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US claims student’s activism could ‘undermine’ Middle East peace
by Evelyn Reynolds 15 April 2025, 23:37
The Trump administration is justifying its efforts to deport a student at Columbia University by saying that his activities could “potentially undermine” the Middle East peace process.In a memo from the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, reviewed exclusively by the New York Times, the administration asserts that Mohsen Mahdawi, 34, a green-card holder and student who led pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia, had undermined the Middle East peace process and threatened the US goal to “peacefully” resolve conflict in Israel and Gaza.Mahdawi was apprehended at an immigration services center in Vermont, where he had arrived to complete the final step in his citizenship process. Instead of taking a citizenship test, as he had expected to do, he was arrested and handcuffed by immigration officers.Rubio’s memo justifying the arrest cites the same authority used to detain Mahdawi’s fellow Columbia protester and green-card holder Mahmoud Khalil. In both cases, Rubio cited a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) that he said allows him to deport any person who is not a citizen or national of the US.In Khalil’s case, Rubio argued that Khalil’s activism undermined the US goal of combatting antisemitism; the reasoning is currently being challenged in court. But the memo addressing Mahdawi’s case, the New York Times reports, is more specific, noting that Mahdawi had “engaged in threatening rhetoric and intimidation of pro-Israeli bystanders”, saying his activism had undermined efforts to protect Jewish students from violence, and saying it had undermined the Middle East peace process by reinforcing antisemitic sentiment.The state department declined to comment, and Mahdawi’s lawyers did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.According to the court filing challenging Mahdawi’s arrest, he was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, where he lived until he moved to the US in 2014. He became a lawful permanent resident of the US in 2015.He was expected to graduate Columbia in May, and had been accepted into a master’s program at the university’s school of international and public affairs, according to the court documents.As a student at Columbia, his lawyers say, Mahdawi was “an outspoken critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and an activist and organizer in student protests on Columbia’s campus until March of 2024, after which he took a step back and has not been involved in organizing”. More
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Harvard says it will not ‘yield’ to Trump demands over $9bn in funding cuts
by Evelyn Reynolds 14 April 2025, 19:30
Harvard University said on Monday that it will not comply with a new list of demands from the Trump administration issued last week that the government says are designed to crack down on antisemitism and alleged civil rights violations at elite academic institutions.In a message to the Harvard community, the university president, Alan Garber, vowed that the school would not yield to the government’s pressure campaign. “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Garber said.The Trump administration said it would review $9bn of federal grants and contracts, including Harvard’s research hospitals, as part of its effort to “root out antisemitism”.In a letter last week from the government’s antisemitism taskforce, the university was accused of having “failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment”.The Trump administration has also demanded that Harvard ban face masks and close its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which it says teach students and staff “to make snap judgments about each other based on crude race and identity stereotypes”. The administration also demanded that Harvard cooperate with federal immigration authorities.The administration further asked Harvard to reform its admissions process for international students to screen for students “supportive of terrorism and anti-Semitism” – and to report international students to federal authorities if they break university conduct policies.University faculties are also under the government’s microscope as it has called for “reducing the power held by faculty (whether tenured or untenured) and administrators more committed to activism than scholarship”.Harvard’s announced resistance to the administration’s demands comes as Trump’s federal government pits itself against several Ivy League universities over intellectual and political freedoms. The dispute has been playing out in the courts over efforts by the administration to deport several postgraduate students holding provisional citizenship or student visas over pro-Palestinian demonstrations that the government alleges were shows of support for terrorism.On Friday, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled that the Columbia University graduate student and Palestinian organizer Mahmoud Khalil, 30, can be deported despite having been granted legal permanent residence in the US. The government contended that Khalil’s presence in the US posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences”, satisfying requirements for deportation, according to the judge.After that ruling, Khalil’s immigration attorney Marc Van Der Hout told the court that his client would appeal.The letter from Harvard’s president said the university would not comply with the Trump administration’s demands to dismantle its diversity programming and to limit student protests in exchange for its federal funding.“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Garber wrote in the message.Garber said the government’s demands were a political ploy.“It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner,” he wrote. “Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.”The new approach by the university, which sits on an endowment valued at over $52bn, comes in contrast to Columbia University. Columbia, which holds an endowment of $14bn, largely acceded to the administration demands after it was threatened with $400m in federal funding cuts.But Jewish advocacy groups are divided on the administration’s efforts. Some say they are an innovative and muscular way to combat what they see as campus antisemitism. Others maintain that the government is weaponizing antisemitism to pursue wider intellectual crackdowns.“The gun to the head and shutting down all science seems like a counterproductive way to handle the particular problems of antisemitism,” Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychology professor, told the Boston Globe earlier in April. More
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White House may seek legally binding control over Columbia through consent decree – report
by Evelyn Reynolds 10 April 2025, 21:07
