in Jerusalem is that more surprises — good and bad — may be on the way. Yet insiders in both the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government speaking to Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov in recent days on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters took a more sanguine view of the delicate diplomacy, saying that there is no rift, even if there are disagreements. 

Calm but critical: Sources in Jerusalem pointed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s two visits to the White House in Trump’s first 100 days in office, as well as Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer’s meeting with the president last week. A Trump administration source said the relationship remains positive and close, but also criticized Israel for not adapting to the president’s transactional approach to foreign policy. Gulf states are likely to announce major investments in the U.S. during Trump’s visit, while Israel has largely been asking the administration for help. Jerusalem could be putting a greater emphasis on jobs created by U.S.-Israel cooperation in the defense and technological sectors when they speak with Trump, the source suggested.

Read the full story here.

Signs of stress: The apparent divisions are especially notable in the context of the Iran talks — Israel largely opposes diplomacy with the regime and favors a military option to address Iran’s nuclear program, on which the Trump administration has not yet been willing to cooperate, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. 

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GIFT OR GRIFT?

Congressional Democrats outraged by reports of Qatari Air Force One gift

Congressional Democrats are expressing outrage over reports that the Qatari government plans to give to President Donald Trump a luxury jet for use as Air Force One, which would reportedly continue to be available for Trump’s use after his presidency, and transferred to his presidential library, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

What they’re saying: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that accepting the jet would be “not just bribery, it’s premium foreign influence with extra legroom.” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) wrote to Trump administration officials to express “alarm,” calling the reported gift a “flying grift.” Torres condemned Attorney General Pam Bondi — who previously served as a lobbyist for Qatar — for approving the reported transfer, which Torres said “flagrantly violates both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause.” Some conservatives, including far-right influencer Laura Loomer, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) and commentator Mark Levin, are also expressing concern.

Read the full story here with additional comments from Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD).

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The ABCs of 123s

U.S., Iran are talking about a ‘123 Agreement.’ What does that mean?

Last week, a group of Senate Republicans introduced a resolution laying down stringent expectations for a nuclear deal with Iran. One of those conditions is a so-called “123 Agreement” with the United States, after “the complete dismantlement and destruction of [Iran’s] entire nuclear program,” Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

What it means: A source familiar with the state of the talks confirmed to JI that a 123 Agreement is a key part of the ongoing U.S.-Iran talks currently being led by U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, though a Witkoff spokesperson said “The sources don’t know what they’re talking about.” Those agreements refer to Section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, which lays out conditions for peaceful nuclear cooperation between the United States and other countries. Twenty-five such agreements are currently in place — but in most cases they pertain to U.S. allies and partners. A 123 Agreement was not part of the original 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — they are only required in cases in which the U.S. is going to be sharing nuclear material or technology with a foreign country, directly or indirectly. The prospect of inking such a deal with Iran is meeting with surprise and heavy skepticism from experts.

Read the full story here.

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DEM DIVIDE

Over half of Senate Democrats blast Israel’s Gaza operations plan

A group of 25 Senate Democrats, comprising more than half of the caucus and led by several senior leaders, wrote to President Donald Trump on Friday condemning new plans for expanded Israeli military operations in the Gaza strip and accusing the Trump administration of failing to push for peace, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Signatories include top lawmakers on some key Senate committees and senior members of the Democratic caucus.

What they said: “This is a dangerous inflection point for Israel and the region, and while we support ongoing efforts to eliminate Hamas, a full-scale reoccupation of Gaza would be a critical strategic mistake,” the lawmakers said, of Israel’s plan to expand military operations in Gaza. They also rejected a new plan for aid distribution in Gaza, which they described as an Israeli plan but which U.S. officials have described as American-led.

Read the full story here.

Hostage hopes: A bipartisan group of 50 House members wrote to President Donald Trump on Friday urging him to “prioritize the release of the five Americans” who remain hostage in Gaza. 

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Q&A

Mother of hostage killed in friendly fire: ‘I choose not to blame anyone’

Most of the best-known hostage relatives in Israel are those who have led demonstrations and called to topple the government. But Iris Haim became renowned in Israel for taking a radically different approach. Haim’s son, Yotam, was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. He and fellow hostages Samar Talalka and Alon Shimriz managed to escape captivity, only to be mistakenly killed by the IDF on Dec. 15, 2023. Yet days after Yotam was killed, rather than express anger or even anguish, Haim chose to send a message of forgiveness and encouragement to the troops. Since then, Haim has been lauded by many Israelis, even granted the honor of lighting a torch at Israel’s official Independence Day ceremony last year. Jewish Insider’s Lahav interviewed Haim at the Global Network for Jewish Women Entrepreneurs and Leaders’ 2025 Global Leadership Conference last week. 

Haim’s philosophy: “I’m not avoiding life, but I’m choosing how to deal with it … I don’t blame anybody, because I don’t believe in that way … I have my philosophy of life. Life can be good for me. It all depends on me. I can find so much good, and I need to choose to see it. It depends on where we put our focus,” Haim told JI. “There is also a lot of bad. Yesterday we heard about two more soldiers who were killed … I cannot control this. What I cannot control, I’m not dealing with. I can’t change what [Israeli Prime Minister] Bibi [Netanyahu] thinks or what this government is doing. I can only vote differently next time, and that’s the way to keep myself normal and not go crazy.”

Read the full interview here.

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NEW DIRECTION

UW changes tack on anti-Israel activity, suspends students involved in destructive protest

The University of Washington suspended 21 students who were arrested during anti-Israel protests at the Seattle campus earlier this week, according to the university, a marked shift from the school’s reaction to previous anti-Israel activity, Jewish Insider’s Danielle Cohen and Haley Cohen report. The suspended students, who are also now banned from all UW campuses, were among more than 30 demonstrators, including non-students, arrested for occupying the university’s engineering building on Monday night — causing more than $1 million worth of damage. Masked demonstrators blocked entrances and exits to the building and ignited fires in two dumpsters on a street outside. Police moved into the building around 11 p.m. 

University response: After Monday’s events, the university’s president, Ana Mari Cauce, quickly denounced the “dangerous, violent and illegal building occupation and related vandalism” and condemned “in the strongest terms the group’s statement celebrating the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.” Miriam Weingarten, co-director of Chabad UW with her husband Rabbi Mendel Weingarten, expressed gratitude to the school for its swift response to the latest incident, which she called “appalling and horrific.”

Read the full story here.

On the East Coast: Columbia University suspended more than five dozen students in connection with last week’s protest at the school’s main library; 33 other individuals were barred from the New York City campus over the incident.

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Worthy Reads

Show of Force: Former Wall Street Journal publisher Karen Elliott House suggests that the U.S. and Israel mount a joint strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. “The only honorable option is to dismantle it. This can be done through diplomacy, which is highly unlikely, or with force. Any other outcome endangers both Israel and Saudi Arabia, key U.S. partners in the Middle East, and destroys Mr. Trump’s credibility with the world. The president adamantly — and repeatedly — has insisted he will accept nothing less than ‘total dismantlement’ of Iran’s nuclear program. The mullahs in Tehran will never agree to that. They saw what happened to Ukraine and Libya after giving up their nuclear ambitions. They think that enriching uranium for their nuclear reactors is a national right. Their real goal isn’t electricity generation but the ability to produce material for a bomb. … Destroying Iran’s nuclear capability involves risks, and Mr. Trump wants to avoid war. But if he believes Iran can be trusted to execute a new pact, he hasn’t done his homework.” [WSJ]

Altman’s Ascent: The Financial Times’ Roula Khalaf interviews OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in his California home about his rise in the tech industry and future plans for the AI company. “As we talk, I search for clues in his upbringing that hint at his future stardom. He says there are none. ‘I was like a kind of nerdy Jewish kid in the Midwest . . . So technology was just not a thing. Like being into computers was sort of, like, unusual. And I certainly never could have imagined that I would have ended up working on this technology in such a way. I still feel sort of surreal that that happened.’ The eldest of the four children of a dermatologist mother and a father who worked in real estate, Altman read a lot of science-fiction books, watched Star Trek and liked computers. In 2005, he dropped out of Stanford University before graduating to launch a social networking start-up. In those days, AI was still in its infancy: ‘We could show a system a thousand images of cats, and a thousand images of dogs, and then it [the AI] could correctly classify them, and that was, like, you were living the high life.’” [FT]

Word on the Street

A senior U.S. official said that American negotiators were “encouraged” by the fourth round of nuclear talks with Iran, held yesterday in Oman…

Members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum board clashed over the decision by the Trump administration to remove several board members appointed by former President Joe Biden, including former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain…

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) ruled out a Senate bid to challenge Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), further narrowing the GOP field days after Gov. Brian Kemp announced he would not enter the Senate race; Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) became the first Republican to enter the race last week…

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) and Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) introduced legislation to specifically ban religious discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, a prospect that has been discussed on the Hill for several years to combat antisemitism on college campuses…

Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-WA) introduced a resolution condemning Iran’s failure to fulfill its Nonproliferation Treaty obligations and comply with International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, and supporting military force against Iran if it withdraws from the NPT or crosses the nuclear threshold…

Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Adam Smith (D-WA) and Jim Himes (D-CT) introduced legislation providing for sanctions on individuals involved in enabling violence or destabilizing activity in the West Bank, including government officials. The legislation echoes sanctions in place under the Biden administration…

A federal program that provides funding to help vulnerable nonprofits meet their security needs has again begun reimbursing recipients, after a funding freeze at the Federal Emergency Management Agency left the fate of the Nonprofit Security Grant Program in limbo, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod and Gabby Deutch report…

As University of Michigan President Santa Ono is set to become president at University of Florida, he said on Thursday that “combating antisemitism” will remain a priority, as it has “throughout my career,” Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports…

Rümeysa Öztürk, the Turkish student at Tufts University who was arrested in March and held in a detention center as she appealed the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, was released following a federal judge’s order…

The New York Times’ Jodi Rudoren reflects on her experiences saying Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, after her father’s death… 

The Wall Street Journal looks at the relationship between Amazon Web Services and Nafea Bshara’s Annapurna Labs, which “has become essential to the success of the whole company” since AWS purchased the startup, which was founded in Israel, a decade ago in a $350 million deal…

Actress Natalie Portman is slated to star in Tom Hooper’s “Photograph 51,” a biopic about British scientist Rosalind Franklin…

The Washington Post spotlights a WWII battalion comprised of first-generation Japanese American soldiers who played a role in the liberation of Dachau… 

The Associated Press looks at a Dutch-led effort to digitize roughly 100,000 records from the Jewish community of Suriname, dating back to the 18th century…

U.K. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson warned that antisemitism among British youth is experiencing a “horrific surge” and becoming a “national emergency”…

The Wall Street Journal reports on the sexual assault allegations made against Karim Khan, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, shortly before he announced his pursuit of arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials…

The IDF and Mossad recovered the remains of Sgt. First Class Zvi Feldman, who went missing along with two other soldiers during a battle in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley during the First Lebanon War in 1982; a joint IDF-Mossad statement said that Feldman’s remains were recovered “from the heart of Syria” in a “complex and covert operation” that used “precise intelligence”…

Israel issued an evacuation warning for the Yemeni ports of Ras Isa, Hodeidah and Salif, days after carrying out strikes at the Sana’a airport targeting the Iran-backed Houthis…’

The Houthis fired a ballistic missile toward Israel on Monday morning; the missile fell short and landed in Saudi Arabia…

In his first Sunday address since being selected as pontiff, Pope Leo XIV called for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, the distribution of aid to Gaza and “all hostages be freed”…  

Rob Silvers, the under secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security during the Biden administration, is joining Ropes & Gray as a partner, and will co-chair the firm’s national security practice…

Heavy metal band Disturbed frontman David Draiman is engaged following his proposal to model Sarah Uli at a show in Sacramento over the weekend…

Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer, who returned in 2010 to live in Berlin, where she shared her story of survival with German audiences, died at 103…

Pic of the Day

Former hostage Emily Damari, visiting London on Sunday, attended her first Tottenham game since being released. Ahead of the game, Damari and her mother, Mandy Damari, met with supporters and called for the release of her friends Gali and Ziv Berman, twin brothers who were taken, alongside Damari,  from Kibbutz Kfar Aza on Oct. 7, 2023, and remain in captivity.

Birthdays

Haifa-born actress and model, she is known for her lead roles in seven films since 2014, Odeya Rush turns 28…

Israeli agribusiness entrepreneur and real estate investor, he was chairman and owner of Carmel Agrexco, Gideon Bickel turns 81… World-renowned architect and master planner for the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan, he also designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Germany, Daniel Libeskind turns 79… Former member of the California state Senate for eight years, following six years as a member of the California Assembly, Lois Wolk turns 79… Chairman of the Israel Paralympic Committee, he served for four years as a member of the Knesset for the Yisrael Beiteinu party, Moshe “Mutz” Matalon turns 72… Former Washington correspondent for McClatchy and then the Miami Herald covering the Pentagon, James Martin Rosen turns 70… SVP and deputy general counsel at Delta Air Lines until 2024, now chief legal officer at private aviation firm Wheels Up, Matthew Knopf turns 69… Professor at Emory University School of Law, he has published over 200 articles on law, religion and Jewish law, Michael Jay Broyde turns 61… Actress known for her role as Lexi Sterling on “Melrose Place,” she also had the lead role in many Lifetime movies, Jamie Michelle Luner turns 54… Founder of strategic communications and consulting firm Hiltzik Strategies, Matthew Hiltzik turns 53… Communications officer in the D.C. office of Open Society Foundations until earlier this month, Jonathan E. Kaplan… First-ever Jewish governor of Colorado, he was a successful serial entrepreneur before entering politics, Jared Polis turns 50… Professor of mathematics at Bar-Ilan University and a scientific advisor at the Y-Data school of data science in Israel, Elena Bunina turns 49… Italian politician, she is the first-ever Jewish mayor of Florence, Sara Funaro turns 49… Israeli pastry chef and parenting counselor, she is married to former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Gilat Ethel Bennett turns 48… Author, blogger and public speaker, Michael Ellsberg turns 48… Senior advisor at Accelerator for America Action, Joshua Cohen… Technology and social media reporter at Bloomberg, Alexandra Sophie Levine… Senior director of government affairs at BridgeBio, Amanda Schechter Malakoff… Civics outreach manager at Google, Erica Arbetter… 

Harvard University’s long-awaited dual reports on antisemitism and Islamophobia, released on Tuesday, reveal a campus beset by tension and simmering distrust — as well as a university struggling to handle competing claims of discrimination, animosity and exclusion made by Jewish and Muslim students. 

In the 300-page antisemitism report, which was made public amid alumni frustration and pressure from the Trump administration, Harvard commits to partner with an Israeli university; provide additional resources for the study of Hebrew and Judaic studies; host an annual academic symposium on antisemitism; ask the leadership of Sidechat, a social media app that allows college students to post anonymously, to enforce its content moderation policies; and launch a pilot program in the business school addressing contemporary antisemitism.

The authors of the antisemitism report described “severe problems” that Jewish students have faced in the classroom, on social media and through campus protests. The report announced the hiring of an Office for Community Conduct staff member expected to consult on all complaints relating to antisemitism, as well as the release of an annual report on the university’s response to discrimination or harassment based on the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. 

In a letter publicizing the reports, Harvard President Alan Garber called the 2023-2024 academic year, following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, “disappointing and painful,” and said the reports “reveal aspects of a charged period in our recent history.” He condemned both antisemitism and Islamophobia, and pledged that the university will take action to counter both forms of hatred. 

Many of the recommendations in both the antisemitism and Islamophobia reports are the same: working to create a pluralistic campus environment where differing opinions are respected, committing additional resources to the university’s Title VI office, providing greater halal and kosher food options and shoring up university policy around protests and activism. 

But the instances of hate or discrimination that were described by Jewish and Muslim students differ. Often, what one group views as bigotry, the other views as acceptable behavior, or an expression of their freedom of speech.

For instance, a Muslim staff member described Harvard as “embarrassingly, shamefully biased” for shutting down the anti-Israel encampment in Harvard Yard last spring. Yet some Jewish students described “being followed and verbally harassed” as they walked near the encampment. 

In the recommendations and commitments made by the antisemitism task force, Harvard pledged to follow the guidance of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism in its Non-Discrimination and Anti-Bullying Policies. But the authors of the Islamophobia report say the IHRA definition — which identifies some criticism of Israel as antisemitic — “sparked concerns” and created “apprehension that this may suppress pro-Palestinian protest.” 

Garber’s letter, and the recommendations issued by the task forces, do not address how the university will act when pulled in different directions by the Jewish and Muslim student populations.

The antisemitism report authors wrote that after more than a year of conducting listening sessions with the university community, it was clear that since Oct. 7, Jewish and Israeli students believed that their “presence had become triggering” to peers and in some cases, faculty. Many Jewish Harvard students were frequently asked to clarify that they were “one of the good ones” by denouncing Israel. The campus climate began to rapidly deteriorate while Hamas’ invasion of southern Israel was still underway, the authors wrote — when 33 Harvard student groups co-signed a letter saying Israel was “entirely responsible” for the terrorist attack.  

The recommendations were divided into three areas: strengthening academic and residential life, supporting belonging and promoting respectful dialogue and revising and implementing campus policies, procedures and training. 

The report called on department deans to work with faculty to “maintain appropriate focus on course subject matter; ensure students are treated fairly regardless of their political/religious beliefs; promote intellectual openness and respectful dialogue among students; and maintain appropriate professional boundaries in instructional settings by refraining from endorsing or advocating political positions.” 

The reports come as Harvard, the world’s wealthiest university, finds itself embroiled in a high-stakes legal battle with the White House. The university is suing the Trump administration in protest of a series of demands issued by President Donald Trump earlier this month, aimed at reforming Harvard’s handling of antisemitism, as well as its governance structure, admissions policies and teaching practices.

The 15-member antisemitism task force’s final set of recommendations were initially expected to be issued last fall, following the release of preliminary recommendations in June, which several Jewish faculty and alumni told Jewish Insider at the time fell short of expectations. The reports were set to be released in early April, according to the Harvard Crimson, but their publication was again delayed as the university came under scrutiny from Trump. 

Amid the Trump administration’s funding freeze and ongoing legal battle with Harvard, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights instructed the university earlier this month to send the report to the government. 

The university has not commented on what led to the delay in issuing the final task force reports. 

For a brief moment, it looked like 2024 all over again: Tents were erected at Yale University’s central plaza on Tuesday night, with anti-Israel activists hoping to loudly protest the visit of far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to campus. Videos of students in keffiyehs, shouting protest slogans, started to spread online on Tuesday night.

But then something unexpected happened. University administrators showed up, threatening disciplinary action, and the protesters were told to leave — or face consequences. So they left. The new encampment didn’t last a couple hours, let alone overnight. The next day, Yale announced that it had revoked its recognition of Yalies4Palestine, the student group that organized the protest. (On Wednesday night, a large protest occurred outside the off-campus building where Ben-Gvir was speaking.)

Meanwhile, at Cornell University, President Michael Kotlikoff announced on Wednesday that he had canceled an upcoming campus performance by R&B singer Kehlani because of her history of anti-Israel social media posts. He wrote in an email to Cornell affiliates that he had heard from many people who were “angry, hurt and confused” that the school’s annual spring music festival “would feature a performer who has espoused antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiments in performances, videos and on social media.” 

The quick decisions from administrators at Yale and Cornell to shut down anti-Israel activity reflect something of a vibe shift on American campuses. One year ago, anti-Israel encampments were, for a few weeks, de rigueur on campus quads across the nation. University leaders seemed paralyzed, unsure of how to handle protests that in many cases explicitly excluded Jewish or Zionist students and at times became violent. That’s a markedly different environment from what’s happening at those same schools so far this spring. 

“In general, protest activity is way down this year as compared to last year,” Hillel International CEO Adam Lehman told Jewish Insider. 

There is no single reason that protests have subsided. Jewish students, campus Jewish leaders and professionals at Jewish advocacy organizations attribute the change to a mix of factors: stricter consequences from university leaders, fear of running afoul of President Donald Trump’s pledge to deport pro-Hamas foreign students and the issue generally losing steam and cachet among easily distracted students. 

Last spring, an encampment at The George Washington University was only dismantled after the university faced threats from Congress. Now, no such protest is taking place — which Daniel Schwartz, a Jewish history professor, said was likely due in part to the “sense that the university was going to be responding much more fiercely to anything resembling what happened last year.” 

“For the most part, the enforcement of rules, the understanding of what the rules are, what you can do, what you can’t do, requiring people to get permits for protests, has really calmed things down [from] the sort of violence that we saw last year,” said Jordan Acker, a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan, who has faced antisemitic vandalism and targeted, personal protests from Michigan students.

Michael Simon, the executive director at Northwestern Hillel, came into the school year with a “big question mark” of how the school’s new policies, which provide strict guidance for student protests and the type of behavior allowed at them, would be applied. “I’m going to say it with a real hedging: at least up until now, I would say we’ve seen the lower end of what I would have expected,” he said of campus anti-Israel protests.

Many major universities like Northwestern spent last summer honing their campus codes of conduct and their regulations for student protests, making clear at the start of the school year that similar actions would not be tolerated again. In February, for instance, Barnard College expelled two students who loudly disrupted an Israeli history class at Columbia,. 

“For the most part, the enforcement of rules, the understanding of what the rules are, what you can do, what you can’t do, requiring people to get permits for protests, has really calmed things down [from] the sort of violence that we saw last year,” said Jordan Acker, a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan, who has faced antisemitic vandalism and targeted, personal protests from Michigan students.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has pressured top universities to crack down on antisemitic activity. The president’s threats to revoke federal funding if universities don’t get antisemitism under control has drawn pushback — Harvard is suing the Trump administration over its decision to withhold $2.2 billion in federal funds from the school — but it has also led universities to take action to address the problem. 

Sharon Nazarian, an adjunct professor at UCLA and the vice chair of the Anti-Defamation League’s board of directors, said there is “no question” that “the national atmosphere of fear among university administrators for castigation and targeting by the [Trump] administration is also present” at UCLA and other University of California campuses.

“My sense is that being anti-Israel is not as much of the popular thing anymore,” Evan Cohen, a senior at the University of Michigan, said at a Wednesday webinar hosted by Hillel International for Jewish high school seniors. “On my campus, there are other hot topic issues. There might be more focus on what’s happening with U.S. domestic politics.” 

Rule-breaking student activists also face a heightened risk of law enforcement action. A dozen anti-Israel student protesters were charged with felonies this month for vandalizing the Stanford University president’s office last June. On Wednesday, local, state and federal law enforcement officials in Michigan raided the homes of three people connected to anti-Israel protests at the University of Michigan. Protesters’ extreme tactics  have scared off some would-be allies.

“I think some of the most activist students went too far at the end of last year with the takeover of the president’s office and a lot of pretty intense graffiti in important places on campus,” said Rabbi Jessica Kirschner, the executive director of Hillel at Stanford. “I think a lot of other students looked at that and said, ‘Oh, this is perhaps not where we want to be.’”

Students’ priorities shift each year, and other issues beyond Israel are also vying for their attention. Trump’s policies targeting foreign students are drawing ire from students at liberal universities, many of which have large populations of international students.

“My sense is that being anti-Israel is not as much of the popular thing anymore,” Evan Cohen, a senior at the University of Michigan, said at a Wednesday webinar hosted by Hillel International for Jewish high school seniors. “On my campus, there are other hot topic issues. There might be more focus on what’s happening with U.S. domestic politics.” 

But the lack of protests does not mean that campus life has returned to normal for Jewish students, many of whom still fear — and face — opprobrium for their pro-Israel views.

“It’s easy to avoid the protests but if you are an Israeli student or a Jewish student perceived to be a Zionist, you should expect to be discriminated against in social spaces at the university,” Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel, told JI. “That is the most powerful way students are impacted by all of this.”

Ken Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which since Oct. 7 has represented dozens of Jewish students in Title VI civil rights cases against their universities, said that campus-related lawsuits are only faintly slowing down this semester. 

“A lot of the staff and the administration think that, ‘OK, since there’s no protest outside, all the Jewish students must feel OK, and let’s put all this stuff that happened in the spring behind us.’ It’s really not the case,” said Or Yahalom, a senior at Northwestern University who was born in Israel. “That doesn’t mean that it’s all better for students. Jewish students are increasingly afraid to speak openly about their identity or connection to Israel, except in private, safe Jewish spaces.”

“Some campuses have been less intense than during last year’s historically awful period, but others have been bad enough,” Marcus told JI. “I believe that the federal crackdown, coupled with the impact of lawsuits and Title VI cases, has had a favorable impact at many campuses, but the problems have hardly gone away.”

