Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) accused the search firm that oversaw the failed nomination of former University of Michigan President Santa Ono to lead the University of Florida of not properly vetting and disclosing the candidate’s record. 

“Clearly the search firm didn’t disclose everything to anybody,” Scott told Jewish Insider on Wednesday of SP&A Executive Search, the firm behind the search for UF’s new president. “It sure seems to me, just talking to people on the search committee, they didn’t know all this before their votes. That’s wrong. That’s on the search firm, they didn’t do their job. It appears to me that that’s what happened.”

The vote by Florida’s Board of Governors, which oversees the state’s public universities, to approve Ono’s nomination failed 10-6 on Tuesday, the first time that the Board of Governors has ever voted down a university trustee board’s leadership selection. 

SP&A Executive Search did not respond to a request for comment. The firm also picked former University of Florida President Ben Sasse. 

The Florida senator said he had been “shocked” that Ono was nominated given what Scott described as a failure to deal with “antisemitic and pro-Hamas” activity on Michigan’s campus during Ono’s tenure and his positions on a Supreme Court ruling relating to diversity on campus.

“It just didn’t fit to what I’ve tried my best to do, to make Florida a great example of where people have the opportunity to go get a great education, where it doesn’t matter the color of your skin, and also where people can go learn in a safe environment,” Scott said.

The University of Michigan experienced some of the most disruptive anti-Israel and antisemitic activity on campus in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks. Ono faced criticism for allowing an anti-Israel encampment to remain in place for over a month last year and admitted he should have engaged with campus Jewish organizations earlier on during protests. 

During the 2024-2025 academic year, Ono took a harder stance against anti-Israel activity on campus and became more vocal in support of Israel — leading to pro-Palestinian vandals attacking his home on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks. Ono wrote in an Inside Higher Ed op-ed last month that the “gold standard” Sasse set in combating antisemitism at UF would “not change under my leadership.”

Scott praised the members of the board for digging into Ono’s background and ultimately rejecting him.

“I’m glad that the Board of Governors made the decision to not confirm him, and I hope, when they do the search they’re going to have to change,” Scott said. “But I’m really appreciative of everybody on the Board of Governors that took this seriously and did the research and voted against him.”

Scott said that he wants to see the next nominee to lead UF be someone more in line with Sasse, a former Senate colleague of Scott’s.

“I was appreciative of what Ben Sasse did and I want somebody like that,” Scott said. “We’ve got to get somebody that fits Florida.”

Sasse’s brief term as president was dogged by accusations of financial mismanagement and other issues and tensions with the Board of Trustees.

In an unprecedented move, the Florida Board of Governors rejected the confirmation of Santa Ono, the former president of the University of Michigan, as the University of Florida’s next president.

During a three hour meeting on Tuesday, Ono was questioned by the board, which oversees the state’s 12 public universities, about an anti-Israel encampment last year that remained on the Michigan campus for a month, as well as his stance on antisemitism. 

Alan Levine, vice chair of the board, grilled Ono about what he described as an inadequate response to antisemitism at Michigan during Ono’s tenure to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel, The Gainesville Sun reported.

“What happened on Oct. 7 deeply affected the members of my community and me personally, and so at UF I would be consistently focused on making sure antisemitism does not rear its head again,” Ono responded. 

Ono also faced criticism from conservatives on the board for his longtime support of diversity, equity and inclusion programs while leading the Ann Arbor university, although Ono has said he would not bring DEI to the Gainesville school. In March, under pressure from the Trump administration, Ono eliminated centralized DEI offices at Michigan — which have come under intense scrutiny on campuses nationwide for failing to address rising anti-Jewish hate, and at times perpetuating it.  

Ono denounced antisemitism in an Inside Higher Ed op-ed last month. He wrote, “I’ve worked closely with Jewish students, faculty and community leaders to ensure that campuses are places of respect, safety and inclusion for all.”

Prominent conservatives who raised objections to Ono included Donald Trump Jr. and Florida Reps. Byron Donalds, Greg Steube and Jimmy Patronis. His confirmation was not publicly opposed by the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.

The decision by the 17-member Florida Board of Governors comes a week after UF’s Board of Trustees had unanimously approved Ono as its president-elect. The vote to confirm Ono failed 10-6, the first time that the Board of Governors has ever voted down a university trustee board’s leadership selection.

Ono was seen as an ally of Michigan’s pro-Israel community who was quick to condemn acts of antisemitism — leading to pro-Palestinian vandals attacking his home on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. In November, he visited the Nova Music Festival Exhibition in Detroit alongside several students.

Under the leadership of Ben Sasse, a former Nebraska senator who served as UF president until stepping down last year, Ono wrote that the school has been a “national leader in this regard — setting a gold standard in standing firmly against antisemitism and hate.” Sasse was among the first university presidents to immediately condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack — as other campus leaders seemed paralyzed over how to respond.  

“That standard will not change under my leadership,” Ono said last month. He pledged to “continue to ensure that UF is a place where Jewish students feel fully supported, and where all forms of hatred and discrimination are confronted clearly and without hesitation.” Nearly 20% of the university’s student body is Jewish. 

The search for University of Florida’s 14th president will now start over.

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.”

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.”

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.

Two of the leading Democratic hopefuls looking to replace retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) condemned anti-Israel protesters for harassing University of Michigan Regent Sarah Hubbard over the weekend. 

Protesters could be heard in video of the incident, which began circulating on social media on Sunday evening, shouting at Hubbard that she had “blood on [her] hands” along with other insults as she was guided away by a uniformed police officer. “Your money has gone to kill Palestinian children. Your money has killed our families. We are your students, you answer to us,” one protester shouted as they filmed Hubbard. 