The Trump administration is considering placing Columbia University under a consent decree, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, a dramatic escalation in the federal government’s crackdown on the Ivy League institution.The university has already accepted a series of changes demanded by the administration as a pre-condition for restoring $400m in federal grants and contracts that the government suspended last month over allegations that the school failed to protect students from antisemitism on campus.A consent decree – a binding agreement approved by a federal judge – would be an extraordinary move by the Trump administration, which has threatened government funding as a way to force colleges and universities to comply with Donald Trump’s political objectives on a range of issues from campus protests to transgender women in sports and diversity and inclusion initiatives.As a party to the consent decree, Columbia would have to agree to enter it – and the Journal report states that it is unclear whether such a plan has been discussed by the university board.In a statement to the Guardian, the university did not directly address the report. “The University remains in active dialogue with the Federal Government to restore its critical research funding,” a spokesperson said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAccording to the Journal, the proposal comes from the administration’s antisemitism taskforce, composed in part of justice department lawyers, who have reportedly expressed skepticism that Columbia was acting in “good faith”. If Columbia resists, the justice department would need to present its case for the agreement in court, a process that could drag on for years with the university risking its federal funding in the interim.Republicans and the Trump administration have sought to make an example of Columbia University, which was at the center of a student protest movement over Israel’s war in Gaza that broke out on campuses across the country. Last month, federal immigration authorities arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and prominent Palestinian activist who participated in campus protests. He remains in detention.During a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Trump pressed his education secretary, Linda McMahon, to elaborate on the department’s efforts to withhold federal funds from universities that were “not behaving”.“You’re holding back from $400 Columbia?” he asked McMahon. She nodded and named other schools, noting that the administration had frozen nearly $1bn in funding from Cornell.“We’re getting calls from the presidents of universities who really do want to come in and sit down and come in and sit down and have discussions,” she said. “We’re investigating them but in the meantime we’re holding back the grant fund money.” More
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I’m a Jewish Israeli in the US standing up for Palestine. By Trump’s logic, I’m a terror supporter | Eran Zelnik
by Evelyn Reynolds 10 April 2025, 14:00
To Kash Patel, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation:Given recent patterns, the FBI might need to take a hard look at my actions over the years. If Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Yunseo Chung, Badar Khan Suri and other recent Ice detainees are considered threats to national security, then so am I.I have committed the same acts they have committed, including publishing an article that calls the war in Gaza a genocide, participating in a protest against the genocide in Gaza, speaking and protesting in favor of BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions against Israel), participating in a sit-in at UC Davis about 10 years ago, and being vocal in general about the atrocities committed by Israel against the people of Gaza and Palestinians.Let me tell you a little more about myself and all the additional reasons you might want to investigate and perhaps arrest me. I was born in Israel and became a naturalized US citizen through my American mother. Given the administration’s recent challenges to the 14th amendment, which provides birthright citizenship, you might proceed from detaining legal residents to revoking the rights of naturalized citizens. Like other fascist regimes before you, you’ve been testing how much resistance you face in your effort to turn the United States into a fascist country. You start with the most marginalized, sending incarcerated trans women to men’s prisons, Venezuelans accused of gang affiliation to El Salvador, and detaining Arab and Muslim legal residents. But if the past is any indication, your next target might well be children of undocumented immigrants or naturalized citizens. Of course, as every student of fascism well knows, the ultimate goal is to apprehend all the supposed enemies of this administration, regardless of their legal status.Furthermore, I must confess to using academic concepts that have come under scrutiny as antisemitic by the Department of Justice taskforce for antisemitism. As a former member of the Israel Defense Forces, I have come a long way. It took me many years of soul-searching to realize that I was complicit in a settler-colonial occupation force and that my best recourse to make amends for that was to be outspoken about my country’s atrocities. As I tried to better understand the terrible tragedy of Zionism – a nationalist ideology that sought to free Jews from oppression only to end up as oppressors in Palestine – I confess to describing concepts such as apartheid, settler colonialism, ethno-nationalism and more. Perhaps even more disturbing from your perspective, I recently employed such concepts as genocide, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing in a book I wrote about early American history.I also confess that in the past I have targeted white supremacist allies of this administration in my community of Chico, California. Clearly employing extralegal militias is part of this administration’s fascist playbook, as Trump already proved during the events of 6 January 2021. For instance, when my house was a target of antisemitic leafleting, I sought the help of a colleague and a local investigative journalist to make this very real form of antisemitism known to authorities. In the process the journalist uncovered troubling information that there is an armed white supremacist in our community who holds deep antisemitic convictions and now knows where I work. Had you really been interested in investigating antisemitism, you might have looked into the whereabouts of that individual. But since you want people like him around so that they can be activated when needed, and since all you really want is to cynically weaponize antisemitism, you might want to arrest me instead. After all, according to your standards, I – a Jew targeted by white supremacists – was all along the biggest threat to Jews in my own community.I have long heard stories about the rise of fascism in Europe from my grandparents, all of whom fled Europe and were refugees from antisemitism. The similarities between