Or Yahalom, a senior at Northwestern University who was born in Israel, recently attended a dinner with Northwestern President Michael Schill, who has faced criticism from Jewish Northwestern affiliates — including several members of its antisemitism advisory committee — for what they saw as the administration’s failure to adequately address antisemitism. 

“A lot of the staff and the administration think that, ‘OK, since there’s no protest outside, all the Jewish students must feel OK, and let’s put all this stuff that happened in the spring behind us.’ It’s really not the case,” said Yahalom. “That doesn’t mean that it’s all better for students. Jewish students are increasingly afraid to speak openly about their identity or connection to Israel, except in private, safe Jewish spaces.” 

Even without massive encampments, disruptive anti-Israel protests and campus actions have not gone away entirely, though they have been more infrequent this academic year. A Northwestern academic building housing the school’s Holocaust center was vandalized with “DEATH TO ISRAEL” graffiti last week. The office of Joseph Pelzman, an economist at The George Washington University who authored a plan calling for the U.S. to relocate Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and redevelop the enclave, was vandalized in February. The Georgetown University Student Government Association is slated to hold a campus-wide referendum on university divestment from companies and academic institutions with ties to Israel at the end of the month. Smaller-scale protests continue at Columbia, with students chaining themselves to the Manhattan university’s main gate this week to protest the ICE detention of ​​Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil, two foreign students who had led protests last year. 

Leaders of the University of Michigan’s anti-Israel coalition held a sham trial for the university president and Board of Regents members in the middle of the Diag, the main campus quad, this week. The event took place without issue, and the activists left when it ended. 

“I wouldn’t want to say that it’s perfect,” said Acker, the Board of Regents member. “But it’s certainly much better than a year ago.” 

The school year isn’t over. Some students at Columbia are planning to erect another encampment this month, NBC News reported on Wednesday. 

But they’ll be doing so at an institution with new leadership, weeks after Columbia reached an agreement with the Trump administration, where the Ivy League university pledged to take stronger action against antisemitism to avoid a massive funding cut. The pressure on Columbia to crack down on any encampment will be massive.

Harvard University filed suit against the Trump administration on Monday in response to its multibillion-dollar cuts to the university — which came in part due to what the White House perceives as a failure to combat the rise of antisemitism that has roiled the Ivy League’s campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. 

The filing, which argues that the funding freeze violates the First Amendment by “imposing viewpoint-based conditions on Harvard’s funding,” comes one day after the Trump administration reportedly planned to cut another $1 billion in federal grants and contracts from Harvard. The administration had already cut $2.2 billion last week and has put a total of $9 billion of its funding under review. 

An April 11 letter from the Trump administration called for reforms to Harvard’s governance structure, its hiring of faculty, its admissions policies and its approach to antisemitism, with stringent federal reporting requirements. Demands were expected to be implemented by August. Attorneys for Harvard responded that President Donald Trump’s reforms “go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.” Harvard University President Alan Garber said the school would not comply with the “illegal demands.” 

In the 51-page complaint filed in federal court in Massachusetts, Harvard’s lawyers wrote that “the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: Allow the Government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions.” The lawsuit names as defendants several members of the Trump administration including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary; Linda McMahon, the education secretary; Stephen Ehikian, acting administrator of the General Services Administration; and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Garber argued in a university-wide statement on Monday that the Trump administration’s demands were part of a campaign against Harvard under the guise of combating campus antisemitism. 

“Before taking punitive action, the law requires that the federal government engage with us about the ways we are fighting and will continue to fight antisemitism,” he wrote. “Instead, the government’s April 11 demands seek to control whom we hire and what we teach.”

“The government has cited the University’s response to antisemitism as a justification for its unlawful action,” Garber wrote. “As a Jew and as an American, I know very well that there are valid concerns about rising antisemitism. To address it effectively requires understanding, intention, and vigilance. Harvard takes that work seriously. We will continue to fight hate with the urgency it demands as we fully comply with our obligations under the law. That is not only our legal responsibility. It is our moral imperative.” 

Garber said the university would “soon” release the delayed final reports of the two presidential task forces on combating antisemitism and Islamophobia, which were originally slated to be released during the fall 2024 semester. 

Jewish faculty, alumni and students at Harvard — including some who have been outspoken against Harvard’s handling of antisemitism over the past year and a half — are watching with concern as the White House targets the Ivy League institution and the university prepares to battle with the Trump administration.

The Trump administration announced on Monday that it would be canceling $2.2 billion in federal funds to Harvard University after President Alan Garber said he would not cede to its demands. Many Jewish Harvard affiliates are wary of Trump’s aggressive intrusion into academia, while also calling for Harvard to take stronger action to address antisemitism. 

An April 11 letter from the Trump administration called for reforms to Harvard’s governance structure, its hiring of faculty, its admissions policies and its approach to antisemitism, with stringent federal reporting requirements, with all demands expected to be implemented by August. Attorneys for Harvard responded that Trump’s demands “go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.” 

“The second Trump letter had demands that could charitably be called ridiculous, and the Trump administration must have known that Garber would have no choice but to reject them,” Jesse Fried, a Harvard Law School professor who has spoken publicly about increasing antisemitism and anti-Zionism at Harvard after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, told Jewish Insider. “They say that Trump is the great divider, but I’ve never seen anybody unify the Harvard faculty as successfully as he has.”

Rabbi David Wolpe, who was a visiting faculty member at Harvard Divinity School from 2023-2024, said he has no problem “with the general goals that are laid out” in Trump’s letter. But, Wolpe added, “I think this is a letter that will have a lot of unintended consequences, and it seems to me an overreach.” 

“I think there are people in the Trump administration — one or two of whom I’ve spoken to — who I know that this is a genuine cause of the heart for them, I have no doubt about that,” Wolpe said. “But I think there are a lot of other agendas swirling around that are not directly concerned with antisemitism.” 

Jewish leaders on Harvard’s campus called on the university to implement some of the federal government’s suggestions to crackdown on antisemitism, even if the university rejects making a formal deal with Trump.  

“Considering that there is wide support in the Harvard community and beyond for many of these policies and changes, they should have been put into place long ago,” Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who leads Harvard Chabad, told JI. “It’s our hope that in wanting to demonstrate its independence, Harvard will not delay implementing further necessary changes, because an authority is trying to impose it on them.” 

Former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who is still a professor at the university, praised Garber for “resisting extralegal and unreasonable demands from the federal government.” But just because Trump’s approach is the wrong one, Summers argued in a post on X, that doesn’t mean Harvard should ignore the issues raised in his letter.

“The wrongness of federal demands must not obscure the need for major reform to combat antisemitism, to promote genuine truth seeking, to venerate excellence and to ensure ideological diversity,” wrote Summers, who has been critical of Harvard’s handling of antisemitism after Oct. 7. 

One Harvard senior who has sharply criticized Harvard’s response to campus antisemitism, Jacob Miller, argued that Trump’s “crusade against Harvard” seeks to “hobble” the university, “the same way he has sought to incapacitate other perceived political enemies, including a number of law firms.”

Alex Bernat, a senior who is co-president of the Harvard Chabad Undergraduate Board, said that if Harvard is set on resisting the government’s demands, “then it is imperative Harvard release the steps they will take to further fix antisemitism here.”

Bernat praised some of the recent changes Harvard made in an attempt to combat antisemitism ahead of the government’s reforms, such as last month’s firing of two controversial heads of the university’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

“But [that is] not enough by any means and I’d like to see a concrete plan, whether developed internally at Harvard or agreed upon with the government,” he continued. “Additionally, I think Harvard ought to be careful about failing to take a given appropriate action merely because it was recommended from outside the university.” 

One nonprofit representing Harvard alumni calling for the school to make changes focused on promoting academic excellence, the 1636 Forum, has been highly critical of Harvard’s handling of campus protests after Oct. 7. 1636 Forum co-founder Allison Wu, a Harvard Business School alumna, said Garber should use this opportunity to clarify what reforms he will take.

“Harvard could benefit from publicly articulating a concrete roadmap for internal reforms and showing it can make swift, meaningful progress on that plan — even in the face of internal resistance or inertia,” Wu told JI. 

Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel, declined to weigh in on the issue. 

The funding freeze is already affecting major research projects at Harvard. Jeff Fredberg, a professor emeritus at the Harvard School of Public Health, has been meeting weekly with Jewish public health students, researchers and faculty over the past year, and the feeling among them now “is one of fear and depression.” 

“They’ve dedicated their whole life to this, and now I’m hearing from them, ‘What am I going to do? There are not going to be positions, or my lab is going to get closed, or has been closed,’” said Fredberg, who started meeting with the group amid increasing antisemitism within the public health field. He worries the federal actions will backfire for budding Jewish scientists. “These Jewish students are afraid there’s going to be a backlash, because the sciences are going to take the body blows on this, and ‘It’s going to be because of the Jews.’”

Harvard’s attorneys made clear the university will fight Trump, although the school has not yet announced plans to file litigation against the federal government. The Trump administration’s antisemitism task force stated on Monday that it will not let up on its demands.

“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges — that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws,” the task force wrote in a press release announcing the funding pause. “It is time for elite universities to take the problem seriously and commit to meaningful change if they wish to continue receiving taxpayer support.” 

Trump added to Harvard’s worries on Tuesday by threatening to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status for “pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness.’” 

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.” 

Two heads of Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies were let go from their roles on Wednesday amid intensive scrutiny of the field from congressional leaders and the Trump administration. 

The center’s director and professor of Turkish studies Cemal Kafadar, and its associate director, history professor Rosie Bsheer, were both removed from their posts, The Harvard Crimson reported on Friday. Global health professor Salmaan Keshavjee — the center’s interim director while Kafadar was on leave — will remain in his position. 

A 2024 report from the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance took aim at the center for broadcasting the view that “the Palestinian people are innocent victims of Jewish (white) oppression and that known terrorist groups are simply ‘political movements.’” 

The report stated that Kafadar and Bsheer, who both will remain in their faculty positions, curated a list of roughly 60 resources for students with the expressed purpose to “offer analyses and histories of expulsion, occupation, settler colonialism, forced evictions, home demolitions, and annexation that situate the current struggle as part of the ongoing Nakba of 1948 and in relation to the Naksa of 1967.” An anonymous student quoted in the report singled out Kafadar for allegedly telling his students to attend pro-Palestinian teach-ins. 

Derek Penslar, a historian and the director of Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies — who shortly after Oct. 7 sparked controversy for comments he made minimizing concerns over antisemitism at Harvard and accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing — has remained a faculty affiliate of the Center for Middle Eastern studies. 

Before the firings were announced, Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who leads Harvard Chabad, told Jewish Insider on Thursday: “Heading an academic center is a privilege and responsibility which they have demonstrated by their own actions and rhetoric that they are simply unworthy of or qualified for.” 

Zarchi went on: “The individuals heading these centers have betrayed every standard and academic principle in their roles; thus, completely disqualifying themselves from the ability to advance scholarship, and most certainly, the qualifications to advance human rights broadly.”

The center also came under fire from former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who wrote on X earlier this month that a February panel billed as “Israel’s war in Lebanon” was “very likely” antisemitic under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which Harvard agreed to implement as part of a resolution to two Title VI lawsuits in January. 

The crackdown on Middle Eastern studies at Harvard comes just days after Columbia University agreed to a set of demands from the Trump administration — including putting the school’s Middle Eastern studies department under a “receivership,” which would involve closer oversight from an external body. Columbia agreed to the supervision as a first step to beginning talks for the federal government to restore $400 million in grants and contracts that were pulled due to Columbia’s alleged failure to respond to rising antisemitism. 

As the Trump administration’s pressure campaign on elite universities continues, Columbia and Yale also saw significant employee changes on Friday. 

Columbia University’s interim President Katrina Armstrong stepped down after seven months in the role — having replaced former President Minouche Shafik, who faced calls to resign in part due to her responses to questions about antisemitism during a congressional hearing last year. 

Armstrong will return to her previous position as chief executive of Columbia’s Irving Medical Center. Board of trustees co-chair Claire Shipman, a former ABC News correspondent, has been appointed acting president. 

Yale Law School, meanwhile, said it terminated Helyeh Doutaghi, an associate research scholar and deputy director of the law and political economy project at Yale since 2023, for her membership in the designated terrorist network Samidoun, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s fundraising arm in North America. 

Harvard’s School of Public Health announced on Wednesday that it had suspended a formal collaboration with Birzeit University, a Palestinian university in the West Bank that has faced scrutiny for its ties to Palestinian terror groups. 

A May 2024 report from the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance raised concerns about the public health school’s relationship with Birzeit, saying the partnership magnifies “false narratives and hate.” A group of 28 House Republicans called for Harvard to cut ties with Birzeit last summer.

“While we were disappointed that it took this long for Harvard to suspend relations with a university that, among other misdeeds, blatantly discriminates against Israeli Jews by barring them from campus, elects would-be terrorists to student government and hosts Hamas and PFLP parades on campus, we are gratified that they have finally done it and hope that their review of the relationship will lead them to recognize a permanent termination,” HJAA’s president, Eric Fleiss, told Jewish Insider. 

After the recent expiration of a memorandum of understanding between Harvard and Birzeit, Harvard made the choice to not automatically renew it, as the university institutes a regular review of its Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. 

“With the MOU halted, the formal institution-to-institution collaboration between Harvard Chan School [of Public Health] and the Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University is on pause, though individual scholars can and do continue to collaborate,” a Harvard spokesperson said on Thursday. 

A decision has not yet been made whether the pause will become permanent, according to the spokesperson. The FXB Center’s Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights will continue to exist, even as the Birzeit relationship is examined.

The move comes as President Donald Trump has taken aim at universities’ handling of antisemitism and as Columbia University has agreed to adopt greater oversight of its Middle Eastern studies department after the Trump administration raised concerns of anti-Israel bias in its courses and among its faculty. Some universities, fearing repercussions from the Trump administration, have begun to make changes and concessions in anticipation of greater federal scrutiny. 

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.

Harvard University has agreed to implement the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism as part of a resolution to two Title VI lawsuits that it settled in federal court in Boston.

One of the lawsuits, filed in May by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education, alleged that since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, students and faculty on campus have called for violence against Jews and celebrated Hamas’ terrorism as the university ignored harassment — including a physical assault — of Jewish students. 

The other suit was filed in January 2024 by Students Against Antisemitism, a group of six Jewish Harvard students, who alleged the school had not protected them from “severe and pervasive” campus antisemitism. In November, a judge consolidated the two lawsuits after Harvard unsuccessfully moved to dismiss both.   

In addition to adopting IHRA, Harvard agreed to prepare a public annual report for the next five years that covers its response to violations of the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination and harassment based on national origin. It also agreed to provide clarification on its website that Jewish and Israeli students are covered by Harvard’s existing Non-Discrimination and Anti-Bullying Policies. 

The May complaint, a copy of which was first obtained by Jewish Insider, stated that Harvard allowed student protesters to occupy and vandalize buildings, and interrupt classes and exams. “Professors, too, have explicitly supported Jewish and Israeli terrorism, and spread antisemitic propaganda in their classes,” according to a Brandeis Center statement. “Jewish students are bullied and spat on, intimidated, and threatened, and subject to verbal and physical harassment.”  

“This settlement agreement is a major advance for students at Harvard University,” Ken Marcus, founder of the Brandeis Center, told JI. “We expect that it will have an extraordinary impact for colleges and universities around the country. There is now a Harvard standard that other colleges will need to strive to meet.” 

Marcus called Harvard’s agreement to incorporate IHRA — and to use it explicitly in its anti-discrimination policy — “critical.”  

“Harvard isn’t the first university in the U.S. to agree to do this, but certainly the most prominent,” Marcus said. “We expect that their lead will now be followed elsewhere.”  

Harvard said it would also invest additional academic resources to study antisemitism and will establish another partnership with a university in Israel, in addition to programs the university currently has in place with Israeli universities.

“We routinely hear from ill-informed university administrators that they make a strong distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism,” Marcus said. “The fact is that rules against Zionists are rules against Jews. That’s a battle we’re fighting around the country [and] having support from Harvard’s new policy will help us in that respect as well.”  

“Today’s settlement reflects Harvard’s enduring commitment to ensuring our Jewish students, faculty, and staff are embraced, respected, and supported,” a Harvard spokesperson said in a statement. “We will continue to strengthen our policies, systems, and operations to combat antisemitism and all forms of hate and ensure all members of the Harvard community have the support they need to pursue their academic, research and professional work and feel they belong on our campus and in our classrooms.” The spokesperson declined to provide further comment to JI. 

Shabbos Kestenbaum, the lead plaintiff in the SAA lawsuit and a recent graduate of the Harvard Divinity School, refused to join the settlement agreement and will pursue additional litigation with new counsel, The Harvard Crimson reported. 

Several other universities nationwide have settled antisemitism complaints in recent weeks as President Donald Trump, who has threatened that universities could lose accreditation and federal support if they fail to address rising levels of antisemitism on campus, returns to the White House. 

A federal lawsuit against Harvard University that alleges the school has ignored the harassment of Jewish students for more than a year is set to begin after a U.S. District Court judge on Tuesday rejected Harvard’s request for dismissal, but denied claims that the school directly discriminated against Jewish and Israeli students. 

Filed in May in federal court in Boston by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education, the lawsuit alleges that since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, students and faculty on campus have called for violence against Jews and celebrated Hamas’ terrorism daily as the university did nothing to stop harassment —- including a physical assault — of Jewish students. Five months earlier, the group filed a previous complaint against the university’s John F. Kennedy School of Government for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The lawsuit, which was first reported by JI, states that Harvard allowed student protesters to occupy and vandalize buildings, and interrupt classes and exams. “Professors, too, have… spread antisemitic propaganda in their classes,” according to a Brandeis Center statement in May. “Jewish students are bullied and spat on, intimidated, and threatened, and subject to verbal and physical harassment.” 

In Tuesday’s decision, Judge Robert Stearns wrote that to prove deliberate indifference, plaintiffs must plead that the school “either did nothing or failed to take additional reasonable measures after it learned that its initial remedies were ineffective.”

In a statement, a university spokesperson said, “Harvard has and will continue to take concrete steps to address the root causes of antisemitism on campus and protect our Jewish and Israeli students, ensuring they may pursue their education free from harassment and discrimination. We appreciate that the Court dismissed the claim that Harvard directly discriminated or retaliated against members of our community, and we understand that the court considers it too early to make determinations on other claims. Harvard is confident that once the facts in this case are made clear, it will be evident that Harvard has taken significant steps to strengthen and clarify our policies and procedures, as well as engage our community around civil dialogue to bridge divides.”

Tuesday’s decision came just days after the House Committee on Education and the Workforce released a more than 100-page report on its year-long probe of antisemitism on U.S. college campuses, including Columbia and Northwestern University. On Harvard’s campus, according to the report, two days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Harvard administrators failed to explicitly condemn the Hamas attack and drew equivalences between the attack and Israel’s response in an Oct. 9 statement. The report also brought to light that no Harvard students have been suspended for antisemitic activity; in some cases, students who were initially suspended had their suspensions downgraded to probation. And the vast majority of students placed on probation for their involvement with an encampment at Harvard had their probation periods shortened. 

The lawsuit comes amid a separate case, filed in federal court by six Jewish Harvard students who allege the school has not protected them from “severe and pervasive” campus antisemitism. In August, Stearns ruled that case would also go to trial, despite throwing out a similar lawsuit filed by Jewish students at MIT alleging that the school didn’t do enough to curb antisemitism on campus just days earlier. At the time, Stearns wrote that the plaintiffs “plausibly establish that Harvard’s response failed Title VI’s commands.”

“Harvard’s motion to dismiss was the biggest potential procedural obstacle to our case, and I’m delighted that we’ve cleared that obstacle and are headed toward discovery and trial,” Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Brandeis Center, and former U.S. assistant secretary of education in the Bush and Trump administrations, told Jewish Insider.  

The decision on Tuesday “provides further indication of the extent of the problems at Harvard and reasons why that institution needs to be held accountable,” Marcus said. “Harvard has to realize that with this lawsuit pending, they need to take much more seriously the problems that Jewish students are facing on campus.”

Following the congressional report, it’s “all too clear that major universities aren’t responding effectively enough to antisemitism,” Marcus said. 

“That should be a message,” he continued, “not just to Harvard, but also to other institutions.” 

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.

Less than a week after throwing out a lawsuit filed by Jewish students at MIT alleging that the school didn’t do enough to curb antisemitism on campus, U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns ruled on Tuesday that a similar suit against Harvard will go to trial.

The suit against Harvard was filed in federal court by six Jewish Harvard students who allege the school has not protected them from “severe and pervasive” campus antisemitism. Both cases allege violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; Stearns ruled that the MIT students hadn’t shown that their civil rights were violated, but that the Harvard students had.

Shabbos Kestenbaum, a recent Harvard Divinity School graduate, was the only named plaintiff in the lawsuit. “Today’s decision affirms that Jewish students are well within their right to hold their universities accountable,” Kestenbaum told Jewish Insider. 

In the 25-page ruling, Stearns, a federal judge in Massachusetts, wrote that “in many instances” Harvard did not respond to “an eruption of antisemitism” on campus, citing its failure to take disciplinary measures against “offending students and faculty.”

“In other words, the facts as pled show that Harvard failed its Jewish students,” Stearns wrote.

Lawrence Summers, the former president of Harvard, noted the significance of Stearns’ Harvard ruling. “Very significant that a highly respected progressive federal judge… who dismissed the anti Semitism lawsuit against MIT has allowed the case against Harvard to proceed saying that ‘the facts as pled show that Harvard failed its Jewish students,’” Summers wrote on X.

Summers said that it remains to be seen how the Harvard Corporation, the university’s main governing body, will respond. “The challenge is before Harvard President Alan Garber. I hope, trust and expect he will move beyond the tepid and inadequate preliminary task force report,” he said of a six-page set of preliminary recommendations released in June by a university task force focused on combating antisemitism at the school. Several Jewish leaders told JI at the time that they were disappointed by the suggestions. 

The lawsuit comes on the heels of a separate case, filed in January, that alleged Harvard violated Title VI. In May, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Right Under Law filed a federal lawsuit stating that since the Title VI complaint, “things have only gotten worse.” 

Stearns wrote in Tuesday’s decision that the plaintiffs “plausibly establish that Harvard’s response failed Title VI’s commands.”

Kestenbaum expects there to be a deposition ahead of trial — as long as the university does not settle — and told JI that a date had not yet been set.

“People have often asked me, when looking at antisemitism on college campuses, if the golden age of American Jewry is over,” he said. “My answer is simple: not without a fight.” 

Following months in which anti-Israel protests overwhelmed Harvard University’s campus, the school’s administration has drafted a new set of rules that would prohibit daytime and overnight camping, excessive noise, unapproved signage and chalk or paint displays on campus property, the elite college announced earlier this week in a draft document first obtained by the Harvard Crimson. 

The six-page document, which was approved by Harvard’s Office of General Counsel and the Working Group on Campus Space, comes months after illegal anti-Israel student encampments overtook the campus for several weeks in the spring. Most of the policies outlined in the new document draw on existing Harvard policies that went largely unenforced last semester. 

“Not only were most of these new policies not actually new, but have been repeatedly violated by students in an effort to harass Jews,” Shabbos Kestenbaum, a recent Harvard graduate who is suing the university over its handling of campus antisemitism, told Jewish Insider. 

“These rules mean little when there is neither enforcement nor discipline for those breaking them,” said Kestenbaum, who spoke last month at the Republican National Convention about his experience with antisemitism on Harvard’s campus. 

Former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, in a statement, echoed Kestenbaum’s skepticism that the school will enforce the new policies.  

“These policies, like many that have been promulgated, are fine and reasonable,” Summers said. “The issue is that the university, over the last year, has consistently failed to act and impose sanctions when policies are violated and has been slow to implement policies on behalf of Jewish student groups. That is why it is subject to multiple federal government investigations and civil suits.” 

The draft document, a copy of which has been obtained by JI, has not been finalized or broadly shared with the Harvard community. Jason Newton, a university spokesperson, emphasized to the Crimson that the university is still finishing writing the policies and the document is subject to change. “Once the document is finalized, it will be shared with the Harvard community,” he said. 

The initial document says that it is designed to “foster the well-being of community members and to preserve these resources for future generations” and warns that violations of the policy could result in punishment.

According to the draft policy, students or groups that fail to comply with the campus use guidelines “may be held financially responsible for any resulting costs incurred and may be subject to other consequences for noncompliance, including referral for discipline.”