In response, Hubbard wrote on X that, “I remain steadfast in my commitment to make our campus a safe place for all our students and will not be intimidated by protestors.”

The incident prompted quick statements of condemnation from Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, two of the Democratic Senate candidates looking to replace Peters. Abdul El-Sayed, a Bernie Sanders-endorsed progressive candidate, did not issue a statement and did not respond to Jewish Insider’s request for comment.

“The harassment and antisemitism we’ve seen against University of Michigan regents in recent months is wrong, plain and simple. Regent Hubbard should be able to walk to her car without a police escort. And Regent [Jordan] Acker’s family was terrorized in their own home when vandals threw jars of urine through their windows and spray painted graffiti on their car,” McMorrow told JI in a statement. 

“The attacks and intimidation need to stop now,” McMorrow, who launched her campaign earlier this month, added.

A spokesperson for Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who announced her candidacy on Tuesday, told JI in a statement, “Rep. Stevens has been clear that violence and vandalism have no place in our communities and will continue to make sure all Michiganders are safe in their daily lives.” 

Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), who is also running to replace Peters, similarly denounced the harassment in a statement.

“These activists’ criminal actions toward university leaders at their homes cannot be tolerated. I stand with Sarah Hubbard and the Michigan Regents as they continue to stand up to hate and antisemitism in their efforts to make the campus safe for all students,” Rogers told JI.

Jewish Insider’s senior congressional correspondent Marc Rod contributed to this report.

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.” 

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

University of Michigan Regent Jordan Acker woke early Monday morning to find that his home in Huntington Woods, a heavily Jewish suburb of Detroit, had been the target of anti-Israel vandals for the second time in just over six months. Acker’s law office was also vandalized over the summer.

During the overnight attack, a window in the Acker home was smashed and his wife’s car was graffitied with the words “divest” and “free Palestine.” In addition, authorities found fragments of a glass jar inside the house along with a foul-smelling liquid as well as a second jar outside of the home. The attack unfolded while Acker, his wife and three daughters were asleep.

“This keeps happening to my family because I’m Jewish,” Acker told Jewish Insider. “There are other, more prominent, regents on this board who do not face this type of targeted harassment, and the reason they do not is because they are not Jewish.”

Acker expressed disappointment in an interview with JI over the silence from university groups, such as The Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs, who he said “have decided to put out statements about Gaza, and yet never put out a statement about situations like this. I haven’t heard from anyone there today. Being privately appalled doesn’t stop your students from engaging in behaviors like this. Public statements do.” 

Acker, an attorney and former Obama administration official, who has sat on the university’s Board of Regents since he was elected in 2018, also criticized the lack of response from local law enforcement. 

“There have yet to be any arrests in all of this,” he said, referring to the three incidents targeting him, as well as several acts of vandalism that occurred on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, targeting the Jewish Federation of Detroit and University of Michigan President Santa Ono’s private residence. 

In a statement on Monday, the Huntington Woods Police Department said that the “case is being investigated by our department in cooperation with other local, state and federal agencies.” 

The University of Michigan called Monday’s vandalism “a clear act of antisemitic intimidation” in a statement. Acker declined to comment on whether the university will provide his family with security, but noted that “we’re going to take a different security posture moving forward.” 

In a statement to JI, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said that “the antisemitic vandalism of University of Michigan Regent Jordan Acker’s home and car is unacceptable. This was a criminal act of targeted hatred on an elected official’s personal property because he is Jewish.” “Several members of Congress,” in addition to Sen.-elect Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), reached out privately to Acker early this morning, he told JI, noting that he “absolutely” hoped all of the statements would be made public. 

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) was the first lawmaker in Michigan to publicly condemn the incident. “Jordan Acker is a dedicated public servant and he and his family should be safe in their own home,” Stevens wrote on X. “I am sickened by the anti-Semitic attack on his home last night. Vandalism, violence, and bigotry have no place in America. Enough. Our Jewish brothers and sisters deserve to live in security and peace.”

Later in the day, Slotkin, as well as Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI), whose district includes Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is located, and Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) put out statements. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) did not respond to a request for comment from JI about the incident. 

Slotkin echoed Acker’s call for law enforcement to take swift action.

“This is targeted hate meant to intimidate and threaten him and his family, and law enforcement has a responsibility to move quickly to connect the dots and do something about it,” Slotkin said in a statement. “This is not activism or free speech on behalf of a cause — indeed this criminal activity undercuts the very cause they purport to care about.” 

Dingell wrote on X, “This anti-Semitic vandalism is unacceptable, dangerous, and never okay. We cannot allow hatred and violence against anyone, for any reason to be normalized, and we must stand up to hate whenever and wherever we see it.” 

“Hate must be condemned in all of its forms. The latest antisemitic attacks against University of Michigan Regent @JordanAckerMI, the third since 10/7, are unacceptable. I urge @UMich to do more to prevent antisemitic attacks against Acker and Jewish students on campus,” Thanedar tweeted. 

In a statement to JI, Peters said, “There is no place in this country for antisemitic or other hateful rhetoric, threats, or acts of violence. These kinds of acts are dangerous and lead to greater fear and division in our communities.”  

In May, doorbell app footage at Acker’s home showed a stranger wearing a red keffiyeh over his face walking up to the front door and standing there for several moments. He placed papers on the doors and took photographs before leaving. The document, a list of demands for the leadership of the University of Michigan, was signed: “In liberation, the UMich Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” 

One month later, Acker’s personal injury law office in the heavily Jewish Detroit suburb of Southfield, was vandalized overnight with the phrases “FREE PALESTINE,” “DIVEST NOW,” “F*** YOU ACKER” and “UM KILLS” scrawled on the walls, walkway and front window.