the actions of this administration and what my grandparents have lived through are unmistakable. I tell them here so that before you choose to arrest me, you will have one more opportunity to decide whether you will go down in history as aiding and abetting the rise of a fascist regime or as someone who refused to be part of another dark episode in this country’s history. Be forewarned: even if you yourself never directly suffer for your crimes, history will judge you.My dear grandfather, Otto, may his memory be a blessing, escaped Austria by the skin of his teeth when he was only 13 after the Nazi takeover of the country. Having witnessed the horrors of Kristallnacht in November of 1938 – the night when local mobs violently rioted against Jewish homes, synagogues and businesses across much of Germany and Austria and arrested 30,000 citizens just for being Jewish – his parents made the decision to flee to Shanghai, the only port that would accept them. Clearly, our current president’s rhetoric regarding enemies of the American nation from within and without, against immigrants, trans people and people deemed un-American in their political commitments (like myself), are eerily reminiscent of the stories my grandfather told me about the scapegoating of Jews.As I consider the memory of dear grandmother Rachel, may her memory be a blessing, who grew up in Poland and survived the Holocaust, including enduring a harrowing year in Auschwitz and the death march to Germany, I cannot shake the sense of another parallel. As Hitler and the Nazi party were consolidating power, they appointed sycophants like yourself and so many others to positions of power in the Nazi administration. The most important criterion for Hitler was not that the people in positions of power were competent or even knowledgeable, but that they would be spineless and loyal to him.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAccording to the historian Ian Kershaw, this type of leadership, where all bow to the great leader, led to the Holocaust, as the people surrounding Hitler constantly sought to outdo each other in their loyalty to the Führer. Knowing Hitler’s hatred for Jews, they constantly tried to curry favor by suggesting the most radical and far-reaching policy ideas towards Jews. This dynamic, which Kershaw called “working toward the Führer”, ultimately led Hitler and the people surrounding him to decide on the “Final Solution”, the plan to exterminate all the Jews in the world on an industrial scale in death camps. This idea of working toward the leader is upon us today, as we see institutions and even some in the Democratic party bowing before the great leader and his will. Instead of standing up to the administration at every turn, institutions, businesses and politicians across the country prefer to anticipate the administration’s wrath and eliminate any behavior or materials that might come under scrutiny. Meanwhile, Republicans rush to outdo each other in flattering the great leader, as American society seems frozen with fear in face of the rising tides of fascism.So, Kash Patel, do you want to arrest me and help bring about fascism?
Eran Zelnik grew up in Israel and came to the US 15 years ago to complete his PhD in history. He now lives and teaches in Chico, California More
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White House freezes funds for Cornell and Northwestern in latest crackdown
by Evelyn Reynolds 9 April 2025, 02:25
In early March, the Trump administration sent warning letters to 60 US universities it said were facing “potential enforcement actions” for what it described as “failure to protect Jewish students on campus” in the wake of widespread pro-Palestinian protests on campuses last year.The president of Cornell University, which was on the list, responded with a defiant op-ed in the New York Times, arguing that universities, and their students, could weather debates and protests over the war in Gaza.“Universities, despite rapidly escalating political, legal and financial risks, cannot afford to cede the space of public discourse and the free exchange of ideas,” the Cornell University president Michael Kotlikoff wrote on 31 March.On Tuesday, the Trump administration froze over $1bn in funding for Cornell University, a US official said. The administration also froze $790m for Northwestern University, which hosts a prominent journalism school.The funding pause includes mostly grants and contracts with the federal departments of health, education, agriculture and defense, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.The newly announced funding freezes at Cornell and Northwestern come as Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania face similar investigations. The New York Times estimated that at least $3.3bn in elite university federal funding has already been frozen by the Trump administration in the past month, with billions more under review.In a statement Tuesday night, Cornell officials said that they were aware of “media reports” suggesting the federal government was freezing $1bn in federal grants.“While we have not received information that would confirm this figure, earlier today Cornell received more than 75 stop work orders from the Department of Defense related to research that is profoundly significant to American national defense, cybersecurity, and health.”Cornell officials said the affected grants “include research into new materials for jet engines, propulsion systems, large-scale information networks, robotics, superconductors, and space and satellite communications, as well as cancer research.”Northwestern also said it was aware of media reports about the funding freeze but had not received any official notification from the government and that it has cooperated in the investigation.“Federal funds that Northwestern receives drive innovative and life-saving research, like the recent development by Northwestern researchers of the world’s smallest pacemaker, and research fueling the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. This type of research is now in jeopardy,” a Northwestern spokesperson said.In Cornell’s Tuesday night statement, Kotlikoff and other university leaders defended the school as having “worked diligently to create an environment where all individuals and viewpoints are protected and respected,” and said they were “actively seeking information from federal officials to learn more about the basis for these decisions.”“We cannot let our caution overtake our purpose,” Kotlikoff had written in the New York Times piece. “Our colleges and universities are cradles of democracy and bulwarks against autocracy.”Trump has attempted to crack down on pro-Palestinian campus protests against US ally Israel’s devastating military assault on Gaza, which has caused a humanitarian crisis in the territory following a deadly October 2023 attack by Hamas.The US president has called the protesters antisemitic, has labeled them as sympathetic to Hamas and foreign policy threats.Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say the Trump administration wrongly conflates their criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza and advocacy for Palestinian rights with antisemitism and support for Hamas. Human rights advocates have raised free speech and academic freedom concerns over the crackdown by the Trump administration.In March, the Trump administration suspended $175m in funding to the University of Pennsylvania over its transgender sports policies.In March, the Trump administration canceled $400m in funding for Columbia University, the epicenter of last year’s pro-Palestinian campus protests.Columbia sparked condemnation from academics and free speech groups after agreeing to significant changes Trump’s administration demanded, including putting its Middle Eastern studies department under new administrative supervision, banning face masks on campus, giving campus security officers power to remove or arrest people and expanding “intellectual diversity” by staffing up its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Lee Bollinger, Columbia’s former president, described the situation as “an authoritarian takeover”. More
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Harvard faculty organize amid anxiety university will capitulate to Trump
by Evelyn Reynolds 4 April 2025, 11:00
The day after the Trump administration announced a review of $9bn in federal contracts and grants with Harvard University due to what it claimed was the university’s failure to combat antisemitism on campus, the university’s president, Alan Garber, sent an email to the Harvard community titled: Our resolve.“When we saw the Garber statement’s subject line, everybody thought: ‘Oh, great, Harvard’s going to stand up!” said Jane Sujen Bock, a board member of the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard, a group of alumni founded in 2016 amid a legal battle over affirmative action.But the actual body of the message indicated no such thing. In the email, Garber briefly touted academic freedom while pledging to “engage” with the administration to “combat antisemitism”, which he said he had experienced directly, and listed a series of measures the university had already taken. “We still have much work to do,” he wrote. He offered no detail about what Harvard would do to protect its independence from the Trump administration.It was “a statement of abdication”, said Kirsten Weld, a history professor and the president of the Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a national group advocating for faculty. “It basically says: ‘Yes, we have been bad and we deserve to be punished.’”The email, along with a string of actions recently taken by Harvard against academic programmes, faculty and student groups who have been accused of being pro-Palestinian, have fueled anxieties throughout US campuses that the Ivy League school will be following in the footsteps of Columbia University, which recently bowed to a string of demands from the Trump administration in an effort to retain federal funding.On Thursday, the Trump administration wrote in a letter to Harvard that federal funding would be conditional on the university banning diversity and inclusion initiatives, restricting protests on campus, cooperating with the Department of Homeland Security, reviewing its academic programs “to address bias”, and installing leaders to implement the president’s demands.Dozens more universities are under investigation for allegedly failing to protect Jewish students from pro-Palestinian protests, with Brown University on Thursday becoming the latest to face the risk of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. They are all paying close attention to how Harvard and others weigh the financial costs of standing up to Donald Trump against the moral and academic costs that come with appeasing him.‘We have to be willing to stand up’Some signs of more muscular pushback are starting to emerge.On Tuesday, in response to the administration’s announcement that it would suspend $210m in funding to Princeton University, its president, Christopher Eisgruber, indicated that he had no intention of making concessions to the administration. At Harvard, the student newspaper reported that Rakesh Khurana, the dean of Harvard College, drew applause from his colleagues on Tuesday when he accused the Trump administration of weaponising concerns about campus antisemitism to justify its ongoing attacks against higher education. (Eisgruber and Khurana did not respond to requests for comment; several Harvard faculty only agreed to speak off the record, citing a repressive climate.)View image in fullscreenKhurana’s comments followed days of upheaval at Harvard, after 600 members of the faculty signed a letter calling on the university to publicly condemn the US president’s attacks and “legally contest and refuse to comply with unlawful demands”. The Harvard Academic Workers union, which represents non-tenure-track researchers and lecturers, wrote in a statement on Wednesday: “The Trump’s administration attack on Harvard has nothing to do with antisemitism” and called on the university to “resist this intimidation with us”.So far, Eisgruber and Christina Paxson, Brown’s president, have signaled they may take a different path and resist.“University presidents and leaders have to understand that the commitment to allow academics – including our faculty, including our students – to pursue the truth as best they see it is fundamental to what our universities do,” Eisgruber said in an interview with Bloomberg this week. “We have to be willing to stand up for that.”Brown has not announced how it plans to respond to threats it will lose more than $500m in funding, but last month, Paxson outlined how the university would respond to federal attacks on its academic freedom. “I know that many in our community have been gravely concerned about persistent media reports of some of our peers experiencing encroachments on their freedom of expression and the autonomy necessary to advance their mission, she wrote. “If Brown faced such actions directly impacting our ability to perform essential academic and operational functions, we would be compelled to vigorously exercise our legal rights to defend these freedoms.”Faculty across the country have also begun to organize. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has filed three lawsuits: over the funding cuts at Columbia, the targeting of international students by immigration authorities, and Trump’s efforts to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programmes on campuses. Meanwhile, faculty at Rutgers University have proposed a “mutual defence compact” within the “Big Ten” consortium, which includes some of the largest state universities in the country, to support one another in the face of political attacks.