MILWAUKEE — Four years ago, Shabbos Kestenbaum, a recent Harvard graduate who is suing the university over its handling of campus antisemitism, was a self-described progressive Democrat who voted for Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for president.

Now, the 25-year-old is poised to take the stage tonight at the Republican National Convention here in Milwaukee, where he will recount the experiences of Jewish students at Harvard amid a sharp rise in antisemitic activity sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and its war in Gaza, among other issues.

It’s a striking evolution for Kestenbaum, an Orthodox Jew from the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale who graduated from Harvard Divinity School in May and has been outspoken in recent months against his alma mater as well as what he has criticized as his own party’s failure to counter antisemitism and maintain strong support for Israel.

But the decision to accept an invitation to speak at the RNC, he insisted, is more a reflection of what he has described as his alienation from a party he once viewed as a political home — rather than an explicit endorsement of former President Donald Trump’s GOP.

“As Ronald Reagan said, ‘I didn’t abandon the Democratic Party — the Democratic Party abandoned me,’” Kestenbaum told Jewish Insider on Wednesday in an interview outside the Fiserv Forum, the main convention hall, hours before his speech.

Kestenbaum explained that he still believes in “progressive policy,” referencing his support for a $15 minimum wage and universal health care. “But Israel’s a progressive issue,” he said. “It’s a bastion of liberalism in an unstable region, and I cannot understand why my party — the one I registered to vote with the day I turned 18 — has turned its back on this important ally.”

“Unfortunately, electoral politics is binary — one person will win and one person will lose,” he added. “But there should be some nuance, and there should be recognition from Republicans and Democrats alike that we need to work together to instill basic common-sense policies. Combating antisemitism is one of them.”

Kestenbaum declined to confirm which party he would support in November, even as the Trump campaign said in announcing his speech last week that he “will be voting for” the former president “for the first time this year.”

Instead, he told JI, “I will be supporting Donald Trump’s policies to tax university endowments, to expel students who violate our foreign visa policies and to instill patriotism in our school systems yet again,” using language from the newly approved GOP platform. 

He also voiced approval of Trump’s handling of anti-Jewish discrimination while in office, saying his federal lawsuit against Harvard — filed with five other Jewish students — had been made possible thanks to the former president’s executive order calling on government departments enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism.

“It’s because of his classification of Title VI that we’re able to proceed,” Kestenbaum said, noting that he next will be in court on July 24 for a hearing to address Harvard’s motion to dismiss the case.

During his time in Milwaukee, Kestenbaum said he has felt a “very strong connection with Jews and non-Jews alike, good, everyday Americans who’ve come up to me in the last day and a half I’ve been here and said, ‘We stand with the Jewish people — we’re praying for you guys.’ That’s incredible.”

“There was a remark last night that if someone were to mention the State of Israel at the RNC, there would be an applause,” he recalled of a speech by Matt Brooks, the CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition. “If you mentioned the State of Israel at the DNC, there would probably be heckles and boos. That’s a very damning indictment on the state of my party.”

But even as he spoke positively of his experience at the convention, Kestenbaum — among a handful of current and former Jewish students addressing the crowd this week — expressed strong reservations about the GOP’s decision to give prominent placement to several speakers who have espoused antisemitic rhetoric, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Tucker Carlson.

“I think it’s important to have a big tent, but not a tent so big whereby it includes bigots, antisemites and those who sow division,” he said, arguing that Greene and Carlson, among others, “represent the worst aspects of our politics. They should have no place in the Republican Party, and they should have no place at the Republican Convention.”

For his part, Kestenbaum said he has faced severe criticism in recent days over his upcoming speech, including from within the Jewish community. “It’s very difficult,” he said. “I think people are assuming my politics. They’re saying things that I never said.”

His response: “If they want to criticize, fine,” he told JI. “But more importantly, join me in the fight to combat antisemitism on our college campuses.”

At the @GOPconvention, @ShabbosK: "Too often students at @Harvard are taught not how to think, but what to think. I found myself immersed in a culture that is anti-western, that is anti-American, and is antisemitic."

Read more: https://t.co/eHdudetyRq pic.twitter.com/CIvZs2RGZu

— Jewish Insider (@J_Insider) July 18, 2024

In a new letter to interim Harvard President Alan Garber sent on Monday, 28 Republican House members, led by Reps. Tim Walberg (R-MI) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY), said that the Harvard antisemitism task force’s recent preliminary recommendations on responding to campus antisemitism don’t go nearly far enough to address the situation on the campus.

The lawmakers said they have “serious concerns regarding the inadequacy” of the recommendations, which are “weaker, less detailed, and less comprehensive” than those presented by a previous task force in December 2023. Harvard Jewish leaders and alumni have said they’re disappointed by the recommendations, released in late June.

“Instead of offering a tangible plan to address antisemitism at Harvard, the task force’s most specific and actionable recommendations are to organize public talks on respectful dialogue and religious relations, increase the availability of hot kosher meals, and to circulate guidance about accommodating Jewish religious observance and a calendar of Jewish holidays,” the letter reads.

It calls the recommendations “particularly alarming given that Harvard’s leaders had already received a strong, detailed, and comprehensive set of recommendations” from the previous task force, arguing that the current group should have built on that framework.

The lawmakers said that Garber needs to “publicly address” criticisms of the task force from Jewish community members, adopt and begin to implement the recommendations from both task forces before the next semester and sever Harvard’s relationship with Birzeit University in the West Bank, whose student government and administration have expressed support for Hamas.

The letter states that the task force was correct to support disciplinary action and condemnation in response to the “serious problem with antisemitism” on Harvard’s campus but did not “offer real solutions for doing so.” It also accuses the task force of giving “insufficient attention” to Harvard’s “failures in imposing discipline for antisemitic misconduct.”

The lawmakers said that the task force “left numerous other significant issues wholly unaddressed,” such as academic programs that have seen significant issues with anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment, student groups’ violations of Harvard rules, failures by Harvard’s Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging office to address antisemitism, falling Jewish enrollment, a lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty on the Middle East, masked protests and possible foreign influence.

They further said that the university “has a consistent practice of balancing statements and efforts regarding antisemitism with similar ones regarding Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias.”

“While hatred and discrimination against Muslims and Arabs is deplorable and must be addressed, there is simply no comparison between the explosion of pervasive antisemitism on Harvard’s campus and instances of Islamophobia or anti-Arab bias,” the Republicans continued. “These constant attempts at balancing serve to trivialize antisemitism and distract from the urgency and severity of the problem.”

Other signatories to the letter include Reps. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), Jim Banks (R-IN), Aaron Bean (R-FL), Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), Anthony D’Esposito (D-NY), Randy Feenstra (R-IA), Russell Fry (R-SC), Lance Gooden (R-TX), Michael Guest (R-MS), Erin Houchin (R-IN), Ronny Jackson (R-TX), Nick LaLota (R-NY), Nick Langworthy (R-NY), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Mariannete Miller-Meeks (R-IA), Burgess Owens (R-UT), Keith Self (R-TX), Pete Sessions (R-TX), Jason Smith (R-MO), Lloyd Smucker (R-PA), Michelle Steel (R-CA), Claudia Tenney (R-NY), Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), Randy Weber (R-TX) and Rudy Yakym (R-IN).

Harvard’s decision on Tuesday to reverse the suspensions of five students for participating in the illegal anti-Israel encampments earlier this year on the Cambridge, Mass., campus was met with “disappointment” by two leaders of Harvard’s Jewish community.

“I’m disappointed in this action. I’ve heard the phrase ‘no good deed goes unpunished’ but it seems in this case that no good deed goes unreversed,” Rabbi David Wolpe, a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Divinity School who stepped down from Harvard’s antisemitism advisory committee after a short stint, told Jewish Insider. “Punishment is a lesson — reversing it is a permission.”

Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who leads Chabad on Harvard’s campus, said the reversal was “revealing and deeply disturbing.” Zarchi added that it’s “sadly clear” the move will embolden anti-Israel demonstrators.

That may have already taken place, judging by a joint Instagram post from the Palestine Solidarity Committee, Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine and the African and African American Resistance Organization. “After sustained student and faculty organizing, Harvard has caved in, showing that student intifada will always prevail,” the groups wrote on Wednesday.

The suspensions and other disciplinary charges — which included the withholding of degrees for 13 seniors because of their involvement in the encampment — were initially announced in late May ahead of graduation. Hundreds of students and faculty members walked out of Harvard’s commencement ceremony in solidarity with the punished students. 

According to the Harvard Crimson, the university informed students on Tuesday of their updated disciplinary charges, which saw the suspensions downgraded to probations of varying lengths and came as a result of the Faculty Council’s criticism of how the Harvard College Administrative Board dealt with the cases.

The most severe probation charge will last for just one semester, a drastic change from the initial punishments that required at least one student to withdraw from Harvard for three semesters. Some students who were initially placed on probation in May also had the length of their probations shortened.

A Harvard spokesperson told JI that the university does not comment on individual disciplinary cases. According to the policy outlined in the Harvard College Student Handbook, students in the disciplinary process who seek to challenge the outcome have two options: “reconsideration,” which is adjudicated by the administrative board and is for new and relevant information that was not initially made available; or  “appeals,” which is adjudicated by the Faculty Council. 

According to the handbook, “appeals” is for situations where the Administrative Board or Honor Council made a procedural error that may impact the disciplinary decision or when the punishment was determined to be inconsistent or inappropriate compared to past sanctions. 

Wolpe, along with other Harvard Jewish leaders and alumni, expressed disappointment to JI last month as well, when a six-page set of preliminary recommendations released by the university task force focused on combating antisemitism at the school fell short of their expectations. 

Between mini-lectures on monetary policy and the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence in a Thursday talk at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Larry Summers, the former Harvard president and Treasury secretary, offered a sweeping denunciation of higher education’s failure to take moral stances, particularly as antisemitism on American campuses has become widespread. 

Summers offered this rebuke amid a monologue about the role of universities in taking positions on controversial issues, arguing that academics should be allowed to say what they want — even “offensively antisemitic things” — but that university leaders and their boards similarly have an obligation to respond, making clear that they reject such extreme views.

“Being brilliant is different from being wise,” Summers said, earning cheers from the audience. “I look at the dialogues that take place on many of these campuses, I see things like the virulent antisemitism professed by people who are really eminent scholars. I don’t agree with the Bill Ackman world that tends to think that because they’ve said some offensively antisemitic things they shouldn’t get to be great scholars. But I sure think universities should make clear that it, as an institution, doesn’t approve of what they’re saying, and it certainly isn’t going to allow them to speak for it.” 

Instead, Summers added, he has seen the opposite. “I think there’s been an abdication of responsibility pretty universally on the part of university trustees to meet this responsibility, and I think ultimately they are the ultimate fiduciaries of these institutions, and I think for the most part they have failed,” said Summers.

He did not specifically name Harvard in those remarks, although he has at times sharply criticized the university’s handling of the campus climate after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel that sparked a wave of antisemitism and fervent protests.

Summers’ comments came a day after Harvard released an interim report from its campus antisemitism committee with an early set of recommendations about how to improve the situation on campus. The report faced criticism from some in the Jewish community, including Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who said the document was “glaringly missing what is exposed and visible for all to see.”

Now an economics professor at Harvard, Summers agreed: “I did not object to anything that was in the antisemitism task force report,” he said. But he pointed out several items that he thought were conspicuously absent.

“I couldn’t help but notice that a component of Harvard has entered into a partnership with a West Bank university that supports terrorism and that was not referred to; that another component of Harvard has come pretty close to calling Israel war criminals on behalf to the university and that was not referenced in the task force; that fairly obvious inadequacies of discipline were not referenced in the task force,” said Summers, who said he would “measure my words” in discussing the report. “This was an interim report, and we have to hope that the return — that the performance will be much better on the final than it was on the midterm.”

New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, who moderated the conversation with Summers, asked him why he thinks antisemitism has become so common on many campuses. Summers started with an acknowledgment that antisemitism is not a new phenomenon for universities — “there’s been 3,000 years of history of antisemitism, and antisemitism is an important part of the history of great universities in the United States” — but ultimately pointed the blame at leftist ideologies.

“I think in terms of understanding the current antisemitism, it is basically that whatever your intersectionality left ideology is, brown versus white, rich versus poor, European versus non-European, whatever it is, Israel has become the focus of it,” said Summers. “Those ideologies have come to have immense attractiveness on the left and on college campuses.” 

Summers then suggested a point of introspection for those who “really and honestly think that human rights for Palestinians and opportunities for Palestinians are the central challenge of our time, so that they should be the defining thing of what’s happening at universities.” 

“If you are a person who discourses at great length on that topic, and never mentions — never — either the injustices that are happening to other peoples, or the sins of others besides the Israelis with respect to the Palestinians,” said Summers, “I have to say that your motives are deeply, deeply suspect and that is a comment on many, many people on our college campuses, including some who lead them.”

The role of great institutions of higher education, Summers argued, is to create space for big conversations and future leaders, rather than setting the agenda for them.

“It is enough to provide the intellectual frameworks for all the people who are gonna lead society, and to be a major source of ideas and concepts going forward on everything from gender roles to radioactivity. We should do that and not try to argue about, This is more socially just than the other thing,” Summers said. He avoided mentioning other campuses directly, but he took an indirect jab at Maurie McInnis, the newly appointed president of Yale, and an email she sent to the Yale community after her appointment was announced in May. 

“One of America’s great universities just appointed a new president who, in an opening statement, said something about how we should all be the change we want to see to bring about a better world,” Summers said. “I thought it was a fundamental misapprehension of the purpose of a great university.”

A six-page set of preliminary recommendations released on Wednesday by a Harvard University task force focused on combating antisemitism at the school falls short of expectations set by Jewish faculty, alumni and a member of the school’s previous antisemitism advisory group who spoke to Jewish Insider shortly after the document’s release.

The recommendations in Wednesday’s report included ones that could immediately be put into action, such as marking pork products in dining facilities and creating a webpage on the school’s site to provide information on Jewish holidays for university community members. The report also urged the implementation of two long-term actions: “the administration should institute anti-harassment training for all students” and for teaching fellows, “antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias need to be included in training for these essential employees.” 

The suggestions, which interim President Alan Garber is expected to review, were divided into six areas: clarify Harvard’s values; act against discrimination, bullying, harassment and hate; improve disciplinary processes; implement education and training; foster constructive dialogue; and support Jewish life on campus. 

The document lacks “comments about hiring faculty, interim and full-time, about rethinking DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and ensuring sanctions against those who have called for violence,”  Rabbi David Wolpe, a former member of a separate antisemitism advisory group that the elite university formed last year amid an academic year marked by strife for Jewish students, told JI. 

Wolpe added that the recommendations are missing “[affirmation that Zionism is a] legitimate and even praiseworthy ideal.”

Harvard Jewish leaders and alumni echoed Wolpe’s dissatisfaction with the preliminary recommendations. 

“None of this addresses the pervasive and systemic nature of antisemitism … I’m incredibly disappointed and frustrated,” Shabbos Kestenbaum, who graduated in the spring with a master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School, told JI. Kestenbaum called the report “a slap in the face.” 

“There’s nothing in here about the hiring and firing of faculty members, nothing in here about examining the pernicious and dangerous role that diversity, equity and inclusion has played in antisemitism, there are no recommendations or even a mention of security at Harvard Chabad and Hillel,” Kestenbaum, who in March spoke to a roundtable organized by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce about the antisemitism he experienced on Harvard’s campus, said. “Of the more concrete policy recommendations, those were just obvious and had been stated months ago by students themselves and by Congress,” he said.

Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who leads Harvard Chabad, said that the recommendations are “glaringly missing what is exposed and visible for all to see.” 

On X, Zarchi cited several examples, noting that the school “still employs deans and faculty who brazenly and defiantly violate university code of conduct and incite students to do the same” and “Harvard maintains an official academic relationship with Birzeit University. Besides the fact that I don’t believe there’s a university in Israel that Harvard has a similar relationship with, this particular institution’s student government (among other entities there) supports Hamas. This makes the relationship not only immoral but likely illegal.”

The list of recommendations, which resulted from dozens of listening sessions, according to the task force, primarily featured suggestions that focus on short-term actionable items rather than long-term structural changes. The group said it would release a list of long-term measures in the fall, which could include “a detailed analysis of how Harvard got into its current crisis of community and lay out proposals to transform our University culture for the better over the medium- and long-term.”  

Kestenbaum emphasized that the antisemitism task force “was not elected and does not speak for Jewish students.” The task force came under scrutiny immediately after it was formed in January for naming professor Derek Penslar, a historian and the director of Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies, as co-chair. Penslar’s appointment drew the ire of Jewish communal leaders and prominent figures at Harvard over comments he made earlier this year minimizing concerns over antisemitism at Harvard, and for past statements he has made about Israel, including signing a letter in August that accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and of implementing “a regime of apartheid” against Palestinians. Penslar stepped down as co-chair in February.

The task force — aimed at cracking down on the antisemitism that has dramatically increased on the Ivy League campus since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel — was established on the heels of an antisemitism advisory group created by then-President Claudine Gay in November. The advisory group featured prominent outside members, including writer Dara Horn and Wolpe, who stepped down after Gay’s widely criticized Capitol Hill testimony in December. 

Also on Wednesday, the committee formed to support Harvard’s Muslim, Arab and Palestinian communities released a nine-page set of preliminary recommendations to combat Islamophobia on campus.

It was meant to be the most exciting year of her life, but for Amit, an Israeli student now wrapping up a yearlong fellowship at Columbia University, it was an experience that she described as “toxic” and one that she would not recommend to future applicants from her country.

“We were supposed to be these very prestigious students that the university is happy to have, they even gave me a big scholarship and so theoretically my program should have been very proud to have me,” Amit, who asked that her real name not be used for fear of retribution from the department and faculty assessing her final research paper, told Jewish Insider. “But it has not been a good experience at all, and if another Israeli applicant came to me to ask if they should do this, I would tell them not to.”

A graduate student in the School of Arts and Science at the Ivy League college that has been an epicenter of anti-Israel activity since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks, Amit said the negative experience stemmed from “a whole dynamic of covert and overt situations.”

Those situations have ranged from threatening demonstrations on campus to hostile and ignorant peers to faculty who essentially erased her and her experience as an Israeli. Now that the year is over, Amit said, “I feel like the acid is leaving my system, it was just so toxic, and I am very disappointed.”

Amit is one of hundreds of Israeli students who traveled to the U.S. in the last year to enrich their academic knowledge and enhance their professional skills, but who found themselves the targets of fierce anti-Israel activists, as Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza played out.

Beginning on Oct. 7, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel from the Palestinian enclave, murdering, raping and taking hostage hundreds of people, mostly civilians, and through to the hostile anti-Israel encampments that sprung up on campuses during the spring semester, many Israelis studying in the U.S. have experienced both the pain of the attacks and the negative climate on campus.

Experiences like that of Amit, who told JI that she felt “canceled” by the director of her department and had been denied the chance to engage in open dialogue with those attacking Israel, and her, have cast a dark shadow — especially over high-level programs — giving pause to future Israeli fellows, doctoral and postdoctoral students who are considering studying in the U.S.

“I really hope that what we’ve been seeing on social media is an exaggeration,” Yana, an Israeli who is heading to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government this summer on an Israeli Policy Fellowship, told JI. She also asked that her real name not be used out of concern that it could impact her experience. 

“I feel confident that the majority of the people I meet there will see me face to face and maybe we’ll have tough and challenging conversations, but I’m pretty sure that I will at least be able to talk to them,” she said, admitting that as much as she is excited about the program, she is also nervous.  

“I haven’t done all the things I did to get accepted in order to be low-profile or hide at the side of the road,” said Yana, an Israeli who is heading to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government this summer on an Israeli Policy Fellowship. “It’s very easy for Israelis to say, ‘This is too hard, they hate us, they are all antisemites, so we are letting go of these platforms,’ but I think we have to keep making efforts to convince Israelis that these programs are important, they are important for us now and important for our future.”

“I hope that when I say I served in the IDF, people will not cancel me, but I’m not sure,” Yana continued, describing how she has already been deliberating whether she should stay away from studying subjects that might cause friction.

“I hope it won’t be like that, but I am still being cautious,” she said, pondering how free she will be to express herself and how her future professors might respond.

Yana said that studying at an Ivy League college in the U.S. was a long-term dream, but that she has also received a mixed response from family and friends in Israel.  

“Two years ago, even one year ago, people would have been so proud of me for being accepted to Harvard,” she recounted. “But even while I was going through the application process, I got a lot of criticism. My closest friends were not pleased about it and my father was really angry with me. He said, ‘You’re going to pay them so much money and they’re against you – why would you do that?’ He did not understand why I wanted to go there.”

Her family and friends also expressed concerns for her safety on a campus that has become increasingly hostile to Jews, and Israelis in particular, she said.

“As an outspoken Israeli student who supports my country, over time, I had to deal with a level of social isolation,” said Barak Sella, who recently completed the mid-career Masters Degree in Public Administration at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “This wasn’t from antisemitism but mainly because most people just wanted to avoid the conversation.”

But, Yana added, that she would not be deterred by the anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric.

“I haven’t done all the things I did to get accepted in order to be low-profile or hide at the side of the road,” she said, adding, “It’s very easy for Israelis to say, ‘This is too hard, they hate us, they are all antisemites, so we are letting go of these platforms,’ but I think we have to keep making efforts to convince Israelis that these programs are important, they are important for us now and important for our future.”

Barak Sella, who recently completed the mid-career Masters Degree in Public Administration, also at Harvard’s Kennedy School, similarly described his experience as toxic.

“I went to Harvard to experience an international cohort and expand my network and intellectual horizons,” Sella, previously the executive director for the Reut Institute, an Israeli strategy and leadership think tank, told JI. “I aimed to gain skills and insights that would help enhance my leadership skills and impact within Israeli society.”

While he described his American campus experience up until Oct. 7 as “fantastic,” as one of around 20 Israelis in a program of some 200 students, Sella said it soon became very difficult.

“There were many sessions and protests against Israel, and being visibly Israeli was a burden,” he said, describing how the debate over Israel, its actions, and its right to exist ended up permeating into every subject – even topics that were totally unrelated to the Middle East.

Whenever he tried to speak up and defend Israel, Sella said, “I was rudely shut down.”

“As an outspoken Israeli student who supports my country, over time, I had to deal with a level of social isolation,” he continued. “This wasn’t from antisemitism but mainly because most people just wanted to avoid the conversation.”

“Most students at Harvard are not antisemitic or anti-Israel – that is just a loud but small minority – the majority of students are thoughtful and moderate people who are interested in creating relations with Israeli students,” Sella added.

While the protests were noisy, Sella said the main problem with them was that they “see Israeli identity as illegitimate … that is why Israelis must continue to apply and participate in these programs.”

“We just can’t give in to this type of behavior,” he emphasized. “We need to double down and ensure a solid and high-quality Israeli presence on campuses.”

While a new batch of Israeli students is set to arrive in the U.S. over the summer, some prestigious programs – and donors supporting these programs – have already been impacted by antisemitic and anti-Israel activities on campus and the failure by some schools to confront it.

In October, the Wexner Foundation abruptly announced the end of a 30-year relationship with Harvard and its Kennedy School, citing the university’s failure to condemn Hamas’ barbaric attacks on Israel. Its statement described an environment in which Israeli students – emerging leaders there to study a mid-career master’s degree and forge important relationships with other local and international fellows – were increasingly being marginalized.

Elad Arad, an Israeli studying for a post-doctorate in chemical engineering at Columbia, said it was critical for Israelis to remain present at top U.S. academic institutions, not only to act as ambassadors for their country, which is feeling more and more isolated, but also to ensure the future of Israeli academia and research, particularly in the field of science.

Not having the opportunity to study abroad, he noted, would contribute to a reduction in academic levels within Israel’s higher education system.

“No one will give me a faculty position without having a postdoc from an Ivy League institution or a well-known institution or university,” Arad said, explaining, “I need to be here for two reasons, the first is prestige and the second that it is much easier to get my [research] work published and make an impact, if it is coming out of a place like these universities.”

He said he had heard about other postdoctoral students rethinking the option of studying abroad, deciding that it might be best to wait until the war ends or to study in Europe, instead of the U.S.

“The main problem is that many of the postdocs already here are afraid to go back to Israel because they think that from there, they will not be able to publish any papers at all and that will end their academic career,” Arad said, adding that could have an impact not only the future of Israeli academia but also on its thriving innovation sector.