Jewish Insider’s congressional correspondent Emily Jacobs contributed reporting.

Democratic lawmakers in Michigan mostly avoided responding to the University of Michigan’s announcement this week that it will roll back its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs. On Thursday, the state’s flagship university announced it will no longer ask for diversity statements from faculty when considering hiring, promotion or tenure.  

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Gary Peters (D-MI) and Sen.-elect. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Jewish Insider about Michigan ending required diversity statements, which ​​some of Michigan’s most high-profile DEI initiatives rely on. 

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI), whose district includes Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan, similarly didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) told JI that while she “can’t speak to the specifics of this decision, refining our approach to higher education to better serve students — especially by lowering costs, ensuring student safety and hiring diverse faculty — are concepts I embrace.” 

“Making sure our campuses are diverse and welcoming places for every student regardless of background and include faculty from every demographic, especially after the Supreme Court ended affirmative action, is the mission of good higher education,” Stevens said. 

The decision, made by University of Michigan Provost Laurie McCauley, follows an Oct. 31 recommendation by an eight-member faculty working group to end the use of the statements, which have been criticized for their potential to limit freedom of expression and diversity of thought on campus, according to a statement from the university.  A survey conducted for the faculty committee, appointed by McCauley, found more than half of Michigan faculty members believed diversity statements placed pressure on professors to express “specific moral, political and social views,” The New York Times reported. 

While critics of DEI say its programs have increased anti-Jewish prejudice and have called for an end to DEI bureaucracy (several red states are working on passing laws to ban it and some schools, such as the University of Florida, already have), the University of Michigan continues to have one of the most expansive DEI programs of any U.S. university. 

A New York Times Magazine investigation published in October found that the university’s efforts have cost more than $250 million over a decade, more than half of which was spent on salaries and benefits for DEI staff — and the program has overwhelmingly left faculty and students frustrated as every university department was forced to adopt a plan to implement DEI ideology. 

The rollback comes amid a larger set of reforms being weighed by the university’s Board of Regents, although one regent told JI that changes are unlikely to be made before the annual budget meeting in June. Those reforms could include shifting more of Michigan’s overall DEI budget into recruitment programs and tuition guarantees for lower-income students, according to The New York Times. 

In conversations between Michigan’s DEI officials and the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor, “there is agreement that the goal of the university must be to be as inclusive and accepting and supportive of all types of diversity,” Rabbi Asher Lopatin, director of community relations at the federation, told JI. 

“Whether under the title or methodology of DEI or not, the Jewish community supports such goals,” Lopatin said.

Jordan Acker, a member of the eight-member Board of Regents and a Jewish Michigan alumnus, told JI that DEI programming — including any of the potential changes being considered — has failed to “effectively include Jewish students whatsoever.” 

“That is additive of other concerns I have about it, but it’s certainly a big one,” Acker, a Democrat, said, noting that he supports the decision made by McCauley on Thursday. 

“It’s the job of administrators to justify regents spending taxpayer and tuition dollars on programming, not the other way around,” Acker said. 

“We need to understand these questions about Jewish students and their belonging on our campus better, whether you call it DEI or anything else,” he continued. “From this past year it’s obvious that the DEI bureaucracy does not know how to handle Jewish students.” 

On the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, the home of University of Michigan President Santa Ono and several locations — with ties to either Jewish individuals or organizations with connections to Israel — became the latest targets in a spate of antisemitic vandalism that have plagued the state throughout the year. 

Even as the attacks have been aimed against high-profile victims or leading Jewish institutions, one prominent Jewish leader in the state is calling out the state’s political leadership for muted reactions in their condemnation of  the vandalism and other recent incidents, noting that few have used the power of their office to speak out against a spasm of antisemitism affecting the state.

Following the spate of antisemitic incidents in Michigan, which is a key battleground state in next month’s election, local Jewish community leaders remain divided about how the response is being handled. 

“I’d definitely like to see more of a crackdown” from elected officials, Rabbi Asher Lopatin, director of community relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor, told Jewish Insider. 

On the morning of Oct. 7, Ono’s home, the home of University of Michigan chief investment officer, Erik Lundberg, and the offices of the Michigan Israel Business Accelerator and the Jewish Federation of Detroit were spray-painted with words including “intifada” and “coward.” The group that took responsibility for the four acts of vandalism, Unity of Fields, formerly known as Palestine Action U.S., wrote that it targeted “businesses to universities.” 

“We reject all financial support for the Israeli regime,” the group said in a statement on Telegram. 

“There are a lot of incidents and it’s hard for [politicians] to even understand where they are all coming from,” Carolyn Normandin, regional director of Anti-Defamation League Michigan, told JI. Normandin emphasized that law enforcement, on the other hand, has responded promptly and worked closely with the ADL to investigate incidents. 

In a statement to JI, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said that “the antisemitic graffiti on the headquarters of the Jewish Federation of Detroit, homes of university leaders, and places of business around the state is cruel and abhorrent.”

Whitmer, a Democrat, continued, “On the one year anniversary of the October 7th attack, we must continue rising above actions that aim to divide us and instill fear in our communities.” Whitmer’s office did not immediately issue a press release about the incident. 

Last month, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt criticized Whitmer for not speaking up more aggressively against antisemitism — after Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) insinuated in an interview that the state’s Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel was only prosecuting anti-Israel protesters who broke the law because she was Jewish. 