“The attacks that are coming from the federal government might be directed toward Columbia University last week, and Harvard University this week, and who knows which other university next week, but if we allow them to proceed, then we will be picked off one by one,” said Weld. “The only way forward for any individual institution in the higher-education sector right now is to join forces.”‘We have our voices’Harvard had tried to get ahead of the administration’s attack. The university was one of the first to come under scrutiny following 7 October 2023 and protests over Israel’s war in Gaza. Allegations that it had failed to address antisemitism on campus contributed, in part, to last year’s resignation of Claudine Gay, Harvard’s first Black president.This year, Harvard adopted a controversial definition of antisemitism in a legal settlement over complaints brought by Jewish students. In the days leading up to Trump’s threats, it forced out two leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and suspended a public health partnership with Birzeit University, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. This week, the university also suspended a “religion, conflict and peace initiative” at the divinity school that the Jewish Alumni Association had accused of focussing “entirely on the Palestinians”, and banned the Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee from hosting events on campus.View image in fullscreenBut if the repression of programmes targeting spaces sympathetic to Palestinians was meant to appease the Trump administration and avert threats of funding cuts, it didn’t work.A fraction of Harvard’s $53bn endowment – the world’s largest for a university – is liquid or free of restrictions, but several faculty said that this is the time for the university to tap into it to defend its core values. While the administration’s cuts threaten hundreds of jobs on campus, Harvard is uniquely placed to withstand the impact, they say.“We’re constantly told that the endowment is not a piggy bank, it’s not a slush fund, and that we need to protect it because it ensures the success of our initiatives over the long term and for future generations,” Maya Jasanoff, a history professor at Harvard, said. “But if we lose the independence of universities from political interference, then we’re sacrificing something for future generations that is truly priceless.”Others noted that Harvard is also in a position to forcefully defend itself in court, much like it did when affirmative action came under attack, although the US supreme court ultimately ruled against the university in that case.So far, the university administration hasn’t shown signs it will put up a fight. Several faculty members believe that Trump’s efforts have the tacit support of some university leaders and trustees.“There is a strategic alliance among segments of the professoriate and university administrations, particularly boards of trustees, who agree that pro-Palestine activism on US college campuses needs to be shut down,” said Weld. “Whether those voices understand what the collateral damage of their participation in that alliance is going to be, I don’t know.”Harvard faculty in recent months have ramped up organizing efforts, including by launching the AAUP chapter on the heels of the Gaza encampment last spring and the university’s response.“One of the perversely brighter things to come out of last year is that I saw the faculty organizing and working together to an extent that outstripped anything I had seen in my academic career,” said Jasanoff. “We have our voices, and we can use our voices together.” More
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The new definition of antisemitism is transforming America – and serving a Christian nationalist plan
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 March 2025, 11:38
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View image in fullscreenIn 1919, Jacob Israël de Haan, an Orthodox Jewish queer poet and lawyer, arrived in British Mandate Palestine from the Netherlands. Despite his initial sympathies with Zionism, within a few years de Haan would become an outspoken critic of the movement. Driven by what he called a “natural feeling for justice”, he advocated for “another Jewish community in Palestine” – one that sought cooperation with the Arab-Palestinian community. His steadfast opposition to mainstream Zionism made de Haan a controversial figure, drawing the ire of Zionist leadership. On 30 June 1924, de Haan was assassinated by a member of the Zionist organization Haganah.This political assassination represented not merely the elimination of one man, but a portentous statement about which perspectives would be tolerated in the emerging political landscape. A century later, we are witnessing a similar troubling pattern. As attacks against universities and intimidation of Palestinian activists become ever more rife, those who challenge Zionist orthodoxy – whether out of political conviction, religious belief or ethical principle – face exclusion, vilification and worse. This time, the main tool is a sweeping legal redefinition of antisemitism in American law and policy.Something unprecedented – and deeply unsettling – is unfolding: under the guise of a legal redefinition of antisemitism, the basic architecture of American public life is being radically transformed. What appears, at first glance, to be a technical change in terminology has become a powerful instrument for political control, solidifying executive power to enforce a narrow, state-sanctioned definition of Judaism. In the name of combating antisemitism, this effort threatens to reshape American public life – and with it, the pillars of American liberalism. But despite what some will have you believe, two things are clear: first, this campaign does not protect Jews – it endangers them; and second, this redefinition plays into a larger Christian nationalist project.The clash over the definition of antisemitismFollowing the horrendous Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, and the subsequent war and utter destruction of Gaza, two sharply contrasting positions have emerged. On the one hand, many Jewish organizations and advocates have seen the emerging pro-Palestinian protest movement as a manifestation of antisemitism, a classic example of the over-scrutinization of Israel, and the denial of Israel’s right to defend itself.On the other hand, many critics of Israel and of Zionism argue against this conflation and in favor of their right to support the Palestinian struggle. For them, labeling anti-Israel positions as antisemitic is a way to silence dissenting opinions and to prevent an honest discussion of Israel’s actions in Gaza.Even before this clash entered the mainstream in the last year and a half, American decision-makers and institutions had already taken a clear side, framing anti-Israel positions as antisemitic. A landmark moment in the emergence of this new understanding of antisemitism is no doubt the 2016 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has rapidly become a legal benchmark for defining antisemitism in the US and has a growing presence in both state and federal law.