Sender Cohen, chairman of the board of the Fulbright Fellowship in Israel, told JI that all these programs were “critically important because they build academic bridges,” in both the short and long term across disciplines.

“It would be heartbreaking for Israelis to miss the opportunity to study in the U.S. and for American universities to lose the intellectual contribution that Israelis offer. We just cannot let that happen,” Professor David Schizer, who served as the dean of Columbia’s Law School from 2004-2014, told JI. “I recognize that some Israelis may be hesitant to come to the U.S., but I would encourage them to come.”

“History has shown that a lot of the Fulbrighters have gone on to great things in universities or in government or in research institutions, and they utilize the relationships formed on the program,” he said.

“For example, those who go to military colleges, the officers get to know each other and then they become generals, they build personal relationships,” Cohen added. “It’s the same with the Fulbright fellows, you have all these brilliant academics spending time together in these departments and then they might end up leading research or becoming the president of a university or even a secretary of education.”

Professor David Schizer, who served as the dean of Columbia’s Law School from 2004-2014, told JI that “it would be heartbreaking for Israelis to miss the opportunity to study in the U.S. and for American universities to lose the intellectual contribution that Israelis offer.”

“We just cannot let that happen,” Schizer, who is now a co-chair of the university’s task force on antisemitism, said. “I recognize that some Israelis may be hesitant to come to the U.S., but I would encourage them to come.”

He said that American universities, including Columbia, needed to be doing much more to ensure that Israeli students feel “safe and welcome on their campuses.”

“Unfortunately, it has been a difficult year,” Schizer explained. “There have been a number of absolutely unacceptable instances in which Israeli students have experienced discrimination based only on their country of origin, and that problem has to be fixed.”

“Israeli students are enormously valuable as members of the Columbia community,” he said, referring to his own institution. “It’s critical that the university ensures that they have the excellent experience that they deserve.”

Schizer, who lectures in law and economics, said that this was not only “a moral obligation because Columbia is committed to the idea of not discriminating based on national origin,” but also a legal one.  

Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, “universities that accept federal funding are not allowed to discriminate based on race, color, or national origin,” he said. “Israeli students are entitled to the same experience that any other student is entitled to have.”

Both Schizer and Cohen said there are some efforts underway to address the toxic experiences Israeli students described from the last academic year.

At Columbia, Schizer said the antisemitism task force had put together a list of recommendations for university’s leadership, including suggestions that future anti-Israel protests be contained to “a designated part of campus,” and that it “enforces its own rules more effectively.”

“We looked into why the university has, at times, failed to enforce its own rules,” he said. “We found that in most cases it was because the bureaucracy at the university was not trained to deal with a situation like the one we had and was not properly prepared, perhaps they didn’t even recognize that times have changed.”

“It can’t be solved overnight, it’s like turning a supertanker,” said Cohen, noting that some major university donors, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are “pulling back in a way that is having an effect.”

He said he believed that some schools, where Israeli and Jewish students were particularly mistreated, would likely see their funding cut, while other universities and individual departments might see their funding increase.

“I’m not actually too worried about it for the long term because at a lot of these universities, the actual people who are in charge, are pragmatic centrists,” Cohen said. “And, I think, everyone realizes there’s a problem.”  

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said she has low expectations, even after a series of high-profile hearings with university presidents on antisemitism on college campuses, that university leaders will make significant changes to their responses to antisemitism on campus.

Asked what might happen on college campuses if the executive branch changes hands after the November election, Foxx, who chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, largely predicted that the status quo will continue.

“I’m a little skeptical of whether the presidents of many of these institutions will take any different kinds of action than what they’re taking now,” she said, speaking on Monday at the American Enterprise Institute. “I think they’ll rant and rave, I think they’ll scream things like ‘academic freedom,’ I think they’ll say, ‘But look over here at these other kinds of things.’”

“I’d like to believe that as a result of what we’ve done already, you’re going to see major changes on campus,” Foxx continued. “I’d like to see that happen. Maybe there’ll be some changes in the schools we’ve highlighted. But even there, I don’t expect a lot.”

Foxx said one of the “most frustrating” revelations from the hearings was that there is an unclear structure of accountability and responsibility within campus administrations for responding to incidents of antisemitism.

But she said she’s hopeful that at the very least, schools will work to implement better conduct codes, as Northwestern University’s president said his school would at a recent hearing. She said she wants to see clearer “lines of responsibility” and punishments for faculty, staff and students involved in antisemitic activity. 

She said that the issue of tax-exempt status for colleges is largely outside of her committee’s jurisdiction but that it’s being examined by Congress.

She said she’s also had discussions with former President Donald Trump during which they’ve shared the belief that the federal government should not be involved in education “at all.”

It’s not clear what that approach might mean for federal enforcement of anti-discrimination provisions in education.

The Education Committee chair dismissed calls from Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and House Democrats for additional funding for the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, arguing that, particularly in the case of Harvard, the committee had already done the department’s work for it.

“This should have been at the top of their list, they should have gotten to it immediately,” Foxx said, referring to enforcement action by the department against Harvard.

According to Cardona, each investigator in the office has been handling 50 cases, given the surge in discrimination complaints since Oct. 7.

Foxx, highlighting the committee’s report on Harvard’s antisemitism task force, largely decried such advisory boards as lacking substance, claiming schools rarely actually respond to such committees’ recommendations.

Good Thursday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff we report on Israel’s move to seize the Philadelphi Corridor, investigate the increasingly hostile environment Jewish therapists are facing after Oct. 7, and cover Sen. John Fetterman’s renunciation of Harvard at the Yeshiva University commencement yesterday. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Sen. Gary Peters, Virginia State Sen. John McGuire and new Yale President Maurie McInnis.

The Israeli army has taken full control of the Philadelphi Corridor, the strategic pathway that runs along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, it announced yesterday evening.

In a press conference, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the route had served as an “oxygen pipeline” for Hamas to smuggle weapons into the Strip. He also said that the Iranian-backed terror group had exploited the corridor’s proximity to Egypt to store its weapons, including rocket launch sites. IDF troops operating in the area in recent weeks discovered dozens of Hamas’ launch sites used as recently as last week to fire projectiles into Israel and at least 20 tunnels, as well as tunnel shafts, located a few feet from the Egyptian border, Hagari explained.

IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi carried out an operational assessment along the corridor on Wednesday, telling troops that the military operation in Rafah, which sits adjacent to the border, was essential to “dismantle the Rafah Brigade.”

Among the tunnel shafts discovered in the area of Rafah in recent days, the army said, was a mile-long tunnel not far from the border crossing into Egypt. The tunnel, which was destroyed by combat and engineering units, contained dozens of anti-tank missiles and a large quantity of weapons.

Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, told Jewish Insider’s Ruth Marks Eglash that controlling the corridor weakened Hamas militarily and economically, both above and below ground.

“The infrastructure that exists beneath the corridor of active smuggling tunnels is used by Hamas for smuggling weapons, munitions, money, people and explosives into Gaza,” Michael said. “By disconnecting them from these tunnels, by dismantling them and destroying them, Hamas will have difficulty restocking.”

The Rafah border crossing also sits along the corridor and was used by Hamas as a source of income, Michael explained. “Hamas received a lot of money from controlling the Rafah crossing, they took customs and taxes and they also used the crossing as another smuggling platform,” he said.

“Disconnecting Hamas from the tunnels and the crossing weakens them dramatically militarily and economically, and also vis-à-vis the population,” he continued. “Hamas leaders are sitting in their tunnels and understand they are close to losing their sovereignty over the Gaza Strip and that might make them more willing to make concessions to reach a deal over releasing the hostages.”

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said during a briefing with reporters on Wednesday that the IDF had briefed the administration on its plans for Rafah, including “moving along that corridor and out of the city proper to put pressure on Hamas in the city. He said that Israel’s control of the 8.6-mile buffer zone along the border was consistent with the “limited” ground operation President Joe Biden’s team had already been briefed on.

“I can’t confirm whether they seized the corridor or not, but I can tell you that their movements along the corridor did not come as a surprise to us and was in keeping with what we understood their plan to be — to go after Hamas in a targeted, limited way, not a concentrated way,” Kirby told reporters.

U.S. Deputy Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Woodtold reporters yesterday that a new U.N. resolution proposed by Algeria to stop Israel’s operation in Rafah “is not going to be helpful.” The draft resolution calls for the opening of all border crossings and demands an immediate cease-fire and the release of all the hostages. Wood said that “another resolution is not necessarily going to change anything on the ground.”

While the movesteers clear of U.S. red lines, it could exacerbate tensions between Israel and Egypt, which is performing a delicate act as a mediator in the war, and has charged that increasing Israeli troops in the border area would be a breach of the peace treaty between the two countries.

An understanding must be reached between Israel and Egypt to prevent Hamas from regaining control of the area in the future and a sophisticated barrier, similar to that which exists between Israel and Gaza preventing the digging of more tunnels, must be erected, Michael said.

bad therapy

‘Opposite of inclusive’: A look inside the increasingly hostile environment for Jewish therapists

When someone posted in a private Facebook group for Chicago therapists in March, asking whether anyone would be willing to work with a Zionist client, several Jewish therapists quickly responded, saying they would be happy to be connected to this person. What happened next sparked fear and outrage among Jewish therapists in Chicago and across the country, and illuminated the atmosphere of intimidation and harassment faced by many Jews in the mental health world who won’t disavow Zionism. Those who replied soon found themselves added to a list of supposedly Zionist therapists that was shared in another local group as a resource, so that other professionals could avoid working with them. The only trait shared by the 26 therapists on the list is that they are Jewish, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

No compassion: The anti-Zionist blacklist is the most extreme example of an anti-Israel wave that has swept the mental health field since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks and the resulting war in Gaza, which has seen the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. More than a dozen Jewish therapists from across the country who spoke to JI described a profession ostensibly rooted in compassion, understanding and sensitivity that has too often dropped those values when it comes to Jewish and Israeli providers and clients. 

Crisis mode: “We all worried that it could get this bad, but I don’t think any of us were actually expecting it to happen,” said Halina Brooke, a licensed professional counselor in Phoenix. Four years ago, she created an organization called the Jewish Therapist Collective to build community among Jewish professionals and raise the alarm about an undercurrent of antisemitism in the field. “Once Oct. 7 hit, we’ve all been in crisis mode since literally that morning, and the stories that have come in from colleagues and about their clients have been horrifying.”

Read JI’s full investigation into antisemitism in the mental health profession here.

Bonus: The Illinois body that licenses therapists has filed a formal complaint against Heba Ibrahim Joudeh, the author of the Zionist blacklist, alleging that the creation of the list violates state anti-discrimination laws as well as professional codes of ethics and standards of practice, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by JI. The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation “prays” that Ibrahim Joudeh has her counseling license “revoked, suspended or otherwise disciplined.” A preliminary hearing on the case is scheduled for June 17.

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unholy alliance

Sen. Peters slams terror-linked conference Rep. Tlaib addressed: ‘There is no place for violent rhetoric or advocacy of violence’

Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) distanced himself from Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s (D-MI) appearance at the People’s Conference for Palestine, where pro-terror messages were celebrated and an activist with ties to a group designated by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization was welcomed. Peters’ office told Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs in a statement on Wednesday that Michigan’s soon-to-be senior senator “understands how personal the issues around the war between Israel and Hamas are for Michiganders and believes that individuals have the right to gather and advocate for their personal beliefs. However, he believes that there is no place for violent rhetoric or advocacy of violence in these discussions.”

Additional concerns: “As Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Peters is also concerned that foreign adversaries, like the Chinese and Russian governments, have and will continue to try to exploit divisions within U.S. domestic politics to sow chaos, something our nation’s intelligence officials have warned about. He urges Michiganders to be attentive to such potential interventions by foreign actors and organizations,” the statement concluded. 

Avoiding comment: JI reached out to every Democratic member of Michigan’s congressional delegation, including Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), for comment on Tlaib’s appearance at the conference. Only Peters and Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) responded, and the latter used her statement to praise President Joe Biden’s record on Israel and Jewish issues.

Conference content: The conference was organized by The People’s Forum, a far-left advocacy group funded largely by Neville Roy Singham, a businessman with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and a long history of donating to Marxist and socialist causes. Wisam Rafeedie, an activist with ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is designated in the U.S. as a terrorist organization, was a guest at the event. Sana’ Daqqah, the widow of Walid Daqqah, the PFLP terrorist who was lionized in the Palestinian community for dying in an Israeli prison, was the keynote speaker. Attendees took part in chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,”, and “We want justice, you say how? End the siege on Gaza now,” in between speeches and discussions on “Confronting Zionism in Higher Education” and “Zionism and U.S. Imperialism.”

Read the full story here.

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feting fetterman

Fetterman renounces Harvard in Yeshiva University commencement address

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) renounced his association with Harvard University over its “inability to stand up for the Jewish community” during his Yeshiva University commencement address on Wednesday, removing the crimson hood representing his alma mater while onstage. Fetterman made the gesture early in his address, which culminated in him receiving the Presidential Medallion, the private Orthodox university’s highest honor, for his advocacy on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people. He joked that he didn’t deserve to be in the same company as previous recipients of the award, describing himself as “just a senator with a big mouth that happens to be committed to standing with Israel,”Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports.

Symbolic gesture: The Pennsylvania senator, who has emerged since Oct. 7 as one of Israel’s strongest allies in his party, said he had been “reflecting” on his “last graduation, and that was literally a quarter century ago. I was graduating from Harvard University. Today, I have been profoundly disappointed with Harvard’s inability to stand up for the Jewish community after Oct. 7. Personally, I do not fundamentally believe that it is right for me to wear this today,” Fetterman said while pointing to his hood, which he then removed from around his neck. The move sparked audible gasps and subsequent cheers from the crowd. 

Staunch support: Fetterman, who graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School in 1999 with a master’s degree in public policy, vowed to remain a staunch supporter of Israel and fight for the release of the hostages, pointing to a memento given to him by a hostage family member. “Of course, we cannot ignore the somber context of today. In fact, on my wrist I’m wearing the wristband from the Nova music festival. It was given to me by a family member of someone that was taken hostage. If you look at it, it reads Oct. 7, 2023. It’s a constant reminder of the horrors of that day,” Fetterman said. “The Jewish community everywhere deserves our support and I promise you will always have mine. And I will not stop speaking out until every last hostage is brought back home.”

Read the full story here.

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old dominion race

Rep. Bob Good faces primary threat from Trump-backed challenger John McGuire

Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), the House Freedom Caucus chair who has frequently voted against U.S. funding for Israel since Oct. 7 and backed a series of candidates opposing foreign aid across the country, is fighting for his political life in Virginia’s June 18 primary election, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Good was already facing a tough primary campaign against state Sen. John McGuire, but his odds of winning the nomination tumbled further after former President Donald Trump endorsed McGuire on Tuesday. 

In the race: McGuire, a former Navy SEAL, told JI that Good’s backing of DeSantis  was a major factor in his candidacy. He said he picked up widespread anti-Good sentiment in his state Senate district during his 2023 campaign. McGuire framed Good as a “divisive” drain on Republicans’ unity and effectiveness in Virginia and nationally, both through his support for unseating McCarthy and his involvement in primaries nationwide. Allies of McCarthy and other outside groups have spent over $4 million on TV ads tagging Good a “backstabber” and “MAGA traitor.”

Speaker troubles: McGuire highlighted that the weekslong speakership vacancy coincided with the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the beginning of the war in Gaza. “In our time of need for our greatest ally, we couldn’t help [them] because we didn’t have a speaker,” McGuire said. “That right there is enough for me to run against him.”

Pro-Israel backing: McGuire called Good “not reliable with regard to Israel.” Good has said he voted against Israel aid over concerns about federal spending and the national debt, as well as provisions in the legislation that provided humanitarian aid for Palestinians. Good has maintained that he’s supportive of Israel. The Republican Jewish Coalition endorsed McGuire and hosted him at a recent leadership meeting in Washington, D.C. The state senator said he would have voted for supplemental Israel aid.

Read the full story here.

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campus beat

New Yale President Maurie McInnis received high marks for handling of protests at Stony Brook

As Maurie McInnis prepares to take the helm at Yale University, Jewish leaders on Long Island and at Stony Brook University, where the art historian has been president since 2020, praised her for avidly defending free speech while also protecting Jewish students amid the anti-Israel campus protests that have roiled the New York school. At Yale, after a spring semester gripped by protests and encampments, the executive director of the school’s Slifka Center for Jewish Life, Uriel Cohen, expressed hope that when McInnis takes over the New Haven campus in July, replacing outgoing President Peter Salovey, the “campus climate [will return] to one in which mutual responsibility and respect are once again hallmarks of the Yale community,” he told eJewish Philanthropy’s Haley Cohen, reporting for Jewish Insider. 

Encampment approach: During her tenure at Stony Brook, a SUNY public university in Suffolk County, McInnis “handled the encampments very well,” Mindy Perlmutter, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council Long Island, told JI. When encampments sprung up in the spring — and included antisemitic activity such as inhibiting the ability of Hillel to host its annual Jewish American Heritage Month celebration — McInnis said that anti-Israel demonstrations that comply with school policy will be permitted to continue. Ultimately, she shut down the encampments on May 2 after 22 Stony Brook students, two faculty members and five others were arrested for violating various laws. 

Balancing act: Stony Brook Hillel’s executive director, Jessica Lemons, said that McInnis, who earned master’s and doctoral degrees from Yale in the 1990s and will be the university’s 24th president — and first woman in the post — “will leave behind big shoes.” Lemons added, “Since October, our campus has seen dozens of protests, anti-Israel events and tables, incidents of doxxing, harassment and intimidation of Jewish students, and much of what other campuses around the country are seeing. It has never been our expectation that our university president would be able to eradicate antisemitism, but rather that she and her administration would do their best to support students on campus, abide by rules set forth by both the first amendment and Title VI, and create an excellent institution of higher learning. By our measure, I believe President McInnis has done that.”

Read the full story here.

Elsewhere: More than 300 people, including 60 faculty members and several major donors have signed a letter calling on the  University of California, Berkeley to cancel the deal outgoing Chancellor Carol Christ made with anti-Israel protesters.

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community concerns

VA-10 candidates voice varying views on Gaza war, U.S. support in Jewish community events

Speaking at a pair of forums with Jewish community groups on Wednesday, candidates running in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District expressed a range of views on the U.S.-Israel relationship and domestic antisemitism, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Disagreements between allies: Del. Dan Helmer, speaking at an online forum hosted by the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said, “I believe in most cases that the Biden administration has done well by supporting the U.S.-Israel relationship. Where I have disagreements, it’s where we have allowed disagreements between allies to potentially become openings for enemies.” He said he “believe[s] strongly in continued aid, and that the best way to ensure the release of hostages is “to continue maximum pressure on Hamas to ensure that they understand that until they let the hostages go, Israel will continue its fight.”

Supporting Biden: Former House of Delegates Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn said she’s been “really pleased with how President Biden has been so incredibly supportive of Israel, its right to self-determination, its right to defend itself in light of the atrocities” committed by Hamas. Filler-Corn laid out several goals going forward: continuing to support Israel, ensuring humanitarian aid, ending the war with a return of the hostages and beginning to consider who will control Gaza after Hamas is defeated.

Defeating Hamas: State Sen. Suhas Subramanyam reiterated views that he’s laid out in other recent events, supporting an “enduring defeat of Hamas,” humanitarian assistance and a two-state solution, emphasizing “Hamas can’t be one of the states.” He said he supports humanitarian assistance for Gaza as well as, broadly, funding for Israel, without offering specifics. Subramanyam added that he was particularly affected by the attack on Kibbutz Kfar Aza, which he visited in 2022, and with whose residents he had stayed in contact.

Read the full story here.

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Worthy Reads

Jewish Pride at Columbia: Natan Sharansky writes in Tablet about the importance of the letter from 500 Columbia University Jewish students expressing pride in Israel and their Jewish faith: “The next year will likely be as tough for Jews on campus as this one. Of course, in democratic America there are many tools that can be used to fight antisemitism: going to court, encouraging hearings in Congress, using the press to unmask the dangerous actors who finance the new antisemitic waves, and so forth. But in order to defend your rights, you have to first define and claim them. Until America’s Jewish students publicly claim their right to their Jewish and Zionist identity, they will continue to fight at a disadvantage.”  [Tablet]

Illiberal State of Mind: Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue argues in an address at the Re-CHARGING Reform Judaism conference on Wednesday that the West is jettisoning liberal values. “The West is increasingly hostile to Jewish identity. It is not only Israel. Judaism, itself, is under withering ideological assault, and hence the Jewish state is the focus and the target of this hostility. It was inevitable that the rise and spread of identity politics would place the Jew on the wrong side of virtue. Some of us have been warning for years that the abandonment of Western liberal values is always bad for Jews. When we forsake Martin Luther King’s understanding of liberalism, to judge people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character; when we elevate feelings over facts, bias over evidence, group entitlement over individual merit, cancelation over debate: When we dismiss liberal values as rooted in white privilege, oppression, colonialism and racism, we have betrayed liberalism, and undermined the very foundations that made the West dominant and Western Jews secure. The passions unleashed by an illiberal state of mind threaten both the West and Western Jews. History teaches that once Jew-hatred becomes normative it portends social decay” [SWFS]

Around the Web

A Letter from the Ayatollah: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote an open letter to American college students, which he also tweeted out, in which he praised them for having “formed a branch of the Resistance Front” and advised them to study the Quran.

Notable Quotable: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) responded to the Khamenei Twitter storm, saying: “When you’ve won the Ayatollah, you’ve lost America.”

Malley Update: Republican lawmakers uncovered evidence that Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s former Iran envoy, “downloaded sensitive and classified documents and may have shared them with individuals outside the US government to advance his diplomatic efforts,” according to Semafor. 

City of Brotherly Love: At a Philadelphia campaign stop designed to win support from Black voters, President Joe Biden attacked former President Donald Trump for invoking “neo-Nazi, Third Reich terms.”

Calming Nerves: Democratic Majority For Israel (DMFI) is trying to reassure Democrats who are concerned that their continued support for Israel will be damaging at the polls, Axios reports.

Role for Musk?: Former President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have considered an advisory role for the X owner should Trump take back the White House in November, according to a Wall Street Journal report.  

No-Show: The U.S. will boycott the U.N.’s ceremony on Thursday to commemorate the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, according to Reuters. 

ICC Fallout: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told former Trump State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus on her radio show that he’s “surprised and disappointed” that the Biden administration said it would reject the congressional effort to rebuke the International Criminal Court.

Backing Starmer: U.S. Ambassador to the U.K. Jane Hartley lauded the U.K Labour party leader, and likely the next prime minister, Keir Starmer, for his approach to the Gaza war and his consistency with the Biden administration’s position.

Next on the Hot Seat: The presidents of Yale University and the University of Michigan were given notice by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce for upcoming probes into the handling of antisemitism at their universities. 

Documents Ask: The House Oversight Committee requested documents from National Students for Justice in Palestine relating to its funding, communications about responses to the Oct. 7 attack, provision of support to terrorism and all documents and communications created or sent between Oct. 6 and Oct. 8.

Road Rage: A driver tried to run over students and a rabbi outside a Jewish school in Brooklyn yesterday as he allegedly yelled “I’m gonna kill all the Jews.” 

Bad Look: The deputy political director for Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), a Senate candidate, attended a 2017 convention celebrating Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

Big Bucks Against Bowman: A national group arguing Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) is too radical to represent mainstream Black voters has joined the crush of critics spending big to keep the progressive from a third term, Politico‘s Playbook has learned. The National Black Empowerment Action Fund, founded by AIPAC veteran Darius Jones, plans to sink an initial half-million dollars into a NY-16 offensive that includes directly interacting with Black voters and mobilizing local officials. More spending is anticipated. 

Calling Out Haley: Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) called former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley “disgusting” for writing “finish them” on an Israeli artillery shell to be shot at Hezbollah targets.

Weighing Words: Responding to comments from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) told Jewish Insider it’s “ignorant and abhorrent” to suggest that the Abraham Accords “either caused or justified Hamas’s barbaric attack on October 7.” He added, “my colleagues should all recognize this simple truth and measure their words and statements accordingly.”

Intercepted: The IDF said it intercepted  a cruise missile “that approached Israel from the east,” this morning, reportedly from Iraq.

Car Ramming: Two Israeli soldiers were killed in a car-ramming attack perpetrated last night near the city of Nablus in the West Bank. 

Lula’s Move: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva withdrew his ambassador to Israel following months of hostility between the two countries over the Israel-Hamas war.  

