Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), the newest Jewish Republican member of Congress, argued on Monday, following an antisemitic attack on a group marching in support of the hostages in Gaza in Boulder, Colo., that the federal government should take aggressive action against groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations whose executive director said he was “happy to see” the Oct. 7 terror attack.

Fine added that the federal government also should be deporting all undocumented immigrants and take a strong hand toward college campuses in order to fight rising antisemitism..

“I’m angry that we’ve allowed this to get there, I’m angry that we’ve allowed Muslim terror to operate unfettered in this country,” Fine said in an interview with Jewish Insider on Monday. “Make no mistake, the Palestinian cause is fundamentally a broken, evil philosophy … It’s time to realize there is evil in this world and we have to fight it.”

He said that institutions tied to that ideology, including CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood and Students for Justice in Palestine, should not be allowed to operate in the United States, and should be designated as terrorist organizations, “because that’s what they are.” 

He noted that the executive director of CAIR had celebrated the Oct. 7 attack, and remains in his position. Nihad Awad had in November 2023 said he “was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land that they were not allowed to walk in.”

Fine also said that the U.S. must deport “every illegal immigrant,” as well as closely examine individuals entering the country “from these places that hate us.” The Boulder attacker, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was an Egyptian immigrant who overstayed a tourist visa and was subsequently granted a work permit, which expired in March, according to Fox News.

Fine said that, while security funding is important, it’s impossible to provide individual security to every Jewish American, making it critical to go on the offensive.

“What we need to do is hunt bad guys,” Fine said. “And we can start by throwing out every illegal immigrant. And we can start by taking a hard look at people who are here on visas from Egypt.”

He said the U.S. must also move to stop countries such as Qatar and China “who are not our friends,” from “buying our universities and buying off our media outlets,” and take action to protect Jewish students.

He noted that he has introduced legislation that would explicitly make antisemitism and other forms of religious discrimination illegal on college campuses. Currently, based on guidance in executive orders, antisemitism is banned as a form of discrimination based on shared ancestry. Fine argued that his legislation would “create real legal courses of action” for Jewish students to protect themselves.

Though Elias Gonzalez — who killed two Israeli Embassy staffers outside of the Capital Jewish Museum last month — was not a student or an undocumented immigrant, Fine argued that campuses and immigrants are epicenters of antisemitic incitement and that addressing those would address larger trends.

“When these people hear that the nation’s best universities are saying that Israel is engaged in a genocide or 14,000 babies are going to die, they are radicalizing people through false information with the stamp of approval of universities,” Fine said. “So this guy [Gonzalez] was involved with organizations that are tied back to universities.”

“Also, he may not be an illegal immigrant, he may not be on a visa from another country, but I guarantee he was hanging around people who were and they’re going to rub off,” Fine continued.

Fine said he expects that antisemitic rhetoric and attacks will only get worse after Sunday’s attack in Boulder. He said he hadn’t slept the night after the attack because he was afraid of what might come next.

“What the Muslim terrorists will do is they’ll do what they did before — they double down, they get more aggressive with the rhetoric afterwards,” Fine said. “That’s part of the strategy. Punch and then punch harder … Muslim terrorists have declared open season on Jews. And I think that is a frightening thing. And I think the people who need to be hunted are the Muslim terrorists.”

Pressed on the fact that Rodriguez was not Muslim, Fine responded, “there are white supremacists who aren’t white … it is terrorism that is rooted in the Muslim faith.”

“They call it Christian nationalism, I don’t think every Christian is a bad person, I think very few of them are,” Fine continued.

Fine argued that surveys show a substantial portion of American Muslims are sympathetic to Hamas, that leading Muslim organizations like CAIR have supported Hamas and antisemitism, that there are few in Gaza who have stood up against Hamas and that many of those who participated in the Oct. 7 attack were not Hamas fighters.

“We are told, ‘No, no, no, it’s this tiny, tiny fringe.’ It is not a tiny fringe,” Fine said. “I don’t know whether it’s 30 or 40 or 70 or 90%, I don’t know. But I know it’s not 1% that are bad, and it’s time for us to stop pretending that it is.”

For decades, Jewish and pro-Israel groups invested significant resources in building bipartisan relationships with key members of Congress to steer legislation, while helping secure foreign aid and blocking unfavorable initiatives concerning the Middle East.

But that long-standing playbook has appeared less effective and relevant in recent years as Congress has increasingly ceded its authority on foreign policy to the executive branch, a trend that has accelerated with President Donald Trump’s return to office. The dynamic is frustrating pro-Israel advocates who had long prioritized Congress as a vehicle of influence, prompting many to reassess the most effective ways to advocate for preferred policies.