“Governor Whitmer, when your attorney general prosecutes people for violating the law, harassing Jews, and attacking police officers, it’s in the interest of public safety. When a congresswoman accuses the attorney general of prosecuting protestors simply because she’s Jewish, it’s bias,” Greenblatt said on X. 

Lopatin added that it was “very disappointing that when Nessel courageously said the state would prosecute people who violate the law, she did not [initially] get support from Whitmer and some elected officials.” 

“She did get support from most of the congressional delegation and that was helpful,” Lopatin continued. 

(A Whitmer spokesperson later issued a follow-up statement offering a clearer defense of Nessel, without specifically defending the Michigan attorney general’s prosecution of the anti-Israel protesters. The statement did not mention Tlaib.)

“Whichever side you’re on, everyone respects decisiveness and being forthright in saying what is right and wrong,” Lopatin said. “This kind of weak response to people violating the law and intimidating others—  I don’t think that this weak response gains anybody’s respect on any side of the political spectrum.” 

“Politicians would do themselves a favor if they took a strong stand against illegal actions, whether against Jews or anyone else,” Lopatin said. “I think everyone – including in the Arab American community – are picking up on the weakness. If society condemns something, that means all of the politicians and leaders, then it diminishes.” 

Michigan has been an epicenter of antisemitic activity in recent months. Earlier this month, more than 100 households across close to a dozen Detroit suburbs received antisemitic flyers. The flier drops are “done by a cowardly group who operates – most of the time – just within the law,” Normadin said. “These are deceitful bad actors whose only goal is to sow hatred toward the Jews… I hope police find some of the people responsible and that they are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” 

Last month, a Jewish student at the University of Michigan was attacked —  resulting in minor injuries — in what the Ann Arbor Police Department described as “a bias-motivated assault.” 

Meanwhile, in June, the exterior of University of Michigan Board of Regents member Jordan Acker’s law office was vandalized overnight with the phrases “FREE PALESTINE,” “DIVEST NOW,” “F***YOU ACKER” and “UM KILLS” scrawled on the walls, walkway and front window.  Acker, who is Jewish, was also targeted by masked anti-Israel demonstrators one month earlier outside of his home as Acker, his wife and three daughters were asleep. 

In the spring, the University of Michigan campus was host to an anti-Israel protest encampment that lasted for nearly four weeks and was ultimately broken up by police. Ono said that this year, the university will have “zero tolerance” for any efforts to reestablish encampments. 

While “more needs to be done to set boundaries” to prevent these types of incidents around the state, Lopatin said, at the University of Michigan, “there’s been an improvement,” compared to last year when the school was a hotbed of anti-Israel activity. Lopatin is the father of two University of Michigan students who were recognized in March at an Honors Convocation that was disrupted by anti-Zionist demonstrators.

“I’m happy to see President Ono speaking out much faster and more forcefully,” Lopatin said. “I think he has done a good job with not allowing protesters to intimidate Jewish people.” 

A Jewish student at the University of Michigan was attacked early Sunday morning in what the Ann Arbor Police Department described as “a bias-motivated assault.” 

The 19-year-old student, who has requested that his identity not be disclosed, was walking near campus and in proximity to the Jewish Resource Center on Hill Street, at approximately 12:45 a.m. when a group of unknown males approached from behind and asked if he was Jewish, according to a police report. When the victim replied yes, the suspects reportedly proceeded to assault him. The suspects then fled the area on foot. The victim suffered minor injuries and did not require hospitalization.

The Anti-Defamation League announced it will offer a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspects. “ADL is horrified to learn of an alleged antisemitic assault on a Jewish UMich student,” the group’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, tweeted. 

Rabbi Davey Rosen, CEO of the University of Michigan Hillel, told Jewish Insider that Hillel staff met on Monday morning with detectives from the Ann Arbor Police Department (AAPD) and is convening a joint meeting Monday afternoon with AAPD, the University of Michigan Police Department and additional Jewish organizations on campus and in Ann Arbor.

“These meetings follow recent antisemitic incidents that have targeted Jewish students and the Hillel community,” Rosen said. 

Based on the rise of antisemitic incidents last year around Michigan’s campus, Michigan Hillel increased its security presence at its facility before the new academic year began. The added security measures, Rosen said, include “organizing walking groups and ride shares for students who do not feel safe traveling alone” and “encouraging students to reach out to the Hillel team for support and to report any concerns or incidents to the University Dean of Students office.” 

“We take bias-motivated crimes very seriously and have assigned this incident to our hate crimes detective,” the AAPD said in a statement, adding that the department is asking for tips as there is currently “limited information on the suspects.” 

AAPD Chief Andre Anderson said in a statement that the department has talked to the University of Michigan police staff, “and our goal is to discuss safety over the next few weeks.”

“There is absolutely no place for hate or ethnic intimidation in the City of Ann Arbor,” Anderson said. “We are committed to vigorously investigating this and other hate-motivated incidents and will work with the County Prosecutor’s office to aggressively prosecute those who are responsible.” 

In a campus-wide letter on Monday, the university’s president, Santa Ono, condemned the incident. “Antisemitism is in direct conflict with the university’s deeply held values of safety, respect and inclusion and has no place within our community,” Ono said.  

Antisemitism and anti-Israel activity has roiled the University of Michigan campus repeatedly since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. In June, the exterior of the university’s Board of Regents member Jordan Acker’s law office was vandalized overnight with the phrases “FREE PALESTINE,” “DIVEST NOW,” “FUCK YOU ACKER” and “UM KILLS” scrawled on the walls, walkway and front window. The incident was the second time since Oct. 7 that Acker, who is Jewish, has been targeted by anti-Israel demonstrators. 