The redefinition of antisemitism isn’t simply a policy shift – it’s part of a deeper transformation of American democracy
While the core definition makes no explicit mention of Israel, the examples of purported antisemitism that IHRA provides tell a different story. Among the illustrative cases, it notes that antisemitism “might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity”. Other examples include “claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor”, and “[d]rawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”.Back in his first term, Donald Trump issued a 2019 executive order directing federal agencies to consider the IHRA definition when enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in federally funded programs, cementing this problematic standard. It has been formally adopted in multiple federal and state statutes, in which it is used to equate criticism of Israel or Zionism with antisemitism. These laws have been applied in a range of legal and policy contexts – restricting free speech, shaping civil rights protections and even influencing the classification of hate crimes in state criminal codes.Trump’s January 2025 executive order on “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism” marks a dangerous escalation in this trend. The order directs multiple federal agencies to “prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence”.Just days after the order, the administration slashed $400m in federal research funding from Columbia University over what it claimed was a systemic tolerance of antisemitic activity and demanded changes to the school’s policies – a move widely seen as retaliation for pro-Palestinian campus activism, to which Columbia has consented in an extraordinary surrender of its academic freedom. Similar threats have followed against numerous additional universities. In a recent chilling development, the Department of Homeland Security arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian permanent resident and student organizer whom the government is now seeking to deport, with more arrests promised. (Indeed, they have begun.) The redefinition of antisemitism isn’t simply a policy shift – it’s part of a deeper transformation of American democracy.We have never been secularNo doubt, proponents of the IHRA definition raise an important point. To understand why, we need to recognize something distinctive about Jewish identity: it has always been deeply political. Unlike modern Christianity, which developed alongside a strong liberal separation of church and state, Judaism has never drawn such a sharp line. Jewish identity has long resisted the tidy categories that liberal theory prefers – religious or secular, ethnic or political, private or public. From biblical times through the diaspora and into modernity, Jewish communities understood religious life not just as a set of spiritual beliefs but as the foundation of a political community. Jewish religious leadership traditionally held legal and political authority – issuing binding rulings on property, taxation, even criminal law. This isn’t a historical anomaly – it’s a defining feature of Jewish tradition. Zionism, despite the secular aspirations of many of its founders, built on this legacy by channeling the political dimension of Jewish identity into the framework of a modern nation-state.View image in fullscreenAccordingly, for many Jews, Israel is a crucial element of their Jewish identity. As Noah Feldman writes in To Be a Jew Today, for many American Jews, “Israel can function as the chosen focal point of their Jewish identity and connection. Caring about and supporting Israel can be constitutive of what makes them actively Jewish.” An attack on that element, a denial of its legitimacy, feels to many like an attack on who they are as Jews.But this does not necessarily cast anti-Israel opinions as antisemitic. When we criticize something important to someone’s identity, it doesn’t automatically mean we’re attacking their identity itself. When political positions become enshrined as essential components of personhood, substantive disagreements risk being recast as attacks on identity. The result, as the scholar Richard Ford once put it, is the potential to “camouflage” ideological conflict as discrimination.Take male circumcision – a ritual at the heart of Jewish tradition practiced by most Jewish families worldwide. When medical experts or rights advocates question circumcision based on concerns about bodily autonomy or health risks, most people understand they aren’t being antisemitic. No matter where they stand on circumcision, they recognize critics may be raising ethical questions that exist independently of Jewish identity. This same logic must apply to Israel. Criticizing Israeli policies may, for instance, reflect genuine concerns about human rights rather than prejudice against Jews, even as the criticism is directed at a defining feature of their Jewishness.The labeling of criticism against Israel as antisemitism has already worked to quash serious discussions on Israel-Palestine in the United States. Even Kenneth Stern, who drafted the original working definition, argued in an opinion piece for the Guardian that the IHRA definition has been weaponized against legitimate political expression.Silencing dissentFederal measures such as Trump’s 2019 executive order have fueled a wave of investigations by the Department of Education into universities over pro-Palestinian activism, pressuring administrators to police student speech. At NYU, political statements such as “Fuck Israel” have led to antisemitism charges against students. At Columbia, students faced disciplinary charges for acts as simple as hanging Palestinian flags from dorm windows or displaying them on campus statues, underscoring the growing constraints on Palestine-related activism in academic spaces. Relatedly, recently New York’s governor ordered Hunter College to remove a job posting for a Palestinian studies position, claiming the need to “ensure that antisemitic theories are not promoted in the classroom”. This interference with academic hiring marks a dangerous precedent.The pressure from federal and state authorities has led universities to internalize this surveillance logic. Last week, Columbia University unveiled an expansive compliance plan in response to the administration’s $400m funding cut, pledging stricter enforcement of student discipline, new security forces empowered to arrest demonstrators, mandatory identification checks at protests and a top-down review of academic programs, including scrutiny of hiring decisions and curricula. These measures reflect not only institutional capitulation, but the chilling normalization of ideological policing on campus.
