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Earlier this month, a federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit against Harvard on the grounds that the antisemitism alleged by the Justice Department was “too isolated and episodic” to show that Harvard had violated federal law.
While this was a setback in the valiant effort by the federal government to address campus antisemitism, federal efforts alone will not result in meaningful change.
The root of the problem is a rotten academic culture that begins in the classroom and is protected and fueled by administrators. Whoever owns the classroom owns the culture, and that culture is primarily responsible for the threat to Jewish safety today.
A view of the encampment in Harvard yard. The “Liberated Zone” had several signs decrying genocide and calling for divestment from Israel. (Nikolas Lanum/Fox News Digital)
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Recently, 170 Harvard faculty members — Jews and non-Jews alike — published an open letter highlighting antisemitic incidents that have taken place at the institution. These incidents included an Israeli undergraduate student at Harvard being “told to leave a classroom by an instructor because her being Israeli made other students uncomfortable.”
Other Jewish students experienced demands to “renounce Zionism” and faced ostracism when they refused. Such incidents are allowed to happen by administrators who foster a culture of impunity.
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Antisemitism on campus is an America First issue because it is an outgrowth of the crisis in our education system.
Malign actors like Qatar have embedded themselves in American academia through lavish spending that university administrators happily accept. Qatar’s foreign influence operations directed at American universities raise concerns about national security, institutional integrity, and equal protection under law.
During the height of the “tentifada,” the encampments and associated violations of student codes of conduct and criminal law were justified by many as displays of “free expression.”
Signs and screams wishing away the existence of Israel and the presence of Jewish students violated the rights of Jewish students to free expression and religious liberty around the country.
A student waves a Palestinian flag during the pro-Palestine student protests that has turned into a an encampment at George Washington University’s Yard in a protest movement that has spread across universities in the U.S, demonstrating against Israeli military action in Gaza and calling on their university to stop doing business with companies they see as supporting the war on Saturday, April 27, 2024. The police first tried to crack down on the small group of students protesting, but the move backfired, and the students have continued in their demonstrations, calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. (Photo by Ali Khaligh / Middle East Images / Middle East Images via AFP) (Photo by ALI KHALIGH/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
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When I was a student at George Washington University, I found inversions of justice and perversions of language. A friend of mine standing peacefully across the street holding an Israeli flag was told to leave while the tents stayed up for weeks.
Later, a group known as Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine teamed up to defend the protesters as “peaceful.”
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Professors who mobilize students to harass, humiliate, and ostracize their classmates are not exercising 1st Amendment rights; they are violating their academic integrity codes and using academic freedom as a cover.
The public is generally not privy to the most insidious element of campus antisemitism: the syllabi. Course descriptions at Princeton and Stanford characterized the Israel-Hamas war as a Palestinian genocide.
Police officers stand in front of the entrance of Columbia University which is occupied by pro-Palestine protesters in New York on April 22, 2024. US President Joe Biden condemned any anti-Semitism on college campuses April April 21, 2024 as pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University spent their fifth day demanding the school sever financial ties with key US ally Israel. (CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)
In 2025, the University of California Berkeley offered an English comparative literature course that initially referred to the Israeli military in the Palestinian territory as the “Israeli Occupying Force” and Hamas militants as “revolutionary resistance forces” standing up against colonialism and imperialism.
The academic lexicon is rife with these descriptions, weaving a tapestry of lies that few dare to tear.
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A university is supposed to defend intellectual honesty and open minds. Instead, we find minds closing and a crisis of accountability that will continue unless administrators hold faculty to their codes, or are themselves held to account.
In May 2025, I sued GW over pervasive antisemitism. The complaint details the “pipeline of hate” that begins with academic culture and spills outward. That August, the DOJ’s own investigation found GW had been “deliberately indifferent” to the hostile environment facing its Jewish and Israeli students.
Federal investigations and settlements provide some solace, yet they offer little remedy for what Jewish students are enduring now. Investigations take months, meaningful enforcement can take years, and a college career lasts only four. That’s why I refuse to treat commencement as the end of my role in this fight. Alumni should adopt the same mindset.
I was reminded of this at the Israel on Campus Coalition’s National Leadership Summit. In my remarks to students, faculty, and community leaders, I stressed that addressing antisemitism is an America First issue, and doing so requires reinfusing academic freedom with academic integrity.
That is how we can inspire a new generation: a rededication to the American constitutional tradition, and a genuinely liberal education.
My conversations at ICC’s Summit also underscored the importance of alumni involvement: our guidance stems from rigorous trial and error in coalition building and university engagement. Graduates are obligated to pass the baton, mentor current students, build bonds with professors, and amplify their voices so the change we yearn for is realized.
Protestors gather outside the Moakley Federal Courthouse, where Harvard University appeared to challenge $2.6 billion in funding cuts by the Trump administration, Monday, July 21, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
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The federal government has a real role to play, but it must do so thoughtfully and with the systemic nature of the issue in mind.
Federal law enforcement efforts must target classroom culture and administrative impunity that let antisemitism take root. Otherwise, the fight against antisemitism will be nothing more than an effort at pruning branches while the roots remain intact.
This work is my responsibility and that of all alumni who have faced down campus antisemitism.