Last week, nine anti-Israel demonstrators and two counter protesters were charged for their involvement in incidents relating to anti-Israel protest encampments that sprung up on the university in the spring.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel charged nine anti-Israel demonstrators and two counterprotesters involved in incidents at the University of Michigan relating to the school’s anti-Israel protest encampment.

“The right to free speech and assembly is fundamental, and my office fully supports every citizen’s right to free speech under the First Amendment,” Nessel said on Thursday announcing the charges. “However, violent and criminal behavior, or acts that trample on another’s rights, cannot be tolerated. I hope today’s charges are a reminder to everyone who chooses to assemble, regardless of the cause, that the First Amendment does not provide a cover for illegal activity.”

The AG’s office said that some participants in the encampment attempted to physically block police officers who were clearing the encampment at the request of university officials. 

Nessel’s office charged seven demonstrators with trespassing and assaulting or resisting police, a felony punishable by up to two years in prison. Two were charged with misdemeanor trespassing, carrying a maximum penalty of 30 days in prison.

Nessel said that she is only charging those who attempted to block the officers from clearing the encampment, and is pursuing felony charges against those who “physically placed their hands or bodies against police” or “physically obstructed an arrest.”

“The police must be allowed to do their jobs, to secure public safety without unnecessary risks of harm or violence, and these laws are in place to prevent such risks,” Nessel said. “All students should know, whether on- or off-campus, in a sanctioned demonstration or an unpermitted encampment, disobeying the lawful commands of law enforcement is a crime, and especially so when you use physical force to counter a police action.”

Two other individuals, one Michingan alumnus and one unaffiliated individual, are being charged for activities related to a counterprotest.

One is being charged with disturbing the peace, carrying a potential 90-day sentence, and attempted ethnic intimidation, carrying a maximum one-year sentence, for kicking over flags set up by the anti-Israel demonstrators.

The other is being charged with two counts of malicious destruction of personal property for taking flags from demonstrators, breaking some and throwing them in the trash. The offense carries a maximum 93-day sentence.

The charges against counterprotesters are all misdemeanors.

“A college campus should be a place where the exploration and sharing of ideas and opinions is able to flourish, but conviction in your ideals is not an excuse for violations of the law,” Nessel said.

In the announcement, the AG’s office also urged Michigan schools to ensure that their policies regarding protests are “up to date and protect freedom of speech and student safety on campus” and are enforced “in a content-neutral way.”

The announcement said the AG declined to prosecute anyone for interrupting University of Michigan President Santa Ono’s speech during a convocation ceremony in the spring or allegedly attacking police officers during another incident around the university’s encampment.

She said that she’s still investigating incidents at the homes of University of Michigan regents.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) praised Nessel’s decision to press charges.

“Peaceful protest and free speech are foundational to our democracy,” Stevens said in a statement to JI. “Attorney General Nessel has always been dedicated to ensuring the law works equally for everyone and that if laws are broken, bad actors are held accountable. I commend her work ensuring first amendment rights are protected and balanced with the safety of our campuses and communities.”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of the most anti-Israel members in Congress, said the charges are “frivolous” and “only serve to silence those speaking out against a genocidal apartheid regime” and suggested the charges are unconstitutional.

Administrators at the University of Michigan and the City of University of New York failed to adequately investigate students’ reports of antisemitism and Islamophobia, the U.S. Department of Education announced on Monday. 

The department’s Office for Civil Rights, known as OCR, released the findings of its investigations into how both Michigan and CUNY handled antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents dating back to 2020, culminating in resolutions reached with both universities to end the investigations in exchange for the administrations promising to do more to take students’ complaints seriously. 

The agreements were the first to resolve investigations related to discrimination on the basis of shared ancestry — including antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Israel discrimination and anti-Palestinian racism — on college campuses since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel sparked a wave of antisemitism and ushered in a slew of more than 100 new investigations into potential civil rights violations. 

“There’s no question that this is a challenging moment for school communities across the country. The recent commitments made by the University of Michigan and CUNY mark a positive step forward,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights continues to hold schools accountable for compliance with civil rights standards, including by investigating allegations of discrimination or harassment based on shared Jewish ancestry and shared Palestinian or Muslim ancestry.” 

Jewish community advocates praised the department for resolving the complaints. In recent months, Jewish leaders have called on Congress to increase funding for OCR, which has been unable to hire additional attorneys to handle an immense increase in its caseloads since Oct. 7. More than twice as many shared ancestry investigations have been opened since Oct. 7 than in the previous seven years combined. 

“The findings are sobering, but not surprising. Both schools must take their obligations to protect students seriously,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a post on X. 

Investigators found that at Michigan, there was “no evidence” that the university complied with federal civil rights requirements mandating that the school assess whether 75 incidents of shared ancestry discrimination reported from late 2022 to early 2024 created a hostile environment for students. Because the university failed to determine whether Jewish and Muslim students faced a hostile environment, investigators also raised concerns that the university did not act “to end the hostile environment, remedy its effects and prevent its recurrence.” 

Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon, who oversees OCR, said she was “grateful to the University of Michigan for its speedy commitment to course correct following the volatile campus conditions since October 2023.” The university pledged to review each report of discrimination from the 2023-2024 school year and to report on its progress assessing harassment over the next two years, as well as to better train employees to comply with federal civil rights guidelines.  

In a statement, Michigan President Santa Ono said the university “condemns all forms of discrimination, racism and bias in the strongest possible terms.” The agreement, Ono added, “reflects the university’s commitment to ensuring it has the tools needed to determine whether an individual’s acts or speech creates a hostile environment, and taking the affirmative measures necessary to provide a safe and supportive educational environment for all.” 