That Congress had no formal role in Trump’s recent decisions to unilaterally reach a ceasefire with the Houthis in Yemen and to lift sanctions on Syria, for example, has stoked speculation that legislators could also be sidelined from ratifying a potential nuclear deal with Iran.

There are any number of reasons why Congress has taken a back seat in shaping foreign affairs, experts say, including Trump’s efforts to consolidate power in the executive branch, most recently by gutting the National Security Council. And Trump’s own power in reshaping the ideological direction of his party, preferring diplomacy over military engagement, has made more-hawkish voices within the party more reluctant to speak out against administration policy.

“Congress is increasingly irrelevant except on nominations and taxes,” Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as a special envoy for Iran in the first Trump administration, told Jewish Insider. “It has abandoned its once-central role on tariffs, and plays little role in other foreign affairs issues. That’s a long-term trend and we saw it in previous administrations, but it is worsened by the deadlocks on Capitol Hill, the need to get 60 votes to do almost anything, and by Trump’s centralization of power in the White House.”

Previously, “when there was real power in the departments, congressional oversight meant a lot more,” Abrams added. “If you’re a foreign ambassador in Washington, there’s no one to talk to at the NSC, lots of vacancies at State, and while there are plenty of people to meet with on the Hill, what are they going to do for you? You need to see Trump” Abrams said, or Steve Witkoff, the special envoy to the Middle East leading the negotiations with Iran.

The executive branch, to be sure, has long held significant control over foreign policy but it has expanded considerably in the decades following the 9/11 attacks. Since then, a law passed by Congress to authorize the invasion in Iraq in 2003 has been used — and, critics allege, abused — by successive administrations to initiate military action abroad without first seeking approval from lawmakers who are constitutionally empowered to decide when the country goes to war and oversee defense spending.

Still, Congress has also long shown “disinterest” in exercising its power over foreign policy, said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “This was a preexisting condition,” he explained to JI. “By and large, Congress abdicated its oversight role before Trump even came to office,” especially as national security matters have been overshadowed by competing domestic issues such as inflation and immigration, which “resonate more saliently” with voters.

“Trump’s dominance over the Republican Party accounts for much of the acquiescence on the part of his Congress,” observed Stephen Schlesinger, a historian who specializes in international affairs. “But let us not forget that recent Democratic presidents have practically had a free hand, too, in pursuing their own global policies — with little reaction or opposition from their party members.”

Among other examples, Schlesinger cited former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran — brokered without consent from Congress — as well as former President Joe Biden’s “total support” for Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Republican deference to Trump, however, has set a new standard for such acquiescence, Schlesinger argued, particularly on talks with Iran. “Given the past obsessive Republican fury against a deal with Iran during Democratic administrations, still none in Trump’s party have objected to a nuclear deal with Tehran under Trump, or, for that matter, his solo decision to lift sanctions on Syria, a country led by a former radical Islamic leader,” Schlesinger noted.

“Certainly the reality of governance in Washington today is that Congress may not be totally irrelevant, but they’re an appendage to the whims and desires of the Trump presidency,” said Norman Ornstein, a senior scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “There is little if any pushback or oversight of what Trump” and his advisors “involved in foreign policy and diplomacy are doing — and that’s a change.”

The new dynamic has forced pro-Israel groups to adapt to a new political landscape in which their traditional advocacy has been weakened by Congress’ diminished clout and lack of interest in asserting meaningful supervision over Trump’s recent Middle East policy decisions.

“There are very few remedies for this kind of a standoff where the executive branch has arrogated to itself so much power that Congress is essentially marginalized,” said Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who previously worked on the Hill. “When you look at the question of Israel, you have to see it in the context of much broader trends.”

Marshall Wittmann, a spokesperson for AIPAC, argued that both “the administration and Congress play a critical role in strengthening and expanding the U.S.-Israel relationship, and AIPAC works with key leaders in power, on both sides of the aisle and both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, to build support for the mutually beneficial alliance between America and Israel.” 

The absence of congressional influence has come as disagreements have emerged between the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government over ending the war in Gaza and nuclear diplomacy with Iran. Trump’s recent trip to the Middle East — where he met with a range of Arab leaders but did not stop in Israel — was one of the latest indications of deprioritization of America’s closest ally in the region.