The new definition of antisemitism imposes a straitjacket of Zionist identity on American Jews
A similar pattern extends to Congress, where lawmakers such as Rashida Tlaib have been formally censured with another censure effort against Ilhan Omar introduced over statements critical of Israel, in effect framing Palestinian advocacy as beyond the bounds of legitimate discourse. Meanwhile, many individuals have lost jobs, been denied opportunities, or faced disciplinary measures for expressing pro-Palestinian views or criticizing Israeli policy. This dynamic narrows the space for legitimate discussion on US foreign policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The charge of antisemitism shifts the focus from Israel’s actions to the credibility of its critics. While combating antisemitism is imperative, the sweeping application of this label to pro-Palestinian voices endangers dissenting voices and erodes free expression, making open debate on one of the world’s most enduring conflicts increasingly difficult.View image in fullscreenBut that’s not the only problem with the new definition of antisemitism. By legally enshrining support for Israel as a defining characteristic of Jewish identity, the new definition of antisemitism imposes a straitjacket of Zionist identity on American Jews, in effect telling them that certain political positions are incompatible with being authentically Jewish. But, precisely because Jewish identity has always also been political, we should not be delegitimizing those whose Jewish identity entails a criticism or even outright rejection of ethno-national Judaism.The historical diversity of Jewish identityJewish communities have always been diverse and plural in their orientations toward Jewish nationality. From the ultra-Orthodox Satmar community that opposes Zionism on religious grounds to the socialist Jewish Bund that promoted cultural autonomy without a state, to current-day Jewish American organizations that oppose Israel’s occupation and military control over Palestinians, anti-Zionist and non-Zionist movements have always been central to Jewish identity.Many anti-Zionist Jews aren’t rejecting Jewish political life or denying Jews the right to self-determination. Rather, they’re expressing different visions of Jewish political existence and self-determination. Some of them view opposition to the state of Israel as emerging from Jewish values and traditions – whether stemming from religious beliefs about exile and redemption, or interpretations of Jewish ethical traditions that emphasize universal justice and opposition to oppression.In his recent book The No State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto, the religion scholar Daniel Boyarin reflects on how he moved from Zionism into anti-Zionism, with “my commitment to Jewish identity and identification, Torah study, scholarship, practice, literature and liturgy, and modes of speech and thinking undiminished, even growing stronger and stronger”. Criticism of Israel can stem from deep Jewish religious commitment.The real question, then, isn’t what the proper connection between Israel and Jewish identity is, but rather how to allow for multiple, sometimes competing interpretations of this relationship. By bootstrapping the definition of antisemitism to Israel, IHRA narrows the boundaries of legitimate Jewish identity. While Palestinians have been, without a doubt, the primary targets of this effort, it also takes aim at a rich Jewish tradition. It restricts the freedom of Jews to define their own identity, limiting the ways in which Jewish beliefs, thought and activism can be expressed.And indeed, on college campuses and in workplaces, Jews who express solidarity with Palestinians report being called “self-hating Jews”, “un-Jews” or “traitors” by fellow students or colleagues. In fact, just this month, Trump – our self-appointed arbiter of religious authenticity – announced that the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, is “not Jewish anymore”.Defining antisemitism in the service of conservative ChristiansSmearing progressive Jews as “not real Jews” has ramifications that extend far beyond the Jewish community, serving a conservative Christian strategy to exploit religious liberties for the sake of suppressing progressive values.In recent years the US supreme court has taken a sharp turn towards conservative Christianity, altering the basic liberal structure of American constitutionalism. The court has upheld religious claims challenging pandemic restrictions on gatherings and vaccination requirements, LGBTQ+ non-discrimination laws, and the separation of church and state in public education.This strengthens conservative Christian influence by transforming political views into constitutional protections – for example, when the supreme court ruled the constitution allowed a Catholic foster care agency to exclude same-sex couples on religious grounds. However, as David Schraub, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, has pointed out, this strategy faces a significant obstacle: progressive Jews. Progressive Jews, and any other group whose religious commitments might be threatened by conservative policies, could leverage the expansion of precisely these religious protections to opt out of conservative policy initiatives.