The resolution reached between CUNY and the Education Department combined nine open investigations alleging antisemitism and Islamophobia or anti-Arab discrimination at several CUNY campuses, including Hunter College, Brooklyn College and Queens College. The department specifically criticized the university for failing to investigate and address an alleged antisemitic incident that occurred in a 2021 class at Hunter College, and called on CUNY to reopen investigations into antisemitic or Islamophobic harassment. 

“The good news is that they are finally issuing resolution agreements for universities to make changes to address discrimination against Jewish students,” Ken Marcus, chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which helps students file civil rights complaints against universities, said of the agreements. Adding a note of caution, Marcus, who headed OCR in the Trump administration, said he had hoped for “more specificity and detail” in the agreements. “Instead, the Education Department has kicked the can down the road, requiring [CUNY] to make some vaguely described changes to its policies.” 

In a statement, William C. Thompson Jr., the CUNY board of trustees chairman, promised the university would work closely with the Education Department. “We look forward to working with the Office of Civil Rights to ensure that all members of our community feel safe and included in the CUNY mission of equal access and opportunity,” said Thompson. 

That both agreements included mentions of both antisemitism and Islamophobia — even though the two OCR complaints against Michigan only referred to antisemitism — reflects a common Biden administration practice of linking the two forms of hatred, even when the incidents are not connected. 

“We all want universities to provide equal protection for all of their students, including Jewish and non-Jewish students alike. But it’s unusual for the agency to address claims by one group by insisting that multiple groups be treated in a different way,” said Marcus. “When women come forward and say that an institution is discriminating against women, the agency doesn’t come up with an order saying that both women and men need to be treated better in the future.” 

The exterior of University of Michigan Board of Regents member Jordan Acker’s law office was vandalized overnight on Monday with the phrases “FREE PALESTINE,” “DIVEST NOW,” “FUCK YOU ACKER” and “UM KILLS” scrawled on the walls, walkway and front window. The incident is the second time during the Israel-Hamas war that Acker, who is Jewish, has been targeted by anti-Israel demonstrators. 

“It’s a disgusting escalation and pure antisemitism,” Acker, who is a former Obama administration official and has sat on the school’s Board of Regents since 2018, told Jewish Insider. “This has nothing to do with Palestine. I am one of eight [regents] and I was the only person targeted. I believe that’s because I’m Jewish. I believe this was a message to be sent to the Jewish community.”  

According to video footage obtained by the Goodman Acker personal injury law firm, which is located in a heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Southfield — about 30 minutes away from the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor — the incident occurred at approximately 2 a.m. when four masked individuals splattered the front walkway, the sign over the door and the building’s walls with red and black spray paint and the antisemitic and anti-Israel messages.

Southfield police told local newspaper Deadline Detroit that the department responded to a 911 call Monday morning and is investigating the matter. “The investigation is in its infancy,” Lt. Mo Bzeih said. “We want to gather the preliminary facts before we put out a statement. We’re canvassing the area.” 

“The vandalism that occurred at Regent Jordan Acker’s place of business is shocking and unacceptable,” University of Michigan’s president, Santa Ono, said in a statement. “Singling out this dedicated public servant and defacing his workplace in the middle of the night is an act of antisemitic cowardice that Southfield police have indicated is being investigated as a hate crime. Such harassment and attempts to intimidate have no place in a civil society and certainly no place in our university community.”

Many Michigan lawmakers and candidates for office expressed support for Acker and condemned the incident. Republican Senate candidate and former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) tagged the incident as antisemitic, while his Democratic opponent, Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) called it “intimidation related to the Middle East conflict.”

“We have yet another instance of the use of intimidation related to the Middle East conflict. If your ‘protest’ tactics include vandalism and violent language, you’re not protesting — you’re breaking the law and discrediting your cause at the same time,” Slotkin said in a statement. “And anyone carrying that out should be held legally accountable.” 

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) said in a statement to JI, “Vandalism and acts of violence and hate against anyone for any reason are completely unacceptable. I condemn these actions in the strongest terms. Hate is being normalized in too many communities, and we must stand up to hate wherever and whenever we see it.”

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) wrote on X, “Jordan Acker and the Goodman Acker law firm have my love and support… so many drive by his place of work every day and it’s painful to see this attack on a place of business. Today and everyday, I denounce Jewish hate with every fiber in my being.”   

Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) told JI in a statement, “I condemn today’s antisemitic attack on University of Michigan Regent Jordan Acker’s Office in Southfield. While everyone has a right to express their views, there is absolutely no place for vandalism or violent rhetoric of any kind of in our state. It’s up to all of us to call out these attacks targeting Michiganders for who they are or their religion.”

Last month, as Acker, his wife and three daughters were asleep, his doorbell app obtained footage of a stranger wearing a red keffiyeh over his face walking up to the family’s front door. He stood there for several moments, placed papers on the door and took photographs before leaving. The incident occurred in the wake of University of Michigan police breaking up an anti-Israel illegal encampment on the Diag, the main quad, that engulfed the campus for nearly a month. One of the papers, a list of demands for the leadership of the University of Michigan, was signed: “In liberation, the UMich Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”

Jewish Insider congressional correspondent Emily Jacobs and senior national correspondent Gabby Deutch contributed reporting. 

When Jordan Acker woke up at 6 a.m. on Wednesday in his home in Huntington Woods, a heavily Jewish suburb of Detroit, he saw several alarming notifications on his iPhone. Photos and videos from his doorbell app showed a disturbance outside his front door around 4:40 a.m., while he, his wife and their three daughters were asleep. 