Meta Move: Meta removed from Facebook and Instagram hundreds of fake accounts linked to an Israeli tech firm that is suspected of having used AI-generated comments for pro-Israel messaging.

New PM: Former chief of the Netherlands’ intelligence and security service, Dick Schoof, has been named as the country’s next prime minister.

Pic of the Day

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Shoshan Haran, who was kidnapped to Gaza along with her daughter, son-in-law and their two children, and was released after 50 days, pose during a reception celebrating Jewish Heritage Month yesterday at Gracie Mansion in New York. Haran’s son, Tal Shoham, is still in captivity in Gaza.

Birthdays

Literary critic, essayist and novelist, Daphne Miriam Merkin turns 70… 

Santa Monica, Calif.-based historian of Sephardic and Crypto-Jewish studies, Dolores Sloan turns 94… Real estate developer and former chair of UJA-Federation of NY, Larry A. Silverstein turns 93… Partner in the NYC law firm of Mintz & Gold, Ira Lee “Ike” Sorkin turns 81… Board member of the Collier County chapter of the Florida ACLU and the Naples Florida Council on World Affairs, Maureen McCully “Mo” Winograd… Cape Town native, she is the owner and chef at Los Angeles-based Catering by Brenda, Brenda Walt turns 73… Former professional tennis player, he competed in 9 Wimbledons and 13 US Opens, now the varsity tennis coach at Gilman School in Baltimore, Steve “Lightning” Krulevitz turns 73… Former chief rabbi of France, Gilles Uriel Bernheim turns 72… Medical director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s Ethiopia spine and heart project, Dr. Richard Michael Hodes turns 71… Encino, Calif.-based business attorney, Andrew W. Hyman… Israeli physicist and philosopher, Avshalom Cyrus Elitzur turns 67… Former member of Congress for 16 years, since leaving Congress he has opened a bookstore and written two novels, Steve Israel turns 66… Former science editor for BBC News and author of six books, David Shukman turns 66… Founder of Krav Maga Global with 1,500 instructors in 60 countries, Eyal Yanilov turns 65… Editorial writer at The New York Times, Michelle Cottle… Film, stage and television actress, she sang the national anthem at Super Bowl XLIX in 2015, Idina Menzel turns 53… Writer, filmmaker, playwright and DJ, known by his pen name Ithamar Ben-Canaan, Itamar Handelman Smith turns 48… Member of Knesset who served as Israel’s minister of agriculture in the prior government, Oded Forer turns 47… Director of engagement and program at NYC’s Congregation Rodeph Sholom, Scott Hertz… Deputy assistant to President Biden until 2023, now chief of staff for Senator Brian Schatz, Reema Dodin… Tel Avivian Alina T. Katz… Israeli author, her debut novel has been published in more than 20 languages around the world, Shani Boianjiu turns 37… Rapper, singer, songwriter and record producer, known professionally as Hebro, Raphael Ohr Chaim Fulcher turns 37… Counsel at Gilead Sciences, Ashley Bender Spirn… Deputy chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Miryam Esther Lipper… Senior writer for CNN, Eric Levenson… Challah baker, social entrepreneur, professor and manager of Howard Properties, Jason Friend…

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) renounced his association with Harvard University over its “inability to stand up for the Jewish community” during his Yeshiva University commencement address on Wednesday, removing the crimson hood representing his alma mater while on stage.

Fetterman made the gesture early in his address, which culminated in him receiving the Presidential Medallion, the private Orthodox university’s highest honor, for his advocacy on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people. He joked that he didn’t deserve to be in the same company as previous recipients of the award, describing himself as “just a senator with a big mouth that happens to be committed to standing with Israel.”

The Pennsylvania senator, who has emerged since Oct. 7 as one of Israel’s strongest allies in his party, said he had been “reflecting” on his “last graduation, and that was literally a quarter century ago. I was graduating from Harvard University.”

“Today, I have been profoundly disappointed with Harvard’s inability to stand up for the Jewish community after Oct. 7. Personally, I do not fundamentally believe that it is right for me to wear this today,” Fetterman said while pointing to his hood, which he then removed from around his neck. 

The move sparked audible gasps and subsequent cheers from the crowd. 

Fetterman, who graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School in 1999 with a master’s in public policy, vowed to remain a staunch supporter of Israel and fight for the release of the hostages, pointing to a memento given to him by a family member. 

“Of course, we cannot ignore the somber context of today. In fact, on my wrist I’m wearing the wristband from the Nova music festival. It was given to me by a family member of someone that was taken hostage. If you look at it, it reads Oct. 7, 2023. It’s a constant reminder of the horrors of that day,” Fetterman said. “The Jewish community everywhere deserves our support and I promise you will always have mine. And I will not stop speaking out until every last hostage is brought back home.”

The Democratic senator has bucked his party’s shift away from Israel in recent months, refusing to waver in his support for continued offensive military aid despite the objections of some far left colleagues. He has also led on legislation combating antisemitism on college campuses alongside Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA). 

He told the graduating class that one of his “most proud moments as a United States senator was voting for billions in aid for Israel with no conditions to allow Israel to push back at that singular evil force.” 

Fetterman also urged students to take some time to celebrate their accomplishments and embrace the joy they felt on this day despite the tragedy that has unfolded in Israel and Gaza on and since Oct. 7. 

“Joy can coexist with tragedy,” Fetterman said. “And today, never forget that today is a day of celebration for all of you and all of these families here.”

Hundreds of students and faculty members walked out of Harvard University’s commencement ceremony on Thursday in solidarity with 13 anti-Israel student protesters who were denied degrees as a result of their involvement in the school’s illegal campus encampment.

Shabbos Kestenbaum, who in March spoke to a roundtable organized by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce about the antisemitism he experienced on Harvard’s campus, said he was “shocked but not surprised.” 

Kestenbaum, who graduated with a master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School, said the unrest at graduation —  which included several students rushing the stage with signs reading “Harvard funds genocide” — “summed up” months of antisemitic protests, culminating in the encampment, that took over campus after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. 

“This has been building for months and is a natural outcome of failed leadership,” Kestenbaum told Jewish Insider, calling the protests that engulfed Harvard Yard “degrading and frustrating,” while noting that it “ruined graduation for everyone else.” 

The commencement speaker, Maria Ressa, the CEO of the Philippines-based news site Rappler and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, supported the student protests in her address. “Harvard, you are being tested,” she said. “The campus protests are testing everyone in America. Protests give voice; they shouldn’t be silenced.” Ressa, whose publication wrote an editorial comparing Israel with Nazi Germany after the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks, went on to say that “money and power” called her an antisemite for speaking at Harvard. 

The two student speakers at the ceremony, an undergraduate and a graduate speaker, also criticized the Harvard Corporation, the school’s top governing body, for its decision not to let some of the encampment demonstrators graduate. “This semester, our freedom of speech and expressions of solidarity became punishable, leaving our graduation uncertain,” Shruthi Kumar, the undergraduate student speaker, said to resounding applause. (There was no applause when other crises, including Sudan or Ukraine, were briefly mentioned.)   

“The focus of those speeches was less about what’s happening in Gaza and more about free speech and repercussions,” Barak Sella, a Harvard Kennedy School of Government graduate and former director of the Reut Institute, told JI. “It’s clear that the speeches weren’t about opposing injustice around the world.” 

Sella noted the irony in the speeches. “They’re saying they don’t have free speech while talking on one of the most central stages of academia, in front of 15,000 people.” 

“It’s fully their right to protest but they were loud and disruptive and today was a special day for many people,” he continued, noting that “many people do not agree with the protesters.” 

“One of the student speakers said, ‘the students have spoken, the faculty has spoken,’ but that isn’t true. Many students were sitting down and quiet,” said Sella, who held an Israeli flag throughout the ceremony and posted a photo online showing a plane trailing an Israeli flag and the words “Jewish lives matter” appearing to fly overhead.

Kestenbaum, a first-generation American, said he “cautiously told my parents that I didn’t want them to come to commencement because I didn’t want them exposed to this narrative.”

“I’m the first of their seven kids to graduate with a masters from an American university and it would have been deeply upsetting [for them to see] that this was overshadowed by antisemitic students who have not been disciplined for their previous engagements like the encampments and occupation of university halls,” he said. “Today sent a really disappointing message to Jewish students.” 

A federal lawsuit filed on Wednesday morning against Harvard University alleges that since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, students and faculty on campus have called for violence against Jews and celebrated Hamas’ terrorism daily as the university ignored harassment —- including a physical assault — of Jewish students, Jewish Insider has learned. 

Filed in federal court in Boston by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Right Under Law, the complaint comes five months after the group filed a previous complaint against the university’s John F. Kennedy School of Government for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

Since the Title VI complaint, “things have only gotten worse,” Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Brandeis Center and former U.S. assistant secretary of education for the Bush and Trump administrations, told JI. “This is what happens when an institution refuses to address even admitted violence. It is rare to see an institution admit as much as Harvard has had to admit and yet do as little to address the problem as Harvard has.” 

The lawsuit, a copy of which was first obtained by JI, states that Harvard allowed student protesters to occupy and vandalize buildings, and interrupt classes and exams. “Professors, too, have explicitly supported Jewish and Israel terrorism, and spread antisemitic propaganda in their classes,” according to a Brandeis Center statement. “Jewish students are bullied and spat on, intimidated, and threatened, and subject to verbal and physical harassment.”  

According to the complaint, a Harvard student’s message board provides a window into the toxic environment for Jewish students, describing it as being “filled with vile antisemitic slurs, threats and conspiracy theories, including calls for Jews to ‘cook’ and the Harvard Hillel to ‘burn[ ] in hell,’ and an antisemitic cartoon resembling Nazi-era propaganda that depicts a hand etched with a Star of David and a dollar sign holding a noose around the necks of what appear to be a Black man and an Arab man. The cartoon was posted not only by student groups but also by a faculty,” according to the Brandeis Center. 

“We have been urging Harvard for quite some time to address antisemitism, even well ahead of Oct. 7,” Marcus told JI the day before the lawsuit was filed. “Their failure to do so is exactly what has led to the current catastrophe.” 

Another example of harassment mentioned in the complaint involves the physical assault of a Jewish student. “When protestors realized a student was Jewish and/or Israeli, from a blue bracelet he was wearing in solidarity with Israel, a mob swarmed and surrounded him, and began physically accosting him and yelling in his face,” according to the Brandeis Center. 

“The student pleaded with them to stop but, assailants violently grabbed him, pushed him, and he was physically attacked. The assault was captured on video, yet Harvard took no action to

redress the physical assault. And even now that the perpetrators have been charged with criminal assault and battery, Harvard has yet to discipline, suspend, or expel the attackers, or remove them from their leadership positions.” 

The lawsuit also addresses harassment that predates Oct. 7, including the Title VI complaint from last October, which involves accusations of discrimination and harassment toward Jewish Israeli students Amnon Shefler, Gilad Neumann and Matan Yaffe. The alleged harassment took place in professor Marshall Ganz’s “Organizing: People, Power, Change” course last spring in Harvard’s prestigious Kennedy School of Government. 

According to the complaint, Ganz told the students they could not use the term “Jewish democracy” to describe Israel – stating that using the words “Jewish” and “democracy” in regard to the Jewish state was akin to a project promoting white supremacy. When the students decided to stick with their project as designed, Ganz threatened them with academic consequences. 

“Professor Ganz admitted he had never told students in any other class that they could not present their work, even when it centered on controversial topics. During the final class, two of Ganz’s teaching fellows taught a lesson on how to recruit support for Palestinians,” the complaint from October said, noting that while the topic itself was not objectionable, “it led to students making hostile claims, inaccurate characterizations and false accusations against Israel and Israelis. Ganz refused to let the Israeli students provide a response or any counter-arguments to the wildly inaccurate data presented.”

Marcus called Harvard’s case “unusual in its breadth and depth.”

“We have been able to show over a period of time repeated harassment of Jewish students and failure of the administration to do anything about it,” he said. “In particular, it is remarkable that Harvard has essentially admitted to Jewish student based discrimination, particularly at the Harvard Kennedy School and yet, they refuse to take prompt and effective action to address it. That’s why you end up with the sort of problems we’re seeing now.”

The legal team suing Harvard includes several law firms in addition to Brandeis Center: Holtzman Vogel, Baran Torchinsky & Josefiak PLLC, Vogel Law Firm PLLC, Libby Hoopes Brooks & Mulvey P.C, and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. “We’ve already seen intensive interest by the House Oversight Committee, leading of course to the resignation [in December] of Harvard’s president [Claudine Gay] and the recent report from the House Education [and] the Workforce Committee,” Marcus said, adding that the House committee report released last Thursday, “details some of the extraordinary failures of Harvard leadership, including their unwillingness to take actons that are suggested by their own antisemitism advisory committees.” The House report also highlighted a series of incidents of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus for which the school could not point to any specific response or disciplinary action it had taken.

A new report released on Thursday by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce suggests that Harvard University continuously and repeatedly sidelined its Antisemitism Advisory Group and its recommendations, a situation that at one point prompted a majority of the working group’s members to threaten to resign en masse.

The report, based on internal communications and notes as well as a transcribed interview with advisory group member Dara Horn, details the work of the first of two antisemitism task forces the school has launched in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel.

The House committee, investigating campus antisemitism, found that the working group provided recommendations to Harvard’s leadership in mid-December, which went largely unaddressed, that the working group identified severe antisemitic harassment and marginalization of Israeli students and that Harvard’s senior leadership sidelined the working group — including failing to consult with the group before the former Harvard president testified to the House committee.

The report highlights a series of incidents of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus for which the school could not point to any specific response or disciplinary action it had taken. It says that the working group itself found a similar pattern of unaddressed antisemitic harassment.

It also outlines a messy and unclear process for transitioning from the working group into the school’s new Antisemitism Task Force.

“The Committee’s report proves that former President Gay and Harvard’s leadership propped up the university’s Antisemitism Advisory Group all for show,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said in a statement. “Not only did the AAG find that antisemitism was a major issue on campus, it offered several recommendations on how to combat the problem — none of which were ever implemented with any real vigor.”

“The University is grateful for the important work of the Antisemitism Advisory Group (AAG). At a critical time during the fall semester, the AAG contributed thoughtful perspectives and recommendations which helped establish the groundwork for ongoing efforts to combat antisemitism,” Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton said in a statement to Jewish Insider.

Newton insisted that “our community and campus are different today because of the actions we have taken, and continue to take” to address hate. He also accused the committee of “offering an incomplete and inaccurate view” of Harvard’s work by releasing “selective excerpts from internal documents.”

The committee revealed that a majority of working group members threatened to resign on Nov. 5, less than two weeks after the working group first met, unless the university committed to a series of concrete steps, some of which the group members demanded the university take within 48 hours. 

Horn, the author of a critically acclaimed book on antisemitism, told committee investigators they issued that threat because Harvard “didn’t seem to be responding to in any meaningful or public way” to a high-profile antisemitic incident, and “it didn’t seem like the deans at the various schools were taking this particularly seriously.”

From the beginning, Horn said the working group members’ role and responsibilities were never well-defined or publicized, and they were “inundated with… concerns from students” that they were unsure how to handle.

The members’ threat prompted a meeting between the working group’s members, former Harvard President Claudine Gay, then-Provost Alan Garber (who now serves as the school’s interim president following Gay’s resignation) and Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker, during which Gay apologized and warned that a group resignation would worsen the environment at Harvard.

That meeting was the only time any member of the Harvard Corporation, the school’s ultimate governing body, met with the working group.

Gay also issued a public statement and set up an email hotline for the committee. But Horn told investigators that she “continued to be frustrated with some of the lack of responses,” including the university’s continued failure to publicly clarify the working group’s role and responsibilities.

Horn said that she again considered resigning — as Rabbi David Wolpe did — after Gay’s testimony to the House committee, about which the working group was not consulted. She said that Harvard leadership internally sought to brush off the testimony and never explained why the working group wasn’t consulted.

According to the report, Harvard’s deans only met with the working group once, and did not provide any opportunity for the working group members to provide feedback and suggestions. Horn described their presentations as “disturbing” because she felt that the deans “didn’t really seem disturbed by the things that were happening” and seemed “perplexed by the situation.”

Working group communications and notes say that Jewish students felt that they had no clear authority to whom they could report their concerns, and that Harvard was not taking their concerns seriously or responding in a substantive manner.

They also indicate that working group members and Harvard leaders believed that many campus incidents fell within existing non-discrimination and bullying policies, but those were not enforced.

Harvard subsequently set up a second Antisemitism Task Force to replace the working group. According to Horn, the university never provided clarity about when, how and why the transition would take place, and did not inform working group members at the outset of their work that they would eventually be replaced.

“It seemed quite clear that there was an interest in getting our recommendations and moving on,” Horn told investigators, adding that she was concerned when told the working group would be replaced.

Horn specifically said she was disturbed by the selection of professor Derek Penslar, who had questioned the seriousness of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus, to lead the successor task force.

Recommendations put forward by the working group included enforcing existing rules to prohibit class disruptions and minimize protests inside buildings; banning masked protests; strictly enforcing of school policies on student group activity; sharing more information on disciplinary consequences; reviewing academic programs; reviewing and replacing “structural approaches to inclusion and diversity that may have inadvertently encouraged antisemitism”; and providing better education on antisemitism, Israel and the Jewish people. 

Internal notes also suggest concern about the potential influence of “Hamas funding” on Harvard’s campus, as working group members noted alleged links between groups backing campus pro-Palestinian activism and groups that had previously funnelled money to Hamas. They also indicate that at least one working group member was concerned that “student demonstrations [are] not organic but seeded.”

Harvard told the committee, in general terms, that it had investigated foreign donations from Middle Eastern nations and found “no issues.”

Addressing concerns about the “ostracization of Israeli students,” working group records identified a significant pattern of such behavior. They highlighted the student-led First Year International Student Orientation Program as a particular problem, “organized to platform an extraordinary amount of strident anti-Israel material,” according to minutes from one working group meeting.

The group also highlighted concerns about the “dramatic decline” in the Jewish undergraduate population at Harvard.

Working group members, in internal communications, blasted the school’s rapid move to set up a doxxing task force, without consulting the working group, primarily supporting students who had signed an Oct. 7 letter blaming Israel for the Hamas attack.

One group member described the move as “handing out milk and cookies to antisemites.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LOS ANGELES — Last week, while college administrators across the U.S. seemed paralyzed over how to respond to campus anti-Israel protesters, one school weighed in with a simple statement that served as a counterweight to the hemming and hawing of elite private universities. “The University of Florida is not a daycare, and we do not treat protesters like children,” a UF spokesperson said, declaring that students in an unauthorized encampment would face disciplinary action if they did not leave. 

The statement achieved every PR flak’s dream: It went viral. Much of the positive attention heaped on the school landed on Ben Sasse, the former Nebraska senator and Yale-educated historian who has been the president of UF since early 2023. (A guest on Fox News on Monday praised Sasse and said, “Don’t be an ass, do it like Sasse.”)

“It isn’t that complicated to affirm free speech and free assembly, which are fundamental American rights and something that institutionally we’re committed to. But that doesn’t mean that the people who are the loudest are the ones who don’t have to obey the rules that everybody else does,” Sasse told Jewish Insider on Monday in a conversation at the Milken Institute Global Forum in Los Angeles. 

For many universities, the seven months since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel that sparked a war in the Middle East and touched off a wave of antisemitism in the U.S. have been marked by instability and indecision. Sasse took a stand early, condemning Hamas’ attack soon after Oct. 7 and raising his voice against antisemitism. But when it comes to the encampment on the Gainesville campus, Sasse said his response is only about enforcing rules and not going after students for having opinions with which he disagrees.

Campus rules allow tents on one occasion, said Sasse — tailgating during football season, when tents are allowed only in certain places and for a particular amount of time. “Why would a specific group of protesters get special license that nobody else gets?” he asked. 

“We support folks’ free speech rights, but that includes the right to make an ass and an idiot of yourself, and a lot of the protesters say ridiculously, historically and geographically ignorant things,” Sasse said. There should be a role for universities and educators to play in responding to the content of what protesters are saying, he added, especially when some of their language echoes terrorist talking points.

“We don’t start by trying to prohibit speech, but we do want to ask fundamental questions about whether or not enough education is happening. The paraglider memes that are now replacing Che Guevara on T-shirts is so bizarre. Which paragliders are we talking about — the savages who raped teenage girls at a concert? That’s who you want to be the icon and the sort of shorthand for the movement you’re defending?” Sasse asked. “At the end of the day, there was an instigator that moved on 10/7, and it’s just amazing how quickly stupid and reductionistic so many of the protests have become.”

Sasse, who earned a bachelor’s degree at Harvard and a doctorate in history at Yale, declined to comment specifically on how those or other schools are handling similar issues. But he took an indirect swipe at universities like Columbia and the University of Southern California that have canceled commencement and other university events.

“I don’t make it my business to comment inside other institutions’ management decisions particularly, but I just don’t know who benefits by canceling these commencements. I don’t know who benefits by allowing people to disrupt the opportunity for students who have an exam tomorrow morning to be able to study in the library,” he said. “I know that we suffer as a community when people are spitting on police. I don’t know who benefits by vandalizing buildings. I just don’t understand the leadership decisions that are made in a lot of other places.”

He took the same approach regarding other universities, like Northwestern, that have sat down to negotiate with the protesters and even reach agreements with them. Sasse has no plans to do the same. “We just don’t think it’s prudent or wise or helpful to negotiate with the people who happen to scream the loudest,” Sasse explained. 

UF has more Jewish students than any other university in America, according to data compiled by Hillel International — 6,500 Jewish undergrads and 2,900 Jewish graduate students. Sasse attended a massive seder at the university last month that drew more than 1,000 people. 

“It is a special community. I think everybody feels safe. But I want the feelings to not be subjective, I want it to be because objectively, they are safe,” Sasse said. “Our Jewish Gators, as they call themselves, feel like it’s a pretty darn special place to be right now.”

A Harvard Law School student group is hosting a conference this week that will feature a public conversation with Ryna Workman, the former president of NYU Law’s student government who lost their job at a law firm and was removed from student government after sending a campus-wide email in October blaming Israel for the Hamas terror attacks on Oct. 7. 

“This week, I want to express, first and foremost, my unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression toward liberation and self-determination,” Workman wrote in an Oct. 10 email to the NYU Law student body. “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.” Workman has stood by this statement and refused to condemn Hamas. 

NYU Law dean Troy McKenzie disavowed the statement, writing at the time that Workman’s email “does not speak for the leadership of the Law School. It certainly does not express my own views, because I condemn the killing of civilians and acts of terrorism as always reprehensible.” Winston & Strawn, the law firm that had offered Workman a job, rescinded the offer, saying Workman’s comments “profoundly conflict with Winston & Strawn’s values as a firm.” 

Workman will speak on a Wednesday panel at the annual conference hosted by the Bell Collective for Critical Race Theory, a student group at Harvard Law School. The three-day on-campus conference, called “Censorship and Consciousness,” highlights pro-Palestinian activism, with a keynote address by Palestinian journalist Motaz Azaiza. Other topics covered at the conference include censorship in prison. 

Workman’s event is called “The Palestine Exception: A panel on repression and resistance.” Workman will appear alongside Rabea Eghbariah, a Harvard doctoral student who has claimed the Harvard Law Review censored a piece he wrote about Gaza; Fatema Ahmad, executive director of the Muslim Justice League; and Yipeng Ge, a Canadian physician who was suspended from his medical residency at the University of Ottawa after making a series of anti-Israel posts on social media.

The conference’s co-sponsors include the Harvard Black Law Students Association; HLS Lambda, a group for LGBTQ+ students; the Harvard Law Association’s Women of Color Coalition; and Harvard PalTrek, which brings students to the West Bank. 

A Harvard spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

In the aftermath of a surge in antisemitism that erupted following the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel, top universities including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania and Northwestern announced the creation of new bodies tasked with studying antisemitism on campus and identifying how to address it. Their impending work is framed with urgency, and the bodies are generally discussed using language about the importance of inclusivity on campus. 

But nearly five months after the environment for Jewish students on these campuses began to rapidly deteriorate, questions remain over the efficacy and mandate of such groups. They will also face the thorny issue of campus free speech as they delve into questions about what, exactly, constitutes antisemitism on campus. 

The question over the credibility of these antisemitism task forces was underscored this week at Harvard, following the resignation of business school professor Raffaella Sadun, the co-chair of the presidential task force, reportedly because she felt university leaders weren’t willing to act on the committee’s recommendations. 

