US President Donald Trump laid out plans on Thursday to combat what he described as an “explosion of antisemitism on our campuses and in our streets” in recent months.
The announcement came on the heels of an executive order, issued Wednesday, on measures the administration planned to take to protect American Jews. As has become typical of Trump’s communications since he resumed the presidency last week, he claimed these actions were necessary due to the shortcomings of the administration of former President Joe Biden.
The new and revived policies focus on antisemitic harassment and attacks that have occurred in the US since October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched an attack in Israel that killed nearly 1,200 people. The attacks led to Israel’s full-scale invasion of Gaza, in a brutal war that has only recently subsided through fragile ceasefire negotiations. Though reliable casualty figures have yet to emerge, recent estimates place those killed in Gaza at 47,354, including 17,492 children, and Israeli deaths at 1,139.
The war has proved deeply divisive across the globe, dragging into the limelight issues of Palestinian statehood, Israeli proportionality, and the fundamental rights of the peoples of both Gaza and Israel. These topics have spurred protests and contributed to surges in both antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents far beyond the Middle East.
In the US, antisemitic incidents on university campuses increased by 700% in the fall of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022, with 1,083 and 135 reported incidents, respectively, according to Hillel International, the world’s largest Jewish campus organization. Across the US more broadly, the Anti-Defamation League tracked 8,873 antisemitic incidents in 2023, up from 3,698 the previous year.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) recorded a 30-year high of Islamophobic complaints in 2023. The prevalence of such complaints on college campuses inspired the organization to launch its “hostile campuses” initiative, which aims to expose university policies that CAIR believes foster Islamophobic sentiment and speech suppression.
Trump’s executive actions focused on the former.
The order requires all federal department and agency heads to submit reports within 60 days detailing their available civil and criminal authorities for addressing antisemitic discrimination and violence. It specifically directs the Department of Justice to inventory relevant court cases and consider intervention in matters involving colleges and universities.
The measure builds upon Trump’s 2019 Executive Order 13899, which provided guidance on civil rights law enforcement efforts to protect Jewish Americans. As has become standard in Trump’s latest presidential communications, the new order claims the administration of former US President Joe Biden “effectively nullified” the 2019 directive by failing to fully implement it.
In a significant new provision that aligns with Trump’s sweeping efforts to crack down on immigration, the Departments of State, Education, and Homeland Security are instructed to develop recommendations for universities to monitor and report activities by foreign students and staff that could be grounds for visa inadmissibility, potentially leading to removal proceedings.
The Department of Education must also analyze all Title VI complaints related to antisemitism in both higher education and K-12 schools that have been filed or resolved since October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel.