A stranger wearing a red keffiyeh over his face walked up to Acker’s front door and stood there for several moments. He placed papers on the doors and took photographs before leaving. The document, a list of demands for the leadership of the University of Michigan, was signed: “In liberation, the UMich Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” 

Acker, an attorney and former Obama administration official, sits on the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan, a statewide position to which he was elected in 2018. He ran for the seat as a way to promote a safe campus environment and protect students from sexual misconduct. A Jewish Michigan alumnus, Acker knew Israel issues might come up — the school has been dealing with staunchly anti-Israel activists for years — but he never expected anything like the uproar of the last seven months. The disturbance at his home escalated things to a new level.

“It’s not a way that we handle disputes in this country, by trying to scare elected officials. I think that is something that is enormously undemocratic,” Acker told Jewish Insider on Wednesday afternoon. “I found it extremely disturbing and very menacing in thinking that someone would dress like that to come to my house at 4:40 a.m. It’s really surreal, and it’s very, very scary.”

He compared the incident to something that happened in December 2020, when two dozen protesters showed up at night outside the home of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to protest the results of the 2020 election. 

“Whether you agree with the cause or not, there is no reason to show up at my home in the middle of the night with a mask on, just like there’s no reason to show up at Jocelyn Benson’s house,” Acker said. “These tactics are fundamentally — whether they’re from the far right or far left — incredibly illiberal. They try to use fear as a tactic to get what they want, when they can’t get what they want at the ballot box. And that cannot be acceptable.” 

According to a statement from the university, more than 30 protesters showed up at the homes of several university regents Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning. In some cases, they chanted and sang; in at least one instance, they placed fake corpses wrapped in bloodstained sheets on the lawn. The groups that spearheaded the campus’ anti-Israel encampment, which disbanded a couple weeks ago, claimed responsibility via social media posts: Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) and the Transparency, Accountability, Humanity, Reparations, Investment, Resistance (TAHRIR) Coalition. (TAHRIR retweeted a post on the social media network X that accused Acker of “incitement” for complaining about the intruder online.)

“The tactics used today represent a significant and dangerous escalation in the protests that have been occurring on campus. Going to an individual’s private residence is intimidating behavior and, in this instance, illegal trespassing. This kind of conduct is not protected speech; it’s dangerous and unacceptable,” the university said in the statement. (Acker and a university spokesperson declined to say if the police have gotten involved.)

In the letter pasted to Acker’s door, the encampment protesters demanded a meeting with Michigan’s Board of Regents, the university’s governing board. They also demanded involvement in university investment decisions, university divestment “from Israeli apartheid and genocide,” a boycott of Israeli academic institutions and the full abolition of the campus police department. The protesters also seek adoption of “essential preconditions” before any meeting even takes place — including a commitment to “full amnesty” for protesters who faced disciplinary action for their role in the protests and a demand that Michigan “stop using dubious accusations of antisemitism to vilify students protesting for basic human rights and liberation.”

The letter and the middle-of-the-night visit do not make Acker more likely to meet with the group. He has said in the past that divestment is “not really a negotiable one” for him.

“I am not interested in meeting with a group led by someone who has posted that anyone who supports the Zionist state should die,” Acker said, referring to a social media post by the president of SAFE, the anti-Israel group that led the encampment. 

“My feelings on Israel and Palestine and Gaza are complicated, like a lot of Jews, by the way. And I don’t know if they’re targeting me because of that,” said Acker. “But I will say that the last six months, and certainly the last six weeks have really instilled in me a new appreciation for my own liberal Zionism and the importance of a State of Israel, and why that’s there. The level of antisemitism has become enormously scary.” 

The biggest concern for Acker is not the students whose style of activism has become increasingly extreme, even though he views that as a problem, too. 

“I’m much more concerned with the faculty, with the small group of faculty who seem to be egging on some of the worst behaviors of our students. And that, to me, is a much harder problem, because I deeply believe in academic freedom,” Acker said. 

“But I also think that with academic freedom comes a responsibility,” Acker continued, “and that responsibility requires these faculty members to do well by their students, to not put them in harm’s way, to teach them that even when they are angry, or in grief, or dealing with the complex emotions that come from seeing this conflict in Gaza, that they they channel their behaviors into ones that are not dangerous, that won’t lead to them having long-term consequences.”

Acker called for Michigan to adopt a position of institutional neutrality, like the University of Chicago (although Chicago also struggled with how to address its recent Gaza encampment). He wants to see that position extended to the classroom, so that students are free to express their views — including students who support Israel.

“You have to be proactively protecting free speech and academic freedom, and that includes, by the way, the academic freedom of students to learn without being punished for their political views, which is actually something that is most concerning, more than any of the potential violence or the encampments or anything,” said Acker. “The one thing that I’ve heard most from Jewish students is that they are deeply concerned that if they don’t take a particular position on Israel or Palestine, they may be punished academically in their classes.” 

Professors at Michigan shouldn’t be forcing students to adopt their own perspectives, Acker argued. “You’re representing the institution. It’s your job to be facilitating people’s First Amendment rights, not enforcing your own political views,” he said. “It’s become a big problem.”

Congressional Republicans are vowing action to address antisemitism on college campuses nationwide, with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) launching “a House-wide effort” this week to crack down on universities unable to control anti-Israel protests that on some occasions have grown violent. 

Johnson said at a press conference on Tuesday that House Republicans would expand the ongoing efforts to tackle antisemitism beyond the House Education and Workforce Committee, which has investigations into six universities underway. 

The chairs of the House Energy and Commerce; Oversight; Judiciary; Ways and Means; and Science, Space, and Technology Committees will separately investigate “the billions of federal taxpayer dollars that go to these universities,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said at the press conference. 