“They’ve utterly failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students. It’s shameful,” a Jewish faculty member at Harvard told Jewish Insider. They requested anonymity to speak candidly about interactions with students and administrators in recent months. The professor has seen numerous Israeli students kicked out of WhatsApp groups unrelated to politics because they are Israeli. The professor also described widespread opposition, among many students, to topics having to do with Israel — and a corresponding reluctance to act from administrators, who fear pushback from far-left students. 

“If you’re an administrator, and you care about your own personal well-being, and you want to keep Harvard out of the news or off social media, you basically try not to engage with these people in a way that will provoke them,” the professor said. “In the end this backfired on Harvard, because their failure to take care of Jewish students contributed to the accusations of institutional antisemitism, the lawsuit, the congressional investigation.”

“I think if the mandate is not clear, if there’s not enough resources, if the council doesn’t have committees and jobs, it’s just going to be window dressing,” said Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network. “It’s not going to be able to do the work that needs to be done.”

Harvard announced the creation of an antisemitism task force in January, which immediately faced criticism due to comments made by its other co-chair, historian Derek Penslar, suggesting that antisemitism is not a major problem at Harvard. The body’s full membership has now been announced, but the scope and timeline of its work remains unclear. 

Interim Harvard President Alan Garber said in a Monday email that he expects the work of Harvard’s antisemitism task force to “take several months to complete,” but he asked the co-chairs “to send recommendations to the deans and me on a rolling basis.” It is not clear if the university will provide updates along the way; or if Harvard’s leadership will accept the task force’s recommendations.

At universities that already had antisemitism task forces prior to Oct. 7, those that achieved the most success generally have a budget to pursue actual work, a clear timeline for their work and strong buy-in from administrators, who must be willing to actually implement the groups’ recommendations, according to Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, which works to fight anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitism at U.S. universities. 

It’s not yet clear if the newly created task forces — especially those at private universities, which don’t have the same obligation for transparency as public universities — will achieve the needed support from leaders.

“I think if the mandate is not clear, if there’s not enough resources, if the council doesn’t have committees and jobs, it’s just going to be window dressing,” said Elman. “It’s not going to be able to do the work that needs to be done.”

At Columbia University, Shai Davidai, an assistant professor in the business school, said he doesn’t have confidence that a newly created antisemitism task force can succeed unless the faculty on the committee changes to include more Zionist and Israeli voices. 

“Stanford is aware of exactly what is going on, and if they cared they would have done something over the last five months,” said Kevin Feigelis, a doctoral student in the Stanford physics department, who on Thursday testified at a House Education Committee roundtable with Jewish students. “The university places people on these committees in one of two ways: either it places people who they think are going to be most sympathetic to the university or they go straight to Hillel and ask them. These are both troubling.” 

“At universities, if you want to make sure something doesn’t happen, you set up a task force,” Davidai continued. “The task force at Columbia has done absolutely nothing. They just talk.” 

At Stanford University, an antisemitism task force created in the wake of Oct. 7 has, like Harvard’s, been mired in conversations and controversy over its membership. Faculty co-chair Ari Kelman, an associate professor in Stanford’s Graduate School of Education and Religious Studies, had a record of downplaying the threat of campus antisemitism along with recent alliances with anti-Israel groups. He resigned, citing the controversy, and was replaced with Larry Diamond, a pro-Israel professor in Stanford’s political science department. Under its new leadership, the committee also expanded its name and scope in January to include anti-Israel bias. 

Despite the updates, Kevin Feigelis, a doctoral student in the Stanford physics department, who on Thursday testified at a House Education Committee roundtable with Jewish students, said that “the task force has still accomplished nothing and it’s not clear that they have the power to accomplish anything.” 

In January, Feigelis worked with the campus antisemitism task force to plan an on-campus forum meant to combat antisemitism. The symposium was disrupted by a pro-Palestinian protest that included threats to Jewish attendees.

The task force “was instituted just to appease people,” Feigelis said. “Stanford is aware of exactly what is going on, and if they cared they would have done something over the last five months. The university places people on these committees in one of two ways: either it places people who they think are going to be most sympathetic to the university or they go straight to Hillel and ask them. These are both troubling.” 

Feigelis expressed belief that the task force could accomplish more if it consisted of lawyers and more Israeli faculty. 

“If you really want to fix the problem, why conflate it with other issues that are going to prolong trying to find a solution to it?” Mike Teplitsky, a Northwestern alum and the president of the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern, said of the task force’s attempt to also focus on Islamophobia and other forms of hate. “I would call it a bureaucratic distraction from trying to fix the problem.” 

“If [the administration cared] the committee would not be made of political scientists and a biologist… lawyers should be the ones staffing a committee that determines what constitutes antisemitism. Instead they picked people who have no idea what constitutes free speech or what the code of conduct actually is.” 

He continued, “The task force is currently holding listening sessions, but it’s just not clear what will come of that.” 

After Northwestern University announced in November that it would create an antisemitism task force, 163 faculty and staff members at the university wrote a letter to President Michael Schill saying they were “seriously dismayed and concerned” by the announcement, raising concerns that the task force’s work would challenge “rigorous, open debate.” Three of the signatories of that letter — including Jessica Winegar, a Middle Eastern studies professor and vocal proponent of boycotts of Israel — were then named to the task force, which will also focus on addressing Islamophobia. 

“If you really want to fix the problem, why conflate it with other issues that are going to prolong trying to find a solution to it?” Mike Teplitsky, a Northwestern alum and the president of the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern, said of the task force’s attempt to also focus on Islamophobia and other forms of hate. “I would call it a bureaucratic distraction from trying to fix the problem.” 

Mark Rotenberg, Hillel International’s vice president for university initiatives and the group’s general counsel, argued that antisemitism has proven to be so severe as to warrant its own mechanisms. The inclusion of Islamophobia “and other hateful behavior” in the group’s mandate would be like if a campus Title IX office, focused on gender-based inequality, was also required to focus on racism.

“Antiracism may be a very important thing, but merging it with the problem of violence in frat houses is not going to signal the women on that campus that they are really taking that problem seriously,” said Rotenberg, who works with administrators at campuses across the U.S. on antisemitism-related issues. “That’s our point about antisemitism.”

Lily Cohen, a Northwestern senior who is a member of the task force, came face to face with antisemitism on campus a year before the Oct. 7 attacks. After writing an op-ed in the campus newspaper decrying antisemitism and speaking out about her support for Zionism, she was called a terrorist and faced an onslaught of hate — including a large banner that was printed with her article, covered by “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” in red paint. 

“I think it comes from the top,” said Cohen, who noted that, after the op-ed incident, “no strong actions were taken to stand up for Jewish students or protect Jewish students, or even just express that that wasn’t OK. It fostered an environment where antisemitism is tolerated at Northwestern as long as it stays just subtle enough that you’re not saying Jews.”

Afterward, she met with university administrators to talk about what happened to her. “At the end of the day, listening is not enough,” she said. “I don’t think in any of the meetings I had with any administrators, that they actually referred to what happened to me as antisemitism. I think that that’s a huge problem here, is how easy it is to say, ‘We are not antisemitic, we’re just anti-Zionist,’ or ‘We don’t hate Jews, we just hate Zionists. We just hate Israel.’”

The group started meeting in January, and it was asked by the president to finish its work by June, which Cohen worries is not enough time, especially given its broad scope. Administrators at the school have not instilled much confidence in her in the past, but she is choosing to be hopeful.

“Being on the committee, I have to be optimistic that we’re going to do something and that the president will take our recommendations seriously, and will put them into action,” she said. “Because if not, what was it all for?”

Gabby Deutch is Jewish Insider’s senior national correspondent; Haley Cohen is eJewishPhilanthropy’s news reporter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

.@ShabbosK with the best case yet for the moral bankruptcy at @Harvard.

"I know these students. I sit in class with them. I share study halls with them. They publicly praise Hamas." pic.twitter.com/9qECoPMNH1

— House Committee on Education & Workforce (@EdWorkforceCmte) February 29, 2024

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

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

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

.@Stanford student Kevin Feigelis says his campus has changed from a center of learning into a wasteland of hatred.

"Dirty jew…monster…colonizer…child killer…these are the names a dozen Stanford Students hurled in my face one night in November as they surrounded me." pic.twitter.com/UYwoaJVnDu

— House Committee on Education & the Workforce (@EdWorkforceCmte) February 29, 2024

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

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

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

Before last year, tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Sam Lessin thought of himself as only slightly more engaged with Harvard than the average Cambridge graduate. In his 20s, he had served as an alumni interviewer; since then, he’s helped raise money from fellow graduates in the class of 2005. 

But Harvard was not his identity — Lessin didn’t make a habit of flying across the country to Harvard football games, nor was the former Facebook executive a major donor to the university, even after he likely made a windfall when Facebook went public.

That changed last fall, after the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel spurred a rise in antisemitism on American campuses, including at Harvard, and set off a ripple effect of bad decisions that would mire the Ivy League university in scandal and months of brutal headlines. Lessin stepped off the sidelines.

In late December, Lessin announced a long-shot write-in bid to be a candidate to serve on Harvard’s Board of Overseers, the university’s second-highest governing body. He came just a few hundred votes short of qualifying for a spot on the ballot, winning more support than any of the other outside candidates that had not been approved by the Harvard Alumni Association. 

“It actually was very invigorating in that you just do see this huge mass of alums coming out of the woodwork who do want change, and I’m optimistic that there can be change,” Lessin told Jewish Insider in an interview last week, in which he pledged to remain involved with university affairs ahead of another board campaign next year. 

He attributed his loss, despite winning the backing of some big names like former Harvard President Larry Summers, to Harvard’s difficult-to-use website, technical problems for alumni who voted and simply running out of time. 

The mounting controversies at Harvard in recent months — including student protesters disrupting classes and common spaces on campus, former President Claudine Gay’s disastrous Capitol Hill testimony and the resulting leadership vacuum — can be traced, in Lessin’s estimation, to “mission creep” at Harvard. He thinks his alma mater has shifted from an institution whose raison d’etre is academic excellence to a place that has tried to accommodate too many goals, and to make itself too many things to too many different people. 

“You need to get the president and the [Harvard] Corporation to reaffirm that very clearly the school is an academic school and academic excellence is the only goal,” Lessin said. “It’s not that and six other goals.” 

He decried a yes-man culture among Harvard’s lay leaders, many of whom are large donors or prominent Harvard boosters, who have governed the school with an utter lack of transparency even as the world’s attention has turned to Cambridge in recent months. 

“That can work when things are easy,” said Lessin. “When things are hard, those are not necessarily the right voices to be leading. The reason is simple, which is, they have so much political liability, and they have very little willingness to push back.” 

Lessin described himself as a moderate seeking to avoid the culture wars in which Harvard has become entangled, a position that he viewed in contrast to Harvard’s loudest critic: hedge fund manager Bill Ackman.

“I believe strongly that there should be free speech in the classroom towards the goal of academic excellence. If people want to make a civil argument about why rape and murder is OK, inside of the classroom — from my personal perspective, I think that’s fair game,” Lessin said. “That is the thing I think is nuanced about this, and I might not agree with every Jew about.” 

“I worry that he’s politicizing this even more, in certain ways, putting forward right-wing voices against left-wing voices. I’m much more of a centrist, is the way I would approach it,” said Lessin. Instead, he earned the endorsement of another billionaire who studied at Harvard — Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. (As a Harvard dropout, Zuckerberg was not able to vote for Lessin.) 

Harvard, like other prestigious universities, has over the past decade made a concerted effort to increase diversity in its student body. Lessin said the way the university has emphasized diversity has in turn led to “factionalism” rather than “academic excellence.” 

“If you’re looking at the admissions essays, ‘What makes you diverse, and then what do you intend to do with that, like, your Harvard education to help the world?’” Lessin asked. “It became very, very tribal, in terms of people saying, ‘I’m here as the token X,’ or ‘I’m here to represent my community Y,’ and it’s not to learn and be part of society and help people integrate into the melting pot of society. Instead it’s like, ‘I’m here to defend that group.’”

The goal of the university, then, should be to get back to promoting academics as the school’s top goal, including absolute freedom of expression in an academic setting, as Lessin sees it. He extends that thinking even to the most abhorrent anti-Israel rhetoric Harvard has seen since Oct. 7. 

“I believe strongly that there should be free speech in the classroom towards the goal of academic excellence. If people want to make a civil argument about why rape and murder is OK, inside of the classroom — from my personal perspective, I think that’s fair game,” he said. “That is the thing I think is nuanced about this, and I might not agree with every Jew about.” 

But what happens outside of the classroom is another story. This is where he thinks Harvard has a responsibility to act much more strongly against antisemitic student protests, which he views as “more of a symptom than a root cause.” The answer is not “treating it as a one-off,” but rather, according to Lessin, revamping the way Harvard thinks about freedom of expression. 

“Sam’s emergence as someone who wants to help correct and change the narrative and to restore the dignity of Harvard, and help elevate the discussion and challenge the status quo that that allowed for this rise of anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric on the campus couldn’t have come at a more important moment,” Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi told JI.

“What you say in the Boston Common is a different situation. If you want to have protests there, that is a space for free speech. Private property at a private university with a purely academic mission is actually a place you don’t have free speech for the sake of free speech,” said Lessin. “Any speech to shut down other people, or to keep them from participating in academic endeavors, or to block academics, is completely unacceptable on private property.” Policies, he continued, must be “enforced and strengthened” so protests in Harvard Yard cannot disrupt people walking to class. 

“It’s private property, full stop,” Lessin said. During his six-week campaign for a seat on the board, he engaged alumni across the world, including among Harvard’s Jewish community; during college Lessin occasionally attended Hillel or Chabad Shabbat dinners, but was not a regular at either.

“Sam’s emergence as someone who wants to help correct and change the narrative and to restore the dignity of Harvard, and help elevate the discussion and challenge the status quo that that allowed for this rise of anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric on the campus couldn’t have come at a more important moment,” Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi told JI.

Jewish alumni and donors are exerting influence on campus affairs in new ways. One group of Jewish alumni lowered their annual donations to $1, to send a message that they care about the university but disagree with its actions in recent months. Other big-name donors have ceased giving entirely. Zarchi, who has worked at Harvard for more than two decades, has never seen this level of engagement from Harvard alumni. 

“I don’t expect that to decline,” he said. “For larger purposes, even beyond their care for Harvard, they want to stay engaged because of the outsized influence that Harvard has in the public conversation.”

Harvard University, under scrutiny for its inaction against antisemitism on campus, took a tough stance this week against pro-Palestinian student and faculty groups for distributing “deeply offensive antisemitic tropes” posted to social media.  

The groups had posted an image containing a cartoon from 1967 of a puppeteer whose hand is marked by a dollar sign inside a Star of David, lynching two men who appear to be Muhammad Ali and former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Harvard announced that it will be launching an investigation into how the antisemitic material got posted, and who was responsible for promoting the hateful material. “The University will review the situation to better understand who was responsible for the posting and to determine what further steps are warranted,” Alan Garber, Harvard’s interim president, said in a statement on Tuesday. 

Harvard’s response has led some Jewish leaders who have criticized campus leadership’s handling of antisemitism to applaud the college’s swift response to the most recent incident, with Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi calling it the school’s first “moment that looks appropriate.”

Harvard’s crackdown comes as the Israel-Hamas war has put a spotlight on the university, leading the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to open an investigation into the school’s record on antisemitism.

“As regards to [this one post, Harvard administration is] taking steps,” said Rabbi David Wolpe, who in December, citing the school’s antisemitism problem, stepped down as one of eight members on Harvard’s antisemitism advisory committee. The committee was formed at the end of October, before an official task force launched, as the school faced fierce criticism over its response to Oct. 7.

“What this will mean longer term, I don’t know,” Wolpe told Jewish Insider, adding that he remains “hopeful but very, very cautious.” 

“I know some people were unhappy I stepped down, but I don’t see any action that suggests that had I stayed the world would be better,” said Wolpe, the Anti-Defamation League’s rabbinic fellow. “I think that we still have serious problems and the onus is not on the task force, the onus is on the administration. The most the task force can do is try to get Harvard’s administration to take steps… it’s going to take fundamental changes and we’ll see whether there’s any willingness to actually undertake those.” 

Wolpe declined to comment further on the task force, which is not yet up and running. 

Zarchi said the school’s response in the current instance is “a very welcome step and an absolute necessity for the university to be able to function with any dignity and legitimacy.” 

“We’re witnessing Jew hate in its ugliest form,” Zarchi, who said in December of then-Harvard President Claudine Gay: We in the Jewish community are longing for a day that we can refer to the president and all of Harvard as ours.”

Zarchi told JI that the administration’s response to the antisemitic post was cheered by Jewish  students. He pointed to a Chabad event on Tuesday night with 150 undergraduate students in which many expressed relief that the incident was being investigated. 

“We finally have a moment that looks appropriate and is responsive. I sense in the students how much it meant to them to hear a voice saying the obvious in condemning the hateful conspiracies against Jews,” Zarchi said.   

Most concerning about the original posting, Zarchi said, was that “faculty were behind the Jew hatred and conspiracies, and have been for some time, and it’s gone unaddressed.”

“People saw a cartoon, it went public and made a lot of noise so we got a response but this didn’t just begin, it’s been going on for some time. Faculty have been writing and speaking on campus publicly in this manner,” Zarchi said. 

While the post originated from two student organizations — Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and the African and African American Resistance Organization — most of the initial criticism was directed at a Harvard faculty and staff of the pro-Palestine group that reposted the image in an Instagram story, the Harvard Crimson reported. 

Garber, who took over for Gay after she resigned amid widely criticized statements about the university’s handling of antisemitism, strongly condemned the antisemitic image on Tuesday. 

“While the groups associated with the posting or sharing of the cartoon have since sought to distance themselves from it in various ways, the damage remains, and our condemnation stands,” Garber said in a statement. “The members of the [Harvard] Corporation join me in unequivocally condemning the posting and sharing of the cartoon in question.” 

Meanwhile, Walter Johnson, the Harvard professor who guided the groups Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, stepped down on Tuesday from his faculty adviser role after the groups were widely condemned for posting the antisemitic image on Sunday. 

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which on Feb. 16 opened an investigation into Harvard over antisemitism on campus, also condemned Harvard faculty involvement in the original post. “This repugnant antisemitism should have no place in our society, much less on Harvard’s faculty,” the committee tweeted.

Jason Newton, a Harvard spokesperson, told JI that “the university is aware of social media posts today containing deeply offensive antisemitic tropes and messages from organizations whose membership includes Harvard affiliates. Such despicable messages have no place in the Harvard community. We condemn these posts in the strongest possible terms.”

Newton continued, “This matter is being reviewed by the university and is being referred to the Harvard College Administrative Board, which is responsible for the application and enforcement of undergraduate academic regulations and social conduct.” Newton declined to comment further on the investigation.  

Zarchi added that while “the message was certainly on target, the question that still remains is what actions will follow from this.”

“But yes,” he said, “this was the right statement.” 

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce issued subpoenas to Harvard’s leaders on Friday morning, seeking documents related to the committee’s investigation into campus antisemitism that the university allegedly withheld.

The subpoena is a historic step — the first time, according to the committee, that it has issued a subpoena to a university. It comes after two months of exchanges of letters and documents between the committee and Harvard following a disastrous hearing that contributed to former Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation.

The subpoenas, issued by Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC), specifically target Penny Pritzker, Harvard Corporation’s senior fellow; interim President Alan Garber; and N.P. Narvekar, Harvard Management Company chief executive officer.

Foxx said in a statement that at least 40% of the 2,516 pages of documents Harvard had provided to the committee were already publicly available, and that the university had failed to address some of the priority requests she made in a letter last week, in which she threatened subpoenas.

“Harvard’s continued failure to satisfy the Committee’s requests is unacceptable,” Foxx said. “I will not tolerate delay and defiance of our investigation while Harvard’s Jewish students continue to endure the firestorm of antisemitism that has engulfed its campus. If Harvard is truly committed to combating antisemitism, it has had every opportunity to demonstrate its commitment with actions, not words.”

In cover letters to the three Harvard officials, Foxx accused the school of failing to treat the probe “with appropriate seriousness,” suggesting that “the school is obstructing this investigation and is willing to tolerate the proliferation of antisemitism on its campus.” Foxx set a deadline for document production of March 4.

The documents requested across the three subpoenas include Harvard leadership’s internal communications, records of reports of antisemitism and actions taken in response, records from the school’s antisemitism task force and advisory group and any documents relating to anti-Israel protests on Harvard’s campus.

The committee chairwoman described the documents in her letters as “essential to inform the Committee’s consideration of potential legislation to address antisemitism in postsecondary education.”

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, is threatening to subpoena Harvard for documents related to its handling of antisemitism on its campus.

Foxx and the committee had requested documents from Harvard as part of the committee’s investigation into antisemitism on campuses, but said the documents the university produced were incomplete and nonresponsive to the request. Foxx on Wednesday gave Harvard’s leadership a week to provide further documents or face a subpoena.

“Somehow, almost two months after the Committee first informed Harvard of its intent to request production of specific documents, and a month after the Committee provided particularized requests, Harvard provided only a single meaningful document to the Committee in its antisemitism investigation,” she said. “Harvard’s failure to produce documents requested by the Committee in a timely manner is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

Foxx demanded all minutes from all meetings of the Harvard Corporation, Board of Overseers and Harvard Management Company; all communications involving the Corporation and Overseers regarding antisemitism since 2021; documents relating to disciplinary processes for incidents of antisemitism; all documents and communications relating the President’s Task Force on Antisemitism; and extensive documents relating to the findings of the Antisemitism Advisory Group and responses to those recommendations.

Foxx further slammed Harvard for redacting documents that are already available publicly in its production to the committee, and for providing what she described as highly abbreviated or redacted meeting minutes about Harvard leadership’s discussions of antisemitism issues on campus. 

Separately, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) led nine Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on letters seeking information about the funders behind the Rutgers University Center for Security, Race and Rights. 

The lawmakers said the center has provided a platform for supporters of terrorism, including guest speaker Sami Al-Arian, who was convicted of providing material support to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The center’s director reposted denialism of the Oct. 7 attack, and the center has hosted individuals who have celebrated the attack or sought to blame it on Israel. 

“The work of the Center, its promotion of terrorist sympathizers, and its platforming of radical ideologues is troubling to us as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee,” the senators wrote. “The Committee has a long history of working on legislation meant to root out support for terrorism, and to compensate its victims.”

The lawmakers questioned whether the center has received federal funds, New Jersey taxpayer funds or funding from foreign governments. They wrote a separate letter to the law firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler about its sponsorship of a law fellowship through the center.

Also this week, Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Don Bacon (R-NE) wrote to the Treasury Department asking it to investigate U.S. colleges and universities that failed to disclose information on $13 billion in contributions from foreign regimes, questioning whether such donations have helped to fund “antisemitic protest groups” on U.S. college campuses. 

Gottheimer questioned Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on the issue at a hearing this week.

Former Harvard President Larry Summers stepped up his criticism of the Ivy League university’s leadership in a series of tweets on Tuesday expressing concern for how the school is addressing antisemitism, which has dramatically increased on campus since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel.

“My confidence in Harvard leadership’s ability and will to confront anti-semitism and the demonization of Israel continues to decline,” Summers, a former U.S. Treasury secretary, wrote on X Tuesday morning. “Unfortunately, it is becoming ever clearer why Harvard ranks first on anti- semitism, even as it ranks last on upholding free speech.” 

Summers, a board member of the newly founded University of Austin, continued, “The executive board of Harvard’s Center for Middle East Studies, acting for the Center, not in their individual capacities, has endorsed a statement demonizing Israel.” 

“I cannot think of a worse stretch in Harvard history than the last few months. I have no doubt that all members of the Corporation are deeply devoted to Harvard,” the president emeritus wrote, referring to the Harvard Corporation, the university’s main governing body. “As the institution’s ultimate fiduciaries, I hope they will take appropriate accountability and enable a restoration of confidence.” 

Summers’ post on Tuesday followed his tweet on Jan. 21, in which he slammed the selection of Harvard professor Derek Penslar as the co-chair of a newly formed university task force on antisemitism. Alan Garber, Harvard’s interim president, unveiled a pair of task forces last week aimed to fight both antisemitism and Islamophobia.

The appointment of Penslar, a historian and the director of Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies,  drew the ire of Jewish communal leaders and prominent figures at Harvard over comments he made in recent weeks minimizing concerns over antisemitism at the university, and for past statements he has made about Israel. “Outsiders took a very real problem and proceeded to exaggerate its scope,” Penslar told JTA earlier this month. 