This farcical performance of concern would merely be amusing were it not for the very real possibility that it serves as a prelude for persecution
Progressive Jewish communities have already begun to challenge conservative policy agendas on religious freedom grounds – most notably around reproductive rights. In the wake of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade and the wave of state-level abortion bans that followed, Jewish women, congregations and community leaders have filed lawsuits asserting that such bans violate their religious freedom. In some cases, plaintiffs have argued that Jewish law not only permits but may even require abortion under certain circumstances. While many of these cases are still pending, in a landmark ruling in April 2024, the Indiana court of appeals recognized, for the first time, the legitimacy of such claims.One way conservatives can eliminate this risk to their project is by questioning liberal Jews’ Jewishness. “If liberal Jews can be erased – either pushed out of the public eye or denied as genuine or authentic specimens of Judaism – then the challenge of liberal Jews disappears with it,” Schraub explains.This isn’t just a theoretical concern – it’s already happening. Project Esther, a new initiative launched by the Christian nationalist Heritage Foundation known for Project 2025, offers a blueprint for combating antisemitism that targets not only pro-Palestinian groups but what it calls a broader “coalition of leftist, progressive organizations” – including Jewish groups – through tools such as anti-terrorism prosecutions, deportations, public firings, and efforts to “disrupt and degrade” dissenting movements. Despite its use of Jewish religious language, the plan has virtually no Jewish authors and is riddled with basic errors, including misrepresentations of Jewish texts. It chastises American Jews who don’t align with its worldview, calling them “complacent” and their positions “inexplicable”.This farcical performance of concern would merely be amusing were it not for the very real possibility that it serves as a prelude for persecution.Reclaiming Jewish religious freedom from the stateThe increasingly aggressive use of “antisemitism” as a political instrument was never about Jewish safety. It has always been about power: consolidating a political order that merges religion, nationalism and authoritarianism under the veneer of minority protection.The ease with which progressive Jews have been thrown under the bus makes this painfully clear. Their erasure is not a side effect – it is the mechanism through which this agenda advances. Because once Jewish identity is defined from above – even with the active participation of some Jews – any Jew who resists can be disqualified and delegitimized. This was true for de Haan, and it is true today.The threat is immediate and ongoing. Already, whole sectors of society – educators, students, artists, political activists and immigrants – are paying the price. And if this continues, we can expect the same logic to be applied across a wider range of policies: tightening ideological control, redefining constitutional norms and re-engineering public institutions in the image of an authoritarian state.But there is another path. The unique position of progressive Jews offers a way to push back against the rise of the far right in the US, both with regard to Israel-Palestine, but also more broadly. Recognizing the unique harm caused to Jews by the new definition of antisemitism allows us to develop new ways to combat it.The establishment clause of the US constitution, for instance, prohibits the state from intervening in religious disputes. By adopting the IHRA definition into law, the US government has in effect taken sides in an intra-Jewish debate, recruiting Zionist Jews to side in a war against its ideological opponents. The redefinition of antisemitism is therefore not only an attack on political dissent – it is an intrusion into Jewish religious life. By codifying support for Israel as a requirement for being Jewish, these laws function as a state intervention in an ongoing Jewish theological and ethical debate.By pushing against the legal redefinition of antisemitism, Jews can refuse to surrender their identity to the state. By continuing to anchor it firmly in their communities, they can resist the instrumentalization of Judaism against others.Reclaiming religious freedom from the state, as part of this act of resistance, would not just protect Jewish dissenters – it would offer a broader framework for resisting state attempts to control religious identity. No government – not the Israeli government, and surely not the American government – should have the power to define what it means to be a Jew.
This article was amended on 23 March 2025 to clarify that Ilhan Omar was not formally censured by Congress
Itamar Mann is an associate professor of law at the University of Haifa, and currently a Humboldt fellow at Humboldt University. He holds a doctorate from Yale Law School
Lihi Yona is an associate professor of law and criminology at the University of Haifa. She holds a doctorate from Columbia Law School. Her research focuses on antidiscrimination law in the United States and Israel
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Leo Terrell, Trump’s antisemitism chief, shares post by prominent neo-Nazi
by Evelyn Reynolds 17 March 2025, 18:50
The leader of a prominent Jewish group has condemned Leo Terrell, the head of Donald Trump’s official antisemitism taskforce, for sharing a post by a white supremacist.The post Terrell shared was written by Patrick Casey last Wednesday. It accompanied footage of the US president saying in the Oval Office that Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic Senate minority leader, “used to be Jewish” and “is not Jewish anymore, he’s a Palestinian”.In the post Casey said Trump “has the ability to revoke someone’s Jew card”.Casey is a former head of Identity Evropa, a defunct racist group. In that role, in 2018, he told NBC News his mission was to “take over” the Republican party “as much as possible”.“Trump’s antisemitism chief shared an antisemitic, white supremacist post from a neo-Nazi involved in Charlottesville,” said Amy Spitalnick, the chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, in reference to the march by neo-Nazis and other extremists in support of Trump in Virginia in 2017, during which a counter-protester was killed.“This administration doesn’t care about countering antisemitism,” Spitalnick said. “They care about exploiting it to attack democracy.”Spitalnick previously led Integrity First for America, the group that steered a successful lawsuit against organizers of the Charlottesville march.“We successfully sued [Casey’s] now-defunct hate group,” Spitalnick said on Monday.Terrell, 70, is a civil rights attorney from California. A former Democrat but a Fox News contributor, he came out in support of Trump in 2020.View image in fullscreenIn January, Terrell was nominated to serve in the civil rights division of the US justice department. In February, the Trump administration announced that Terrell would lead “a multi-agency Task Force to Combat Antisemitism”, focused on college protests over Israel’s war in Gaza.Terrell said: “Antisemitism in any environment is repugnant to this nation’s ideals. The department takes seriously our responsibility to eradicate this hatred wherever it is found. The Task Force to Combat Antisemitism is the first step in giving life to President Trump’s renewed commitment to ending antisemitism in our schools.”Now, attention to Terrell’s social media habits comes amid controversy regarding the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia student and protest organizer. Khalil is being held for deportation under an obscure provision of immigration law but has not been charged with wrongdoing.Raw Story, a progressive site, first noted that after sharing Casey’s tweet, Terrell shared another by Keith and Kevin Hodge, podcasters the advocacy group Stop Antisemitism said have “taken a puzzling antisemitic turn”, including “admitting to listening to Hitler’s speeches … wishing America had a leader like him”.Terrell has not commented. The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a comment request. More

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