“Antisemitism is a virus and because the administration and woke university presidents aren’t stepping in, we’re seeing it spread,” Johnson said. “We must act, and House Republicans will speak to this fateful moment with moral clarity. We really wish those in the White House would do the same. We will not allow antisemitism to thrive on campus and we will hold these universities accountable for their failure to protect Jewish students on campus.”

“That’s why today we’re here to announce a House-wide effort to crack down on antisemitism on college campuses,” he continued. “Nearly every committee here has a role to play in these efforts to stop the madness that has ensued. The federal government plays a critical role in higher education, and we will use all the tools available to us to address this scourge.”

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who chairs the Education and Workforce Committee, revealed that in addition to her ongoing probes, she will have the presidents of three other schools testify next month on their responses to protests and instances of antisemitism on their campuses. The presidents of the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Michigan; and Yale University will be brought in to testify before Foxx’s committee on May 23. 

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, noted that her panel “oversees agencies that dole out massive amounts of taxpayer funded research grants… We will be increasing our oversight of institutions that have received public funding and cracking down on those who are in violation of the Civil Rights Act.”

“Imagine being a Jewish American, knowing that part of your hard-earned paycheck is going to fund an antisemitic professor’s research, while they threaten students and actively indoctrinate and radicalize the next generation,” McMorris Rodgers said. 

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) said that his panel was reaching out to the State Department and Homeland Security Department to find out “how many students on a visa have engaged in the radical activity we’ve seen now day after day on college campuses.”

“The overriding question is real simple: Are individuals advocating for the destruction of our dearest and closest ally, the State of Israel, and engaged in this antisemitic behavior, is that a national security threat? We think it is,” Jordan said. 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) hasn’t directly addressed the expanded GOP investigations, but is pushing for the House to consider a bipartisan antisemitism bill in response to the campus incidents.

Jeffries said Wednesday he has no current plans to visit colleges that have been plagued by unrest and anti-Israel encampments. He said he also hasn’t looked at proposals for cutting funding to colleges that are not cracking down on antisemitism, but slammed Republicans for pushing to cut funding to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which investigates antisemitism accusations on campuses.

“Ultimately, it was House Democrats led by [Rep.] Rosa DeLauro [D-CT], that were able to restore the proposed extreme MAGA Republican cut that would have adversely impacted the ability of the Department of Education to combat antisemitism and all other forms of hatred on college campuses,” Jeffries said. “We don’t need rhetoric from some of my Republican colleagues, we need real action.”

The New York congressman expressed support for Columbia University and the New York Police Department’s response to anti-Israel demonstrators who broke into and took over an administrative building on campus.

“As far as I can tell, the efforts by the NYPD were thorough, professional, and they exercised a degree of calm in a very tense situation that should be commended,” he said during a press conference, adding that he did not see any incidents of excessive force.

The Democratic leader said that peaceful protest and civil disobedience are “an important part of the fabric of America” but that protests that threaten others or engage in antisemitism or other bigotry are unacceptable.

He said he had no comment on Democratic lawmakers who have visited the encampments at Columbia to offer support. He also declined to comment on remarks by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) accusing some Jewish students of being “pro-genocide,” noting that he hadn’t spoken to Omar directly.

On the Senate side, where Democrats are in the majority, Republicans have been largely unified in calling for consequences for schools that cannot get their campuses under control, but otherwise lack the power to force any action. 

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) organized a press conference on Wednesday for a group of GOP senators to condemn the encampments, which he referred to as “Little Gazas.”

“These ‘Little Gazas’ are disgusting cesspools of antisemitic hate full of pro-Hamas sympathizers, fanatics, and freaks,” Cotton said. “President Biden needs to denounce Hamas’s campus sympathizers without equivocating about Israelis fighting a righteous war of survival.”

“The State Department needs to yank the visas of foreign students in these ‘Little Gazas’ and DHS needs to deport them,” he added. “The Justice Department should investigate the funding sources behind these ‘Little Gazas,’ and the Department of Education needs to withhold funding for colleges that won’t protect the civil rights of their Jewish students.”

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), the No. 3 Senate Republican, similarly called for revoking federal support for universities that fail to uphold civil rights laws.

“We have laws in this country to protect against violence, to protect students. Students have a right to be protected. Jewish students, all students on campus, from harassment, from discrimination,” Barrasso said at the weekly leadership press conference. “If not, those colleges should lose their federal funding.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered two floor speeches on the matter within two days. His Tuesday speech likened Columbia protesters to ‘student Nazis of Weimar Germany’ in a call to restore order on the university’s campus, while his Wednesday remarks urged the Biden administration to not focus “on virtue-signaling and political theater to appease the leftist agitators of their base.”

While Republicans have generally been more vocal about their concerns on the matter, there have been some bipartisan calls for action in the upper chamber. 

Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and James Lankford (R-OK) have asked Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to hold a hearing on antisemitism on college campuses in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the top Republican on the committee, has requested the same.

Asked by JI in the Capitol on Wednesday about organizing a hearing about antisemitism on college campuses, Sanders replied, “Well, the issue of bigotry on campus is something that we are concerned about,” before abruptly entering a senators-only elevator. 

Cassidy told JI in November that Sanders had declined to call a hearing on campus antisemitism. Sanders delivered a Senate floor speech on Wednesday largely expressing support for anti-Israel protests on college campuses and rejecting many of the accusations of antisemitism leveled at anti-Israel demonstrators.

Sanders’s office did not respond to JI’s subsequent request for comment on the matter, nor did a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).