Tensions have also surfaced amid ongoing negotiations with Iran. Pro-Israel advocates have voiced concerns that Trump’s negotiating team is nearing an agreement that could simply reinstate the deal brokered by the Obama administration a decade ago — which detractors had criticized as a pathway to a nuclear weapon since it allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium.

The Trump administration has indicated it will not permit Iran to retain domestic nuclear enrichment — even as some officials have sent mixed signals on the matter, contributing to a sense of confusion over the ultimate terms of an agreement. Trump pulled out of the original deal — which was widely opposed by Republicans — during his first administration.

For pro-Israel groups, the risks of clashing with Trump on key issues likely outweigh the benefits, observers contend. “Any organization has to very carefully weigh its equities before publicly taking on the administration,” Daniel Silverberg, a former top foreign policy advisor to Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), told JI.

The pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC has recognized that it is now operating in a unique landscape, according to Manny Houle, a Democratic pro-Israel strategist who previously served as the group’s progressive outreach director in the Midwest. Before Trump was elected, Howard Kohr, AIPAC’s former president, frequently said the group “was all about Congress,” Houle recalled in a recent interview with JI. “Then, Trump was in office and he said we’re going to be dealing with the White House.”

Marshall Wittmann, a spokesperson for AIPAC, argued that both “the administration and Congress play a critical role in strengthening and expanding the U.S.-Israel relationship, and AIPAC works with key leaders in power, on both sides of the aisle and both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, to build support for the mutually beneficial alliance between America and Israel.” 

“President Trump has a strong pro-Israel and anti-Iran record, but his administration evinced early on a lack of expertise and consistency in its policy toward Iran’s nuclear program,” said Michael Makovsky, president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. “But recently that position has evolved and strengthened due in no small part to feedback it has gotten.”

“We applaud the administration’s strong statements and actions in support of our ally, commend Congress for passing pro-Israel legislation such as the annual appropriation for lifesaving security assistance to Israel, and appreciate President Trump and congressional leaders both making clear last week that Iran must completely dismantle its nuclear program,” Wittmann said in a statement to JI last week.

Even as Congress has failed to take formal action over points of disagreement with Trump’s recent Middle East directives, some pro-Israel activists suggested their outreach to lawmakers on the Iran talks in particular has yielded substantive results in recent weeks. 

“President Trump has a strong pro-Israel and anti-Iran record, but his administration evinced early on a lack of expertise and consistency in its policy toward Iran’s nuclear program,” said Michael Makovsky, president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. “But recently that position has evolved and strengthened due in no small part to feedback it has gotten.”

In public and private settings, JINSA and other pro-Israel groups, as well as Israeli officials and congressional Republicans, “have made the case that Trump needs to stick to his initial policy of dismantlement of Iran’s enrichment facilities,” Makovsky said.

“This has contributed to Trump officials pivoting in the past couple weeks to a tougher ‘no enrichment’ stand,” Makovsky told JI last week.

Eric Levine, a top GOP fundraiser and a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition who recently launched a federal lobbying practice, said “the most important voice Congress will have is if the president makes a deal with Iran. I think that it’s really important that the Senate remains steadfast and safeguards its powers and insists, if there is a deal, it should be counted as a treaty. If he thinks it’s an amazing deal, he should have no trouble passing it.”

Still, it remains to be seen if the toughest voices against Iran in the Senate who have expressed reservations with enrichment limits and other perceived weaknesses of a potential deal will push back against Trump if he lands on an agreement that does not meet their standards. While some Republican lawmakers have spoken out in recent weeks to set expectations for a deal, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), observers say they are skeptical that Congress will ultimately seek to flex its authority if an agreement comes forward.

“The ultimate test will be if there’s a vote on Iran,” said former Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), a pro-Israel Democrat who opposed Obama’s deal in 2015. “As Congress has grown more performative, it has become less deliberative on foreign policy,” he added. “The speaker’s gavel has become a rubber stamp. The result is an abdication by Congress of its delineated responsibilities.”

Eric Levine, a top GOP fundraiser and a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition who recently launched a federal lobbying practice, said “the most important voice Congress will have is if the president makes a deal with Iran.”

“I think that it’s really important that the Senate remains steadfast and safeguards its powers and insists, if there is a deal, it should be counted as a treaty,” said Levine. “If he thinks it’s an amazing deal, he should have no trouble passing it,” Levine said of Trump’s efforts to reach what he has suggested is an imminent accord.