Summers’ criticism of Harvard stands in contrast from his previous praise of how the school’s leadership was dealing with antisemitism. Earlier this month, he applauded President Claudine Gay for her decision to step down due to allegations of plagiarism, coupled with her handling of the antisemitism controversy. 

“I admire Claudine Gay for putting Harvard’s interests first at what I know must be an agonizingly difficult moment,” Summers said in a statement on Jan 2.  

Harvard did not respond to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks for two days. By then, a letter signed by more than three dozen student groups holding Israel alone responsible for the massacre had gone viral. In the last several months, antisemitic incidents at the Cambridge campus have skyrocketed. Six Jewish students filed a federal lawsuit against the school this month, calling it a “bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment.”

Jewish Insider’s senior national correspondent Gabby Deutch contributed reporting.

Good Wednesday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at how Harvard is addressing concerns from Jewish students and alumni amid questions over its newly created antisemitism task force, and talk to Senate Democrats who oppose efforts to condition aid to Israel. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Matti Friedman, Arielle Charnas and Benny Gantz.

Israel entered a fresh round of mourning on Tuesday, as the details emerged about the deadliest incident since the start of the Gaza war and the 21 soldiers killed. IDF soldiers were preparing to demolish a building on Monday night to create a buffer zone in central Gaza, allowing Israeli residents of the town Kissufim, some 600 meters away, to return home, IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said.

A Palestinian terrorist cell shot a rocket-propelled grenade at a tank guarding the troops, causing two structures to collapse while soldiers were inside. Hagari said the buildings were likely rigged with mines. The IDF plans to investigate the incident, Jewish Insider senior political correspondent Lahav Harkov reports.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and war cabinet Minister Benny Gantz overcame their political tensions to release a joint statement to express their sorrow at the deaths of the soldiers, as well as their determination to continue the war “in the spirit of the fallen, to complete their mission,” as Gallant said.

The 21 soldiers killed were all reservists, ranging in age from 22 to 40, many of whom were husbands and fathers. Many Israeli commenters noted the diverse nature of the towns in Israel from which they came, from Tel Aviv and its surrounding cities, to West Bank settlements such as Karnei Shomron and Kiryat Arba, to the Bedouin city of Rahat.

“We are destined to live here together,” Yaya Fink, a prominent left-wing and Orthodox activist posted along with the names of the towns. “This is not a nation that is divided and divisive,” right-wing opinion columnist Ofir Dayan wrote after a similar list of the towns.

Master Sgt. (res.) Rabbi Elkana Vizel, 35, a father of four, came from Bnei Dekalim, a town in the Negev established by Israelis evacuated from their homes when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. He was wounded in action in Operation Protective Edge in 2014.

He wrote a letter to his family this time in case he was killed or missing in action: “If I was kidnapped, I demand that no deal be made for the release of any terrorist to release me. Our overwhelming victory is more important than anything… Maybe I fell in battle. When a soldier falls in battle, it is sad, but I ask you to be happy… We are writing the most significant moments in the history of our nation… So please, be happy, be optimistic, keep choosing life all the time.”

One of the soldiers, Sgt. First Class (res.) Cydrick Garin, 23, was the son of a Filipino migrant worker who grew up in Israel and was a high school dropout with a criminal record. He straightened out his life after police officers knocked on the door to his family’s home and he saw his mother Imelda’s distress. He enlisted in the IDF, earning a certificate of excellence when he finished his service. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that he knew Garin as one of his bodyguards, calling him “a hero of Israel with a great soul.”

Another soldier, Sgt. First Class (res.) Yuval Lopez, 27, was from a community of Incas indigenous to Peru who converted to Judaism as a community and moved to Israel between 1990 and 2006. Lopez grew up in the Spanish-speaking community in Alon Shvut, a settlement near Jerusalem, and lived in Tapuach, a West Bank settlement, in recent years with his wife, Sigalit, and three daughters ranging in age from 7 months to 3. His wife’s cousin called him “an exemplary father” who “loved the army [and] loved his country,” adding that “anything I could say about him would be too little.”

And Sgt. Maj. (res.) Adam Bismut, 35, from Karnei Shomron, was the founder and CEO of the SightBit startup that developed a system to help prevent people from drowning. “The eternal child of the Ginot Shomron neighborhood, his kindness illuminated his surroundings, loved and loved who fought for the defense of the Land of Israel,” the mayor of Karnei Shomron said in a tribute to Bismut.

Meanwhile, stateside, the Washington, D.C., Jewish Community Relations Council is leading an event outside the Qatari Embassy in Washington today, urging the Qatari government to exert more pressure on Hamas to release its hostages. Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Glenn Ivey (D-MD), as well as Alan Gross, who was imprisoned for five years in Cuba, are set to speak.

The event isamong the first major public efforts by a U.S. Jewish group to pressure the Qatari government, although organizers have been careful not to characterize it as a protest, describing it in a recent promotional email as a “peaceful gathering.”

crimson confusion

Uncertainty surrounds Harvard’s efforts to tackle antisemitism

Anyone trying to follow Harvard’s efforts to address rising antisemitism on campus has had to decipher a labyrinthine turn of events that have left even those close to the university questioning what, exactly, the strategy is, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Unforced errors: The critical response to a co-chair of the university’s new antisemitism task force, announced last week, is just the latest unforced error for Harvard, which since the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel has been mired in a series of PR missteps amid widespread public scrutiny of its actions. In a Monday statement to JI, Harvard stood by its choice of Derek Penslar, a historian and director of Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies, and Harvard Business School professor Raffaella Sadun as co-chairs. But what remains most unclear is what action the task force, with a broad mandate to research and address antisemitism, will take.

Secret advising: The body comes on the heels of an antisemitism advisory group that former Harvard President Claudine Gay created in November. But none of that group’s activities have been made public by the university. The group, which disbanded at the end of last year, authored a detailed report that contained specific recommendations Harvard could take to counter antisemitism on campus, two sources with knowledge of the group’s work told JI on Tuesday. The report was shared with university administrators but otherwise is confidential and not meant to be shared with the public, one of the sources close to the advisory group said. 

On the defensive: None of the members of the initial group have yet been named to the new task force, raising concerns about follow-through; Penslar and Sadun were not part of the original group. With the controversy over Penslar’s appointment, Harvard is beginning a crucial task already on the defensive. 

Read the full story here.

Bonus: House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC) called the documents Harvard University provided for the committee’s antisemitism investigation “woefully inadequate” and “unacceptable,” Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. She said the school had failed to respond in a “substantive manner” instead turning over largely public materials including letters from nonprofits and student handbooks. “Harvard must produce the remaining documents in a timely manner, or risk compulsory measures,” Foxx said.

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aid arguments

Pro-Israel Senate Dems say Netanyahu’s two-state solution comments don’t impact conditions debate

Democratic pro-Israel stalwarts in the Senate are pushing back on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau’s comments rejecting a two-state solution, even as they dismiss arguments from some colleagues that Netanyahu’s remarks are proof of the need for conditioning U.S. aid to Israel, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Pushback: Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told JI on Tuesday that he disagreed with Netanyahu’s comments, explaining that “a two-state solution is the best and most viable path to peace and stability in the region.”

No linkage: But he dismissed remarks from some fellow Democrats suggesting that Netanyahu’s rejection of a two-state solution, and other comments from Israeli leaders hostile to U.S. policy, show that the U.S. needs to condition or restrict its aid to the Jewish state. Five additional senators signed onto an amendment conditioning aid the day after Netanyahu’s comments. “I don’t think those two are necessarily linked,” Blumenthal said, adding that he’s “hopeful that [Netanyahu] will restate his views in a way that’s more encouraging to all of us who want to help.”

Supplemental concerns: Another possible hiccup for the supplemental bill came into view on Tuesday, as McConnell expressed skepticism about providing aid to the Palestinians, elevating Republican concerns about that portion of the emergency funding package. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said in remarks on the Senate floor that he “cannot understand why some of my Democratic colleagues, including the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee who pushed so hard to pass legislation combating global corruption, now want to shovel billions of taxpayer dollars to one of the most corrupt entities on the planet,” referring to the Palestinian Authority. 

Read the full story here.

Elsewhere on the Hill: Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Todd Young (R-IN), Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Mike Lee (R-UT) wrote to the administration raising questions about the U.S.’ strategy in its continued campaign of air strikes against the Houthis, as well as the constitutional authorities underpinning those strikes. They said the U.S. may be “in the midst of an ongoing regional conflict that carries the risk of escalation” and that “Congress must carefully deliberate before authorizing offensive military action.”

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on the hill

More than 200 lawmakers condemn South Africa’s genocide case against Israel

A bipartisan group of 210 House lawmakers sent a letter on Tuesday condemning South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice as “grossly unfounded and defamatory,” Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Pushback: The letter, led by Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Kathy Manning (D-NC), addressed to Secretary of State Tony Blinken, expresses the lawmakers’ “disgust at this filing, which perpetrates false and dangerous allegations against the Jewish state.”

Support: The lawmakers accused South Africa of attempting to “demonize” and “delegitimize” Israel, and called on the State Department to continue to push back against the case, “offer Israel all appropriate support” and urge U.S. allies to join such efforts. The signatories also called it “particularly cynical” to accuse Israel of genocide “for defending itself against Hamas terror… given that the term ‘genocide’ was coined following the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust.”

Read the full story here.

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campus beat

Cornell professor cancels class in solidarity with anti-Israel activists

As students at Cornell University returned to campus on Monday after the winter recess, some freshmen in a writing seminar learned their professor canceled class for the day “in solidarity with collective calls for a Global Strike for Palestine,” eJewishPhilanthropy’s Haley Cohen reports for Jewish Insider. Alyiah Gonzales, a professor in Cornell’s College of Arts and Science, canceled the first day of “ENGL 1160: FWS Intersections: Race, Writing, and Power.” 

In solidarity with Gaza students: In an email to students, obtained by JI, Gonzales wrote, “Today, I am canceling class in solidarity with collective calls for a Global Strike for Palestine. As I write to you, a short drive away from the university we all attend and that I have the privilege of teaching you in, I mourn the fact that all universities in Gaza have been destroyed or demolished by Israeli military forces and operations. In Gaza, students like us, who hold a passion for learning and engaging in community knowledge production, have had their institutional resources ripped away from them one bomb at a time.”

First assignment: Gonzales added that while class may be canceled, “this is not a free hour to sit passively.” Instead, she wrote, “As your first writing assignment of the semester, I’d like you to write a 2-3 page letter/essay in which you share why you chose to enroll in Race, Writing, and Power as your FWS course… Please reflect on your intentions coming into the course, what knowledge you hope to deepen and share with myself and your peers, and how you presently understand the relationship between writing, power, and systems of oppression (including, but not limited to, race, gender, class, dis/ability, etc).”

Read the full story here.

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content warning

Meta Oversight Board rules against Holocaust denial content

Citing a case made by a prominent Jewish group, the Meta Oversight Board overturned the social media giant’s decision to leave up an Instagram post that spread garbled information about the Holocaust, according to an announcement made on Tuesday, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Haley Cohen reports for Jewish Insider. 

Urging action: The Oversight Board, an independent entity created by Meta to review its actions removing or hiding certain content, urged the company, which runs Facebook and Instagram, to impose updated measures in how it tracks Holocaust denial, pointing to a submission by the American Jewish Committee and its Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights (JBI) in the decision. JBI’s comment on the case claimed that Meta’s prohibition of Holocaust denial is “fully consistent with international human rights standards.” 

Content in question: The content at the center of the case, originally posted on Instagram in September 2020, featured a meme of the “SpongeBob SquarePants” character Squidward. It questioned the number of victims of the Holocaust and existence of crematoria at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, under a speech bubble titled “Fun Facts About The Holocaust,” according to the board. Meta removed the post in August after the board announced it selected the case to review. When the board took up the case for review, Instagram had allowed the post to remain on the platform.  

Read the full story here.

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Worthy Reads

Gantz’s Ascent: In The New York Times, Anshel Pfeffer spotlights former Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, the war cabinet member who has seen his popularity rise since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war. “Mr. Gantz, 64, is in a unique and contradictory position. He is now, essentially, the grown-up in the room of the Israeli government. Many if not most Israelis, as well as Israel’s allies, look to him to prevent the radical moves being urged by the government’s far-right members. At the same time, according to polls, he is also the man most likely to replace Mr. Netanyahu and his disastrous government. To manage that transition and set the stage for a potential successful premiership will require political deftness, ruthlessness and, above all, an acute sense of timing. … Mr. Gantz has refused to give interviews since Oct. 7, eschewing even off-record briefings. But his very presence in the innermost decision-making forum has reassured Israelis. Mr. Gantz is said to have stood against the urgings of the generals, including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, to launch a pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah in Lebanon. He advocated the hostage release agreement with Hamas, which generals initially rejected because it included a temporary truce during which Hamas could relieve its exhausted fighters.” [NYTimes]

Jersey Boy: The Washington Post’s Jesús Rodríguez does a deep dive into Sen. Bob Menendez’s (D-NJ) rise to power, as the senior senator from New Jersey mounts a reelection bid amid federal corruption and bribery charges. “He rose in New Jersey politics as part of an anti-corruption alliance that ousted a Union City boss who had been convicted in a racketeering case in which a 28-year-old Menendez gave testimony. Now, Menendez’s American success story is at risk of becoming a cautionary tale of corruption, decadence and hubris. ‘Embedded in that story are definitely all the elements of a Greek tragedy: the same purpose for which the character and the Greek tragedy started is what ultimately undermines the character,’ says Frank Argote-Freyre, a former Menendez staffer. ‘Rather than reforming the system, the system seems to have changed him, based on these allegations.’” [WashPost]

In Plain Sight: In the Jewish Review of Books, Matti Friedman looks at how the themes of Haim Sabato’s 1999 book Adjusting Sights, about the Yom Kippur War, resonate 50 years later. “It’s a strange fact that a bookish country defined by wars has produced reams of analysis, military history, and recollections by generals — but almost no war memoirs of literary value. I’m not sure why. When Adjusting Sights came out in 1999, going on to win Israel’s highest literary prize and to earn a place in the Hebrew canon, it was unique for the way it presented the war through the eyes of a tank gunner who spoke from the army’s lowest ranks, from the immigrant neighborhood in Jerusalem where he lived, and from the study hall of the yeshiva. The author wasn’t a creature of the literary scene or the world of secular culture in Tel Aviv, but a rabbi, a stranger among the people who produce most of Israel’s writing. And yet Sabato’s voice was Israeli and couldn’t be from anywhere else: in Adjusting Sights it’s easy to see the presence of ancient Jewish texts and of the Hebrew literary giant S.Y. Agnon, but international influences are all but impossible to detect. It’s not quite right to say that the book mixes the sacred and the profane. Sabato doesn’t seem to think any of what he describes is profane. ‘So highly strung were our souls in those days,’ he writes of the war, ‘that whatever touched them made them tremble.’” [JewishReviewofBooks]

Middle Men: In the Liberal Patriot, Brian Katulis suggests that American legislators mount a bipartisan front to address Iranian aggression. “One of the biggest challenges that the United States faces in crafting a strategic approach to a complicated challenge like Iran comes from within—the sharp divisions inside the United States about what could and should be done about Iran. These divisions weren’t always as acute as they are today, and recent events are the product of the lack of serious reflection and meaningful debate about what should be done about the current situation in the Middle East and the role that the Iranian regime has played in creating it. … Right now, U.S. policy on Iran is missing one main needed element: a bipartisan coalition to devise a new, comprehensive U.S. policy on Iran that addresses the full range of challenges, threats, and opportunities posed by Iran to U.S. national security interests and values.” [LiberalPatriot]

Around the Web

Primary Colors: Former President Donald Trump won the New Hampshire GOP primary, with 55% of the vote compared to former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s 43%. President Joe Biden won the Democratic primary through a write-in campaign. 

Hostage Negotiations: The Wall Street Journal reports that Hamas officials said they are open to releasing a number of the hostages still in Gaza during a prolonged pause in fighting; a Reuters report indicates that negotiators are discussing a monthlong pause that would see the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners. 

Overnight Strikes: The U.S. struck Iran-linked targets in Iran and Iraq that American officials said threatened U.S. forces and commercial and military vessels.

Digging into Doha: Rep. Jack Bergman (R-MI) sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland calling on his office to investigate reports that Qatar spied on and attempted to discredit U.S. lawmakers.

Lesson Plan: New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks launched a new initiative to address antisemitism and Islamophobia in the city’s public schools.

Problematic Posts: A Washington, D.C., councilmember who had previously come under fire for antisemitic comments and for donating to Louis Farrakhan is again in the headlines for controversial social media posts, including a veiled antisemitic reference to Jews.

Ballot Block: The Burlington, Vt., City Council voted against allowing a ballot measure that called for an end to “Israel’s apartheid regime, settler colonialism, and military occupation.” 

News Cuts: The Los Angeles Times is laying off more than 20% of its newsroom, days after two of the paper’s managing editors, Shani Hilton and Sara Yasin, departed the publication; Executive Editor Kevin Merida left earlier this month, amid reports that he and the Times’ owners disagreed over editorial stances.

Wardrobe Malfunction: The Wall Street Journal charts the rise and fall of Arielle Charnas’ Something Navy brand.

Ackman’s Aquisition: Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman and his wife, Neri Oxman, purchased 4.9% of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange for roughly $17 million, their first investment in Israel since the outbreak of the war.

Delayed Arrival: Bloomberg looks at how the Israel-Hamas war has derailed efforts to build the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, a network of rail links across the Middle East.

No-Go Zone: Israeli officials are mulling the creation of a two-mile demilitarized buffer zone on the Gazan side of the Israel-Gaza border.

Talking Tunnels:The New York Times’ Bret Stephens dives into new revelations about Hamas’ vast tunnel system in Gaza and the light it sheds on the terror group’s MO.

Shell Search:The Wall Street Journal spotlights the 155mm artillery shells, which are in high demand in both Israel and Ukraine for their respective wars.

Eye on India: Israeli officials are hoping to increase the number of Indian migrant workers in the coming months, amid the departure of thousands of foreign workers and the absence of Palestinian workers since the start of the war.

Families’ Fight: The Washington Post looks at scaled-up efforts by the families of hostages still in Gaza to draw awareness to their loved ones’ plights.

Death Penalty: A 23-year-old Iranian man was executed in Tehran for what authorities allege was his role in anti-regime protests.

Pic of the Day

Family and friends of Sgt. Maj. (res.) Matan Lazar mourn as they walk behind Lazar’s coffin on Tuesday. Lazar was one of the 21 Israeli soldiers killed on Monday evening in Gaza.

Birthdays

Sporting director for Hapoel Jerusalem of the Israeli Premier League and the FIBA Champions League, Yotam Halperin turns 40… 

Canadian architect and urban renewal advocate, Phyllis Barbara Bronfman Lambert turns 97… Singer-songwriter and one of the world’s best-selling recording artists of all time, Neil Diamond turns 83… 2011 Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry, Professor at Technion and Iowa State University, Dan Shechtman turns 83… Chairman of the Sazerac Company and of Crescent Crown Distributing, two of the largest domestic distillers and distributors of spirits and beer in the US, William Goldring turns 81… Professor of modern Jewish history at New York University, Marion Kaplan turns 78… Senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Elliott Abrams turns 76… Professor of alternative dispute resolution and mediation at Hofstra School of Law, Robert Alan Baruch Bush turns 76… Ukrainian-born comedian, actor and writer, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1977 and is noted for the catchphrase “What a country,” Yakov Smirnoff turns 73… Conductor, violinist and violist, Yuri Bashmet turns 71… VP of strategy at LiveWorld, Daniel Flamberg… Founder of an online software training website which was acquired by LinkedIn in April 2015 for $1.5 billion, Lynda Susan Weinman turns 69… Burlingame, Calif.-based surgeon at Peninsula Plastic Surgery, Lorne K. Rosenfield M.D.… Beryl Eckstein… Former senior correspondent for Fox News, Rick Leventhal… Former CEO of Ford Motor Company, and now a board member of Hertz, Mark Fields turns 63… B’nei mitzvah coordinator at Temple Beth Am of Los Angeles, Judith Alban… Former HUD secretary and OMB director, now the president and CEO of Enterprise Community Partners, Shaun Donovan turns 58… Co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy, Ian Bassin turns 48… Journalist and then a tax attorney, Joshua Runyan… Founder and CEO at TACKMA, Jeffrey Schottenstein… Regional director of synagogue initiative at AIPAC, Miryam Knafo Schapira… J.D. candidate at Brooklyn Law School, Michael Krasna… Musician and former child actor, Jonah Bobo turns 27…

Anyone trying to follow Harvard’s efforts to address rising antisemitism on campus has had to decipher a labyrinthine turn of events that have left even those close to the university questioning what, exactly, the strategy is. 

The critical response to a co-chair of the university’s new antisemitism task force, announced last week, is just the latest unforced error for Harvard, which since the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel has been mired in a series of PR missteps amid widespread public scrutiny of its actions.

Some Jewish communal leaders and prominent Harvard affiliates criticized recent comments made by task force co-chair Derek Penslar, a historian and director of Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies, minimizing the scope of antisemitism at Harvard. Some also expressed concern about public writings from Penslar adopting a left-wing approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on which he has written extensively, including a letter he signed onto that accused Israel of ethnic cleansing. 

In a statement to Jewish Insider, Harvard on Monday stood by its choice of Penslar and Harvard Business School professor Raffaella Sadun as co-chairs. But what remains most unclear is what action the task force, with a broad mandate to research and address antisemitism, will take.

The body comes on the heels of an antisemitism advisory group created by former Harvard President Claudine Gay in November. But that group’s activities have not been made public by the university. 

The group, which was comprised several Harvard faculty members and administrators, a university trustee, one student, author Dara Horn and Rabbi David Wolpe (who resigned in December), disbanded at the end of last year.

The advisory group authored a detailed report that contained specific recommendations Harvard could take to counter antisemitism on campus, two sources with knowledge of the group’s work told JI on Tuesday. The report was shared with university administrators but otherwise is confidential and not meant to be shared with the public, one of the sources close to the advisory group said. 

“The advisory group has wrapped up its work, including having come up with recommendations for the charge and work of the Task Force on Combating Antisemitism, that will lead this initiative going forward,” Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton told JI on Tuesday.

Despite its lack of transparency, the advisory group was more than a public relations move — it met roughly twice a week for two months, and each meeting was attended by then-Provost Alan Garber, who is now Harvard’s interim president. (Gay did not consult the group before her testimony to Congress in December.) Its report included recommendations that the new task force is meant to implement, including specific guidance to enforce Harvard’s code of conduct against student protestors who interrupt classes to chant antisemitic slogans and policies to evaluate the academic rigor of speakers on campus, according to the source. 

These ideas have been advocated by Jewish students and alumni for months, with little action from Harvard. Despite Gay saying in November that chants to free Palestine “from the river to the sea” come across as hateful to Jewish students, pro-Palestine protestors interrupted several classes at Harvard weeks later with that same chant.

Still, the advisory group left the task force with its report as a blueprint for future action. But none of the members of the initial group have yet been named to the task force; Penslar and Sadun were not part of the original group. With the controversy over Penslar’s appointment, Harvard is beginning a crucial task already on the defensive, promoting Penslar as a good steward of the cause while also taking steps toward appointing other members of the task force.

Reached for comment on Monday, a Harvard spokesperson offered the names of several Jewish studies professors at other universities who could vouch for Penslar, a well-respected scholar. Among some members of the campus Jewish community and advocates with ties to the university, his appointment to lead the group raises questions.

“Being chair of a task force is not a scholarly enterprise. You need to be able to bring multiple stakeholders along, particularly where people feel very aggrieved. It is important that the person in place be someone who is not polarizing and can help the community to heal,” said Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, an organization that works with Jewish faculty at U.S. universities to counter antisemitism and anti-Israel bias. (She and Penslar will appear on a panel together, discussing antisemitism, at a Center for Jewish History event in New York on Sunday.) What’s most important, Elman said, is that the chair of a committee like this “should have the trust and support of the aggrieved Jewish community on campus.”

Talia Kahan, a Harvard sophomore who took a Jewish history class with Penslar in the fall, said he handled the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks thoughtfully.

“In the wake of October 7, I definitely felt fully supported as a Jewish student, and as somebody who has a lot of personal ties to Israel, by Professor Penslar,” she told JI on Tuesday. “A lot of the criticism leveraged against him has come from an analysis of his scholarship to claim that he is not well equipped to be on this task force. I’m fairly confident that most people who are leveraging criticism against him have not spent a semester learning with him.”

