Who exactly is President Trump protecting when he punishes colleges and universities which he says tolerate antisemitism?
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As antisemitism once again raises its ugly head in America, the treasured Jewish holiday of Passover seems even more poignant than before. It began Saturday night, when millions of Jews gathered around tables fulfilling the tradition of the Seder, which starts after a reading of the Haggadah, an ancient rite that tells the story of the forced exodus of the ill-treated Israelites from Egypt. Then, if we are lucky enough, ample portions of matzo ball soup, potato kugel, and brisket.
Last year, like every year, in keeping with the time-honored custom revered by observant and secular Jews alike, there were Passover Seders across the nation, even in the university encampments protesting Israel’s war in Gaza. But last year was not a typical Passover. Jewish students, while simply trying to go about their daily business, suffered a barrage of on-campus threats by actors who were antisemitic, anti-Zionist, or anti-Israeli and even by some who didn’t know what was going on.
Just one year later, this is not the picture of campus life anymore. Hate will always exist, but now the encampments are gone and the police are not regularly dispatched anymore to protect campus Jews. By and large, they no longer need protection.
However, notwithstanding facts on the ground, President Donald Trump insists they still do, and not just from on-campus protesters but also from university policies. As his way of providing protection, he is threatening to withhold federal funds from more than 60 schools (at last count) that fail to take steps he defines as necessary to combat antisemitism. This money is given for research grants and other work, aimed toward the benefit of all Americans, not only those who study or work on college campuses.
The latest? The Defense Department slammed Cornell last week with more than 75 stop-work orders for projects meant to improve our cybersecurity, our health, and our defense. At Northwestern, the government suspended research to create smaller pacemakers and more effective treatments for Alzheimer’s.
“Jew hatred is real, but today’s anti-antisemitism isn’t a legitimate effort to fight it. It’s a cover for a wide range of agendas that have nothing to do with the welfare of Jewish people.”
These moves might be meant to punish antisemitism and those who tolerate it, but they end up just punishing Americans. As Deborah Lipstadt, President Joe Biden’s former special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, put it, the Trump administration is “weaponizing” antisemitism in higher education policy. She fears, as a Holocaust historian, that this kind of thing “doesn’t end well for the Jews.”
It’s all the result of last year’s campus protests, but it raises the question: Will all this talk about fighting antisemitism actually create more of it?
It’s important of course to actually define antisemitism. While there is no universally agreed-upon definition, there is a commonly used description, written by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
This is the definition that the United States has long embraced. Presumably, when the administration goes to battle over it, that’s what they mean. But their actions belie their words.
Writing in the online journal Public Discourse, Daniel Ross Goodman of St. John’s University’s Department of Theology and Religious Studies said,
Sledgehammer approaches fail Jewish students because they conflate accountability with retribution, often leaving the innocent to bear the brunt of the fallout, like blameless bystanders caught in crossfire. Antisemitism must be uprooted, not just penalized, and that demands strategies that protect rather than imperil Jewish academic life. A policy that balances targeted reform with sustained support sends a powerful message: Discriminatory conduct will not be tolerated, nor will the erosion of the intellectual spaces where Jewish students and scholars flourish.
Alexander Pascal, a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, wrote earlier this month:
A strong democracy that values its people’s diversity, safeguards their fundamental rights and protects them equally under the law is the only true bulwark against the catastrophic antisemitism that we have experienced throughout our history. The foundational insight of the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism was that any serious initiative to fight the very real scourge of antisemitism in the US must focus on cultivating and strengthening a vibrant democracy — not destroying it.
Michael Roth, the first Jewish president of the formerly Methodist Wesleyan University, wrote, “Jew hatred is real, but today’s anti-antisemitism isn’t a legitimate effort to fight it. It’s a cover for a wide range of agendas that have nothing to do with the welfare of Jewish people.”
However, anti-antisemitism can have something to do with more hatred for the Jewish people.
Antisemitism is often called “the oldest hatred.” We find evidence of it in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and in Rome’s political domination of early Christianity. Data concerning the hatred of Jews is overwhelming in its impact on the global Jewish community. That’s pretty amazing when you consider there are only 15.8 million Jews in a global population of more than 8 billion. How can so few people stimulate so much political fighting, cultural debate, and divisive behavior?
It leads me to the conclusion that the continuous agitation over treatment of Jews has a unique value for leaders seeking and instigating cultural chaos. Does the word “scapegoat” come to mind? Antisemitism has always had its scapegoats.
During his presidential campaign, Trump suggested that real Jews would vote only for him, while faux Jews and Jews who were out of their minds would vote for his opponent. Which leads to another question: Given that more than 70 percent of Jewish voters did not vote for Trump, why should we believe that his campaign to fight antisemitism and provide for the safety of Jews is honest and sincere? How do we know it won’t make antisemitism worse?
Why is the safety of Jews on university campuses being used as a cudgel without any Jewish involvement? Why are major research programs being threatened, if they are not already suspended, as if there are no Jews suffering the punishment along with the universities themselves? If these programs become casualties of Trump’s misguided policies, will Jews become casualties along with them?
That’s the point. These measures against American universities can have the opposite effect from what the administration says it intends. Jews will be blamed, and antisemitism will only worsen. And among Jews, it will deepen fear about a new resurgence of hatred that dates back to the first Passover in Egypt.
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Joseph A. Edelheit served as a rabbi at synagogues in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Michigan City, IN. He served on the board of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and on President Clinton’s Advisory Council for HIV/AIDS. He is emeritus professor of Jewish and religious studies at St. Cloud State University and president of the Council of Reform Rabbis of Brazil. Rabbi Edelheit lives in Rio de Janeiro.