It is unclear if the White House will seek approval from Congress for a deal, even as lawmakers have recently stressed that an agreement would have no guarantee of surviving in future administrations if not ratified by the legislative branch.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio affirmed during hearings on Capitol Hill last week 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, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, was passed. A White House spokesperson declined to confirm if Trump plans to present a potential deal to Congress when reached by JI on Wednesday, deferring to the president and Witkoff’s remarks from the Oval Office — which did not address the matter.

With Congress increasingly on the sidelines, some pro-Israel groups have turned to alternative forms of advocacy to buttress their lobbying efforts in recent years.

“Advocacy tactics are always changing,” James Thurber, a distinguished professor of government at American University and a leading expert on federal lobbying, told JI. “It is like war where opponents must be flexible, try new tools, assess and adjust. It is essential to be persistently focused on the best strategy, theme and message and to not rely on outdated lobbying tactics.”

“Our world has changed,” said Ann Lewis, a veteran Democratic advisor and a former co-chair of Democratic Majority for Israel, whose formidable political arm has actively engaged in congressional primaries featuring sharp divisions over Israel. “Any definition of advocacy that begins post-election is less effective than it deserves to be.”

Indeed, AIPAC’s foray into campaign politics four years ago, marking a major tactical shift for the organization, was a sign of the changing power dynamics in Washington. The group has since helped to elect a range of congressional allies, while working to unseat some of the fiercest critics of Israel in the House and blocking potential antagonists from getting elected.

“Advocacy tactics are always changing,” James Thurber, a distinguished professor of government at American University and a leading expert on federal lobbying, told JI. “It is like war where opponents must be flexible, try new tools, assess and adjust. It is essential to be persistently focused on the best strategy, theme and message and to not rely on outdated lobbying tactics.”

But as most foreign policy decisions now emanate from the White House, some pro-Israel activists say they remain frustrated by the lack of will from Congress to assert its authority, even as they vow their efforts will continue.

“It is tragic that Congress has so blatantly shirked its responsibility to act as a check and balance on the executive branch,” a senior political operative involved in pro-Israel advocacy recently lamented. “But under no circumstances does that mean we stop fighting for the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

Only in a family where nearly everyone is a rabbi does becoming a Cabinet secretary in one of the largest states in the nation make you a black sheep. 

That’s the joke that Uri Monson, Pennsylvania’s budget secretary, likes to make when describing his career as a public servant in the context of his family — a brother, father, grandfather and great-grandfather who were rabbis; a stepmother who was a lifelong Jewish nonprofit professional; and a mother who was a renowned Jewish academic and university administrator.

But coming out of that kind of lineage (his great-grandfather was the first person to certify Coca-Cola as kosher!), choosing a career in public service was Monson’s act of “pseudo-rebellion,” he said in an interview with Jewish Insider earlier this month. He didn’t stray that far from his Jewish values, though — during his first internship, at city hall in Philadelphia, he helped draft the mayor’s speech for Israeli Independence Day.

“I grew up a mile from Independence Hall. I’ve always been an American government junkie, and fascinated by and love[d] government and its ability to really help,” said Monson, 56. “I felt, even at 18, that I could make it better, that it had to be able to be done better, and that started me on that path to public service.” 

Even if Monson didn’t follow his family members into the Jewish professional world, growing up immersed in deep conversations about the weekly Torah portion over Shabbat lunch and spending his summers at Camp Ramah in the Poconos shaped his approach to public service just as much as his wonky fascination with fiscal policy and his master’s degree in public administration.

“What we’ve seen all along is that that Jewish perspective has shaped his commitment to what government can do and the way that society should work,” said Rabbi Chaim Galfand, the head rabbi at Perelman Jewish Day School in Philadelphia and a close friend of Monson’s. 

Monson attended the joint program at List College at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and another, in midrash, from  JTS. The intellectual curiosity and creativity that comes from his expertise in interpreting the Torah — Monson calls himself a “midrash parsha junkie” — colors the way he approaches everything from budgetary policy to his weekly Settlers of Catan board games with Galfand each Shabbat. 

The biblical stories about Joseph are his favorite; Joseph’s “rise in the political world,” from slave to advisor to the Egyptian pharaoh, is particularly resonant for Monson. But he doesn’t think there is only one way to engage with these stories, and that’s a lesson that guides his approach to public policy, too.

“When you make that jump to learning that the Talmud is not a book of law, but that it’s a book of how to think about law, it’s a major change. It’s a major jump in thought,” Monson said. “To realize that you had people disagreeing over really complex issues of Jewish law — that’s how they lived their lives, and what they actually record [in the Talmud] is the discussion and the back-and-forth and the debate. They were able to do it while living civilly together.”