Academics view the close reading of Penslar’s past writings on Zionism and his public statements about antisemitism as an affront to their profession, where freedom of expression and critical inquiry are key tenets. 

“The frustration among many scholars in seeing Penslar become a target and a focal point for debate about this is that we need to be focused on the larger goal of thinking critically and carefully about these institutions and really using evidence-based methods,” said James Loeffler, a professor of modern Jewish history at Johns Hopkins University who has worked closely with Penslar. “I want the people who are charged to investigate and to come up with solutions to really be singularly focused on honesty and academic rigor.”

Any timeline for the task force to name its members or implement new policies has not been made public. Back from winter break, Harvard Jewish students continue to complain of a toxic environment. The Harvard Crimson reported on Monday that the university sent a selection of antisemitic messages posted on an anonymous chat app for Harvard undergraduates to the campus police, to investigate whether law enforcement should get involved. 

Kahan, on her first day back after winter break, walked by posters with the photos of Israeli hostages. They had been vandalized.

Good Monday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on the appointment of a controversial academic to head Harvard’s antisemitism task force, and look at how a Knesset committee is approaching potential future military tribunals of perpetrators of the Oct. 7 attacks. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Dr. Albert Bourla, Rabbi Sharon Brous and San Francisco Mayor London Breed.

When American pro-Israel politicians talk about their desire for a “two-state solution” between Israel and the Palestinians, they’re usually speaking about support for an aspirational goal — even when there’s no realistic partner for peace on the Palestinian side.

That was true before Oct. 7, and Israeli leaders typically went along with the formulation, knowing both sides understood the realities of the region. But since the Hamas massacre, officials across much of the Israeli political spectrum are rejecting any imminent discussion of two states — even as the Biden administration has been pushing harder for a Palestinian state as part of a post-war resolution, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov writes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call with President Joe Biden took place on Friday, the day after a press conference in which Netanyahu rejected a Palestinian state. When asked about the prime minister’s position, Biden didn’t dwell on the differences, saying: “I think we’ll be able to work something out.”

With Hebrew media accusing Netanyahu of telling Biden the opposite of what he said to the Israeli public, the prime minister took the unusual move of releasing a statement on Shabbat, saying that, in his call with the president, he “repeated his consistent position for years … After the elimination of Hamas, Israel must remain in full security control of the Gaza Strip to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel — and this conflicts with demands for Palestinian sovereignty.”

Netanyahu and Biden’s statements may not be as contradictory as they may seem. Since his 2009 Bar-Ilan speech, the Israeli prime minister has envisioned a demilitarized Palestinian state with full Israeli security control. Netanyahu has described it as a Palestinian “state-minus” in the ensuing years, and he has repeatedly recounted, including in his memoirs, that then-Vice President Biden was skeptical about the plan. Yet on Friday, Biden was willing to entertain “a number of types of two-state solutions,” noting that “there’s a number of countries that are members of the UN that…don’t have their own militaries.”

Netanyahu’s more outspoken resistance to the two-state formulation has emboldened criticism of Israel from Democrats on Capitol Hill. Five additional Senate Democrats signed onto legislation that would add more conditions to aid to Israel, and even some stalwart pro-Israel backers have been speaking out more aggressively against Netanyahu. Read more below.

It’s convenient for Americans to think that Bibi is the obstacle to their vision coming to fruition, but his position reflects widespread Israeli public opinion that now is not the time to talk about peace, a view shared across a large swath of the ideological spectrum — including by Netanyahu’s more-liberal rival Yair Lapid and Israeli President Isaac Herzog, the former leader of Israel’s Labor Party.

Herzog said at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday: “If you ask an average Israeli now about his or her mental state, nobody in his right mind is willing now to think about what will be the solution of the peace agreements, because everybody wants to know, can we be promised real safety in the future?”

Referring to Israel’s 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Herzog said Israelis saw that “When you pull out [of territory] you get terror…I think that when nations come forward and say ‘two-state solution,’ they have to first deal with a preliminary question…Are we offered real safety?”

​Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, speaking on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” over the weekend, said declaratively that the creation of a Palestinian state was a prerequisite to normalization between Riyadh and Jerusalem. “We need stability,” he said, “and only stability will come through resolving the Palestinian issue.”

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), one of Israel’s strongest allies on Capitol Hill, expressed the view of those seeking to balance national security reality on the ground in Israel and the political reality in the U.S.: “I am under no illusion that a two-state solution will happen in the immediate future but to assert that it should NEVER happen — that either Jews or Palestinians should never have self-determination — is morally wrong,” Torres said.

This rhetoric effectively summed up the challenge that Jerusalem and its strongest supporters on the Hill face, with Washington’s vision for the region becoming more politically untenable in Israel than it has been in decades.

bibi backlash

After Netanyahu’s rejection of two-state solution, five new Senate Democrats support conditioning Israel aid

A day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rejected the prospect of a two-state solution following the war in Gaza, five additional senators announced their support for an amendment conditioning emergency supplemental aid to Israel and other allies, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

​New supporters: Sens. Tina Smith (D-MN), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Laphonza Butler (D-CA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Jon Ossoff (D-GA) joined the 13 senators already supporting the amendment, bringing its support to 18 lawmakers, more than a third of the Democratic caucus.

Growing discontent: The announcement from the amendment’s sponsors comes amid growing criticism of Netanyahu’s comments from pro-Israel Democrats. Fourteen Jewish House Democrats — including some staunchly pro-Israel members and others who have been more critical of Israel’s military operation or have called for a cease-fire — rejected Netanyahu’s comments in a curt, two-sentence statement. “We strongly disagree with the Prime Minister. A two-state solution is the path forward,” Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), Becca Balint (D-VT), Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Dan Goldman (D-NY), Seth Magaziner (D-RI), Mike Levin (D-CA), Dean Phillips (D-MN), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Kim Schrier (D-WA), Brad Sherman (D-CA) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) said in the statement.

Close allies: Another group of Jewish Democrats, including some of the most outspoken pro-Israel lawmakers in the House — Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Kathy Manning (D-NC), Brad Schneider (D-IL) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) — issued a separate statement which avoided mentioning Netanyahu directly. “Once [the hostages are released], and Hamas is defeated, it will be critical to work toward a lasting peace and a two-state solution — a truly safe and secure, democratic Jewish state of Israel and a state for the Palestinian people. That will ensure a better future for everyone in the region.”

Read the full story here.

Elsewhere on the Hill: The House Judiciary Committee approved a bill last week making any individuals affiliated with Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or involved with the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, ineligible for immigration to the U.S. Both Hamas and PIJ are already designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations, making their members ineligible for entry into the U.S., although some unaffiliated Gaza civilians are believed to have joined the attack as it was underway.

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seeing crimson

New Harvard antisemitism task force under fire for controversial co-chair

Harvard has faced calls to do more to address antisemitism. Now critics are questioning its choice of who will lead those efforts. After interim President Alan Garber on Friday announced the creation of two new “presidential task forces,” one focused on combating antisemitism and another focused on Islamophobia, the antisemitism-focused group came under immediate scrutiny for naming Derek Penslar, a historian and the director of Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies, as co-chair, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Red flags: Penslar’s appointment drew the ire of Jewish communal leaders and prominent figures at Harvard over comments he made in recent weeks minimizing concerns over antisemitism at Harvard, and for past statements he has made about Israel.

Exaggerated scope: “Yes, we have a problem with antisemitism at Harvard, just like we have a problem with Islamophobia and how students converse with each other,” Penslar told JTA earlier this month. “The problems are real. But outsiders took a very real problem and proceeded to exaggerate its scope.” 

Israel attitudes: Penslar faced pushback for signing a letter in August that accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and of implementing “a regime of apartheid” against Palestinians. He has also sharply criticized the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, a tool that has been widely adopted by dozens of countries, including the United States, and the mainstream Jewish community. Pensler signed on to the “Jerusalem Declaration,” which offered an alternate definition of antisemitism.

No progress: Former Harvard President Larry Summers called for Penslar to step down. “I also hope Harvard’s leadership will recognize that they have exacerbated Harvard’s credibility problems on anti-Semitism with the Penslar appointment and take steps to restore their credibility,” Summers said in a post on X on Sunday. “As things currently stand, I am unable to reassure Harvard community members, those we are recruiting or prospective students that Harvard is making progress in countering anti-Semitism.” 

Read the full story here.

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art imitating life

‘Law & Order’ takes on campus antisemitism — with a violent twist

A pro-Palestine professor accused of indoctrinating students to hate Israel. A university president facing plagiarism accusations and juggling how to handle free speech in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel. Graffiti, torn-down hostage posters and a brawl between pro- and anti-Israel activists. No, this isn’t Harvard. All of these scenes appeared in the 42-minute season premiere of “Law & Order,” which aired on NBC last Thursday, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Battle raging: The popular crime drama, which just kicked off its 23rd season, has long been known to spin headlines into story arcs. Thursday’s episode, titled “Freedom of Expression,” was particularly striking because the heated atmosphere it depicted still rages on university campuses across the United States. “When did expressing your beliefs become so fraught?” one detective asked another as they were investigating a series of violent incidents stemming from the conflict overseas. “When it comes to Israel and Palestine,” his colleague responded, “forever.” 

Central drama: The central drama is the murder of a president at a fictional New York City university. Although he is Jewish, the president took a stridently pro-free speech line in the wake of the Hamas attacks that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and declined to weigh in on the growing war in the Middle East. 

Read the full story here.

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extremism watch

Rep. Jamaal Bowman praises speaker who celebrated Oct. 7 Hamas attacks

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) introduced a controversial anti-Israel scholar, Norman Finkelstein, who has accused Jews of exploiting the Holocaust to legitimize Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, at a panel discussion on the Israel-Hamas war last Sunday in Westchester County, where the congressman expressed his admiration for the polarizing author and activist. “I’m a bit starstruck,” Bowman said of Finkelstein, whose 2000 polemic, “The Holocaust Industry,” has faced allegations of promoting conspiracy theories about Jewish extortion, and the other guests who participated in the discussion at the Andalusia Islamic Center in Yonkers, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.

Background: Finkelstein, a political scientist who in 2007 was denied tenure at DePaul University amid charges of antisemitism, which he dismissed as politically motivated, has long been a divisive figure for his comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Jewish son of Holocaust survivors has voiced support for Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terror group in Lebanon, and compared Israel to Nazi Germany, among other incendiary remarks. Following Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks, Finkelstein also celebrated the massacre as a “heroic resistance” akin to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, writing that “it warms every fiber of my soul.”

Bowman’s introduction: In his introductory remarks, Bowman made no allusion to those comments as he thanked the scholars who had joined the panel “for being here and coming to Yonkers and delivering the truth to us.” A spokesperson for Bowman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Apology: Bowman took to X yesterday to address backlash to the event. “I had seen a few interviews but was unaware of Norman Finkelstein’s completely reprehensible comments before this event,” he wrote. “And when he made comments on October 7th at this event, I strongly condemned his language and will always continue to do so. I apologize deeply to any of my friends and neighbors hurt by my comments and will continue to fight the scourge of antisemitism in our country and across the world.”

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trial tribulations

Knesset considering military tribunals, death penalty for Oct. 7 terrorists

Over 100 days after they massacred Israelis in kibbutzim and cities near the Gaza border, hundreds of Hamas terrorists who participated in the Oct. 7 attack remain in Israeli prisons. The terrorists are in administrative detention, and a recent Knesset amendment extended the period in which the state can bar them from seeing a lawyer until April, as they await trial. But the kind of trial they will face remains an open question — one that the Justice Ministry began to consider shortly after the attack, and one that will likely require legislation. The Knesset Law, Constitution and Justice Committee has established a confidential subcommittee meeting to discuss prosecuting Hamas terrorists who are part of the group’s special forces unit, Nukhba; the subcommittee held its second meeting on Sunday. Committee Chairman Simcha Rothman of the Religious Zionist Party told Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov that “the Justice Ministry already understands that we need an amendment to the law, because current criminal law does not fit the events of Oct. 7.”

Challenges: Regular courts would likely be overwhelmed by the number of terrorists who would need to be put on trial, creating a backlog and long delays, Chagai Vinizky, a military judge and candidate for the Supreme Court in 2021, noted in a paper for The Begin Institute for Law and Zionism submitted to the subcommittee. Rothman expressed concern that such lengthy regular criminal proceedings “would be taken advantage of to disrupt investigations and coordinate between [the Nukhba terrorists].”

​Additional obstacles: There are also difficulties in finding evidence to tie individual terrorists to specific victims beyond a reasonable doubt, as required in a murder trial. DNA samples were not collected according to usual procedure in light of the scale of the attack — 1,200 killed and thousands injured — and the need to collect the bodies in what remained an active combat zone for days. Other than the attack on the Nova music festival, the vast majority of the survivors hid and were unable to provide eyewitness descriptions of the killers. In addition, the terrorists burned many structures and bodies that could have carried evidence.

Letter of the law: Yet, Israeli law allows for the death penalty or life in prison for those who abetted or failed to prevent genocide, including incitement or attempted participation, which may be easier to prove. In the case of Oct. 7, GoPros and cell phone recordings provide video evidence of the presence of terrorists during the attack. In addition, genocide charges would “express the unique severity of the actions,” according to the Begin Institute paper. 

Read the full story here.

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Worthy Reads

Circle of Care: In The New York Times, Rabbi Sharon Brous explores the modern-day application of a passage of the Mishnah. “Buried deep within the Mishnah, a Jewish legal compendium from around the third century, is an ancient practice reflecting a deep understanding of the human psyche and spirit: When your heart is broken, when the specter of death visits your family, when you feel lost and alone and inclined to retreat, you show up. You entrust your pain to the community. … We cannot magically fix one another’s broken hearts. But we can find each other in our most vulnerable moments and wrap each other up in a circle of care. We can humbly promise each other, ‘I can’t take your pain away, but I can promise you won’t have to hold it alone.’ Showing up for one another doesn’t require heroic gestures. It means training ourselves to approach, even when our instinct tells us to withdraw. It means picking up the phone and calling our friend or colleague who is suffering. It means going to the funeral and to the house of mourning. It also means going to the wedding and to the birthday dinner. Reach out in your strength, step forward in your vulnerability. Err on the side of presence.” [NYTimes]

Gaza Dispatch:The Times of Israel’s Lazar Berman reports from inside the Gaza Strip, and interviews Col. Elad Shushan, the head of a paratrooper brigade operating in the enclave. “We drove through an open, unmanned gate in the multi-billion dollar border fence, the same barrier that barely slowed terror squads in October. Holes in the fence punched by Hamas bulldozers had been fixed, but it wasn’t hard to discern which sections were newly patched up. The nearly 30 hostages seized from Be’eri almost certainly passed this way before being taken into tunnels and hideouts inside Gaza, where many of them remain. After about 10 minutes of bouncing along muddy fields through Gaza’s agricultural border area, we pulled into the hastily built brigade bastion where the Archimedes soldiers and Shushan were based. Broken buildings surrounded the dirt plot, and feral but friendly dogs moved between the parked APCs and Hummers. Soldiers had left graffiti on the walls of some of the buildings, expressing their longing for wives and girlfriends back home, as well as cartoons with no immediately obvious meaning. ‘Play stupid games, win stupid prizes,’ read one message.” [TOI]

​Davos Reflection: In Time magazine, Pfizer CEO Dr. Albert Bourla recounts his conversations at the World Economic Forum with returned hostages and relatives of Israelis still in Gaza. “These women deserve to be heard. We must heed their call for the release of the hostages. All of us. They must have our active support, and not just for a day, but until all of the captives have been freed. There should be nothing political about this issue. This is about human decency. The hostages are in dire conditions — reports of food shortages, torture, and sexual abuse. As such, every minute counts. I say this while recognizing the broader spectrum of sorrow and loss in this conflict, including the innocent families in Gaza, caught in the crossfire, who endure their own tragedies. What binds us as people should urge us to look beyond borders and divisions. This is [a] call to action for our common humanity. It is our moral duty, as global citizens, to take the necessary steps to help the hostages. To start, we can learn more about them. They are real, innocent people facing unspeakable cruelty.” [Time]

​Sasse’s Scope: The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto interviews University of Florida President Ben Sasse about navigating the campus landscape at a time of heightened tensions around the Israel-Hamas war. “I didn’t come to Gainesville to talk politics, and Mr. Sasse says he ‘signed a 36-month pledge of partisan neutrality,’ following the example of Mitch Daniels, the former Indiana governor and Purdue University president. But he touches on the subject when he says he worries that ‘the collapse of a belief in classical liberalism is what’s eating up all of these institutions,’ including but not limited to universities. He blames this on both the ‘wokes’ who have managed to ‘hijack’ those institutions and the ‘super MAGA” types who would rather destroy than save them. ‘You can’t burn down every institution,’ Mr. Sasse says. ‘Lots of institutions are going to be bankrupted by the digital revolution,’ and that disruption is made more dangerous by the ‘ideological warfare about every institution.’ He would like ‘to conserve and preserve and reform and change and reorganize lots of institutions, and that requires you to have more of a public definition of what you’re there for.’” [WSJ]

Biding Time: In The New York Times, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh examine why Iran has been hesitant to become more involved in its proxies’ wars across the Middle East. “At the heart of Iran’s aversion to a major conflict are the domestic issues that have been preoccupying the regime. The elderly supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is seeking to secure his legacy — by overcoming political headwinds to install a like-minded successor, pursuing a nuclear weapon and ensuring the survival of the regime as an Islamist paladin dominating the Middle East — and that means not getting dragged into a wider war. … As he oversees the succession search and Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Mr. Khamenei appears to be content, for now, to let the Arab militias across the Middle East do what Tehran has been paying and training them to do. Iran’s so-called ‘axis of resistance,’ which includes Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, is at the core of the Islamic Republic’s grand strategy against Israel, the United States and Sunni Arab leaders, allowing the regime to strike out at its adversaries without using its own forces or endangering its territory. The various militias and terrorist groups that Tehran nurtures have allowed it to indirectly evict America from Iraq, sustain the Assad family in Syria and, on Oct. 7, help inflict a deeply traumatizing attack on the Jewish state.” [NYTimes]

Around the Web

And Then There Were Two: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ended his 2024 presidential bid, two days before voters in New Hampshire cast their ballots in the state’s primary.

U.N. Probe: Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) wrote to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres requesting an investigation into why UN Women took nearly two months to acknowledge and condemn Hamas’ sexual violence on Oct. 7.

Qatar in Congress: Fox News Digital obtained documents indicating that Qatar mounted a campaign to discredit GOP lawmakers who opposed the Muslim Brotherhood.

Campus Beat: Biden administration Iran envoy Rob Malley, who has been on leave from the State Department since the summer pending an investigation into whether he mishandled classified information, will be teaching a course titled “Contending with Israel-Palestine” at Yale this semester.

Crimson Content: Administrators at Harvard have asked social media platform Sidechat, which allows the posting of anonymous content, to more strictly enforce its content moderation policies, amid an uptick of antisemitic postings targeting Harvard students.

No to Cease-fire: San Francisco Mayor London Breed opted not to act on a controversial resolution passed by the city council calling for a cease-fire; in a letter explaining her decision, Breed, who visited Israel last year, slammed the decision by local officials to move forward with the resolution, saying their efforts “only inflamed division and hurt.”

Netanyahu’s No: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a Hamas proposal that would end the war and release all the hostages, but would leave the terror organization intact and operational.

Release Time: A judge in New York granted the release of the last imprisoned co-defendant of the “Newburgh Four,” a group of men convicted of planning to attack synagogues after a faulty police investigation.

B.Y.-Jew: Haaretzprofiles Brigham Young University starting quarterback Jake Retzlaff, the school’s first Jewish football player.

History Lesson: The Atlantic’s Peter Wehner counters the widespread rejection of historical Jewish ties to the land of Israel.

Evicting Eylon?: Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Sara Netanyahu is pushing for the ouster of Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy over his participation in last year’s anti-judicial reform protests.

Ein Li Eretz Acheret: The Washington Postspotlights Israelis who contemplated leaving Israel during last year’s protests, but have since Oct. 7 decided to stay.

Tunnel Vision:The New York Times, embedded with IDF troops in Khan Younis, reports from an underground compound where Israeli hostages were held by Hamas.

Lost in Translation: The Atlantic‘s Yair Rosenberg looks at the ways in which Israeli war officials’ statements are being mistranslated and misreported by the international media.

Held in Gaza: The IDF announced the death of 19-year-old Staff Sgt. Shay Levinson, who was killed on Oct. 7 and whose body was taken to Gaza, where it remains.

Syria Strike: Five Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials, including the Iranian group’s intelligence chief in Syria, were killed in a strike in Damascus that Iranian state media blamed on Israel.

SEAL Saga: Two Navy SEALs who fell into the Arabian Sea off the coast of Somalia while attempting to intercept weapons headed from Iran to Houthi militants were declared dead after 10 days missing at sea; meanwhile, new U.S. intelligence indicates that the Iran-backed group is stepping up efforts to procure weapons from Tehran.

New Heights: Iran announced the successful launch of a satellite into its highest orbit to date.

Wavy War: The U.S. is gearing up for a sustained fight against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, who have not curbed their attacks on ships transiting in the Gulf of Oman despite U.S.-led strikes on their facilities.

​Remembering: Tanya Berezin, the former artistic director of the Circle Repertory Company, died at 82. Filmmaker Menachem Daum, the co-producer of “A Life Apart: Hasidism in America,” died at 77. Social psychologist Robert Rosenthal died at 90. Plastic surgeon Berish Strauch, who pioneered advances in the field of limb reattachments and replacements, died at 90.

Pic of the Day

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff met with released hostages and the relatives of Israelis still being held captive in Gaza while in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. 

The New York Times’ Bret Stephens, in Davos for the summit, wrote about his conversations with the hostage families.

Birthdays

Actress, best known for her role as Nicky Reagan-Boyle in the CBS series “Blue Bloods,” Sami Gayle turns 28… 

Professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, she is regarded as a founder of cancer immunology, Eva Klein turns 99… Co-founder in 1965 of the Japanese video game company Sega, David M. Rosen turns 94… Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry in 2000, he is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Alan J. Heeger turns 88… Los Angeles resident, Ruth Lynn Kopelove Sobel… Managing director and founder of Brave Warrior Advisors, he is the son of Hall of Fame baseball star Hank Greenberg, Glenn H. Greenberg… Rabbi Mark Samuel Hurvitz… Brooklyn-born conductor, who during his tenure as artistic director of the Kraków Philharmonic became friends with Pope John Paul II for whom he later conducted multiple Papal concerts, Gilbert Levine turns 76… Senior political law counsel and consultant at Akin Gump, Kenneth A. Gross turns 73… Founder and executive director of the Brooklyn-based Bridge Multicultural and Advocacy Project, Mark Meyer Appel… Publisher at Chicago Public Square, Charlie Meyerson… Partner in the Cleveland law firm of Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis, Lisa Arlyn Lowe… Former director-general of the Israeli Defense Ministry, he is a retired Major General in the IDF, Ehud “Udi” Adam turns 66… Member of the Knesset for Likud, Katrin (Keti) Shitrit-Peretz turns 64… Justice on the Supreme Court of Israel since 2012, Noam Sohlberg turns 62… Michael S. Marquis… President of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, Gideon Taylor… American-Israeli composer, pianist and music producer, Roy Zu-Arets turns 55… Actor best known for his role as Harvey Specter on the series “Suits,” Gabriel Macht turns 52… Play-by-play broadcaster for the Washington Commanders, Bram Weinstein turns 51… Rabbi at the Midway Jewish Center in Syosset, N.Y., Joel Mark Levenson… Director of the Chabad House in Kathmandu, Nepal, Rabbi Yechezkel “Chezki” Lifshitz… News editor at Mishpacha Magazine, Yochonon Donn… Senior project specialist for the International Rescue Committee, Heidi Rosbe… Managing director at SKDKnickerbocker, Kendra Barkoff Lamy… Financial services editor at Politico, Zachary Warmbrodt… Houston native and philanthropist, Serena Hines… Music composer, Justin Hurwitz turns 39… Corporate associate at Covington & Burling LLP, Mark Donig… NYC-based managing director at Politico, Jesse Shapiro… Tax reporter for the Washington Post, she is also a professional balloon twister and was a 2018 contestant on “Jeopardy!”, Julie Zauzmer Weil… Israeli singer known by the mononym Netta, Netta Barzilai turns 31… Jewish hockey player most recently playing for a Russian team, he was a first-round pick of the New York Islanders in 2014, Josh Ho-Sang turns 28… Banking and finance associate in the Chicago office of Mayer Brown, Matthew Lustbader…