Monson started his career in Washington as a policy advisor at the Department of Education during the Clinton administration. He has friends from that era who have lost their jobs as the Trump administration slashes the federal workforce. Monson does not reflexively believe all public employees have a right to keep their jobs; his former boss, President Bill Clinton, also stressed efficiency and shrunk the federal workforce by hundreds of thousands of people. But he does think those workers should be respected.

“There are few of us who have a mantra, and I share this with the governor, that [we] cannot stand the phrase, ‘That’s the way we’ve always done it.’ There are always opportunities for change,” he said, referring to Gov. Josh Shapiro. “The biggest difference for me between what I was a part of and what the current administration is doing is that that change was all about employee empowerment.” Shapiro has made a play for laid-off federal workers, encouraging them to apply to fill vacancies in Pennsylvania.

Monson’s time in Washington got him started on his path to Harrisburg — both because it was his first full-time gig in the government, and also because it was in this era that he reconnected with Shapiro, who was working on Capitol Hill at the time. 

“Like most expatriate Eagles fans, we would find each other to watch games, that kind of thing,” said Monson. But their relationship goes back decades: Shapiro and Monson’s younger brother, Ami, were in the same grade at Akiba Hebrew Academy, a pluralistic Jewish day school in the Philadelphia suburbs. (CNN anchor Jake Tapper was another classmate.) Shapiro’s parents and Monson’s were active in the Soviet Jewry movement of the 1970s and 1980s.

“Uri and I both lean on our family and our faith as motivation to serve the good people of Pennsylvania,” Shapiro told JI in a statement last week. “We are both driven by the same Jewish principle of tikkun olam, and from the passage from the Talmud that teaches us that no one is required to complete the task, but neither are we free to refrain from it.”

Shapiro’s first video ad in his 2022 gubernatorial campaign showed him, his wife and their children celebrating Shabbat. Monson, who observes Shabbat and does not work or travel from sundown Friday until Saturday night, receives weekly “Shabbat shalom” emails from Shapiro.

“When he offered me the job, I said, ‘I’m not going to be in Harrisburg on Fridays in the winter’” — when Shabbat begins in the late afternoon — “and he said he understood,” Monson recalled. Over the years, his colleagues have gotten used to Monson’s Shabbat observance, sending emails on Saturdays with the subject line “read me first” to try to capture his attention after Shabbat ends.

“Once in a while they’re like, ‘Maybe I want to be Jewish too,’ because they need a break,” Monson said, laughing. 

Monson returned to Philadelphia in the late 1990s for the first in a series of increasingly powerful jobs dealing with municipal and school district budgets. In 2012, when Shapiro was chair of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, he tapped Monson to serve as chief financial officer of the commonwealth’s third most populous county. Monson then spent seven years as chief financial officer of the School District of Philadelphia, which has a budget of $4.6 billion, helping shepherd the district through the tumult of the COVID-19 pandemic. He joined Shapiro in Harrisburg in early 2023.

“Uri had a very calming presence of being able to lead with certainty in very uncertain times,” said Larisa Shambaugh, the former chief talent officer in the Philadelphia school district, where she worked closely with Monson. She saw him take a forward-looking approach to budgeting, thinking not just about cost but about how to advance the interests of the school district.

“What was truly a joy about working with Uri is that he wasn’t a CFO that was focused only on finances and only on the bottom line,” Shambaugh explained. “When we would be thinking about proposing a new initiative or a new policy or a new staffing structure, the first question wasn’t, How much would this cost and can we afford it? It was, Why is this best for students?”

Shambaugh also benefitted from another skill Monson brought with him to his next job: his baking skills. He baked lemon squares for a meeting with new school board members. When he found out Shambaugh loved challah, he baked her one. In his new job, he’s baked cranberry walnut muffins twice — once to relax before a budget hearing and once to get rid of flour before Passover — and brought hamantaschen to the capital during Purim. (“We’ve all been on the receiving end of his largesse,” said Galfand.)

Monson has spent the spring testifying at Statehouse hearings about Shapiro’s $51.5 billion budget proposal. This is the forum where he allows his Torah discussion skills to shine: keeping his cool under sometimes hostile questions from Republicans, and disarming them by actually being willing to engage. (When he sat down at this year’s budget hearings, he wore a custom kippah showing the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, made by an artist his wife found on Etsy.)

“I will never claim to have a monopoly on good ideas, and I think that’s something I certainly learned from around the table and from growing up among the rabbis,” said Monson. “I want to learn from everybody, because you can learn from everybody, and be open to the discussion.”

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.’”