BY JENNIFER RUTH
Yesterday, the Department of Education announced investigations into Columbia University, Northwestern University, Portland State University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, explaining that “widespread antisemitic harassment has been reported” at these five institutions. Given the confusion that reigns in and over higher education today, it’s worth trying to think this through a bit. The press release does not suggest that a new complaint has been made, but rather indicates that these institutions have been identified for special scrutiny out of the pool of many institutions against which complaints of antisemitism have been filed with the department over the last year. “It is the university’s understanding,” an official from Portland State, my home institution, told the local press, “that the February 3 notice from the US Department of Education initiates a directed investigation—which means it is not based on a specific complaint from an individual, but instead is prompted by the new administration.” Given the threat accompanying these investigations that an institution may have its federal funding revoked as one possible outcome, this announcement had the immediate impact presumably intended: fear.
In May 2024, then–Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona wrote, “Since October 7, 2023, the Office for Civil Rights has opened more than 100 investigations into complaints about antisemitism and other forms of discrimination under Title VI.” While the phrase “other forms of discrimination” is added, Cardona’s focus in the letter is antisemitism: “As the 2023–24 school year comes to a close,” he wrote, “I remain incredibly concerned about antisemitic hate directed at students on some campuses.” While many if not most of these investigations remain open, some have closed (for open cases involving Title VI for K–12, see here.) To date, no institutions that I am aware of have lost federal funding due to a Title VI investigation. While I have not done a comprehensive review of all the posted documents (if one has been done, please point me to it), the outcome as outlined in the resolution agreement made with the University of Washington in January of this year appears to be fairly typical. The university agreed to undertake five actions: review and update policies and procedures, provide regular training of all employees tasked with reviewing and investigating complaints, provide regular anti-discrimination training for students and employees, conduct a climate assessment, and review prior report compilations. This resolution agreement was made under the Biden administration, as have all previous ones to date.
The intended message of yesterday’s press release is that there’s a new sheriff in town. Already fearful, institutions are being told they should be even more so. The February 3 press release links to three documents: “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism,” an executive order issued by Trump on January 29, 2025; “Antisemitism on College Campuses Exposed,” an Education and Workforce Committee press release from October 31, 2024; and “Justice Department Announces Formation of Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism,” a press release issued by the US Department of Justice yesterday (the same day as the announcement of the investigations of the five campuses). The last document regarding the creation of a Task Force on Anti-Semitism indicates that more departments will be involved in investigations of campuses than were involved before. In addition to representatives from the Department of Education, the Task Force will include representatives from the Department of Justice (the department overseeing the Task Force), the US Department of Health and Human Services, and, as it vaguely states, “other agencies.”
The first document also indicates a change in the way these investigations will be pursued. Trump states that “the prior administration effectively nullified Executive Order 13899 by failing to give the terms of the order full force and effect throughout the government.” Executive Order 13899, issued by Trump during his first administration, requires that agencies enforcing Title VI, “consider the following”:
“(i) the non-legally binding working definition of anti-Semitism adopted on May 26, 2016, by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which states, “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”; and
(ii) the “Contemporary Examples of Anti-Semitism” identified by the IHRA, to the extent that any examples might be useful as evidence of discriminatory intent.”
In other words, as I read it, the order is an attempt to intimidate government officials into using the IHRA definition when they assess cases and to do so in a maximalist way. Previously, under the Biden administration, agency officials were free to consider the IHRA definition or not. This was problematic enough, given that, as Jan Deckers and Jonathan Coulter wrote in May 2022, “pro-Israel activists can and have mobilized the IHRA document for political goals unrelated to tackling antisemitism, notably to stigmatize and silence critics of the Israeli government.” In particular, as a number of scholars have noted, some of the examples listed in the IHRA definition encourage the conflation of the Israeli state with the Jewish people. Such a conflation leads to the specious conclusion that criticism of Israel is itself somehow antisemitic. (For more information on how the IHRA definition has been used to silence critics of Israel, see “How a Leading Definition of Antisemitism Has Been Weaponized Against Israel’s Critics” by Jonathan Hafetz and Sahar Aziz.)
We now have an overt attempt to intimidate and bully government officials into adopting a definition that many credible analysts have determined to be misleading at best and propagandistic at worst. Officials will be obliged to enforce this definition, it seems, at the threat of losing their jobs. This threat won’t be lost on any of them, considering that fifty-five DOE staff members were capriciously placed on leave yesterday and Trump is currently drafting legislation seeking to eliminate the department as a whole.
Jennifer Ruth is a contributing editor for Academe Blog and the author, with Michael Bérubé, of It’s Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom and coeditor, with Ellen Schrecker and Valerie Johnson, of The Right to Learn: Resisting the Right-Wing Attack on Academic Freedom. She is the director, with Jan Haaken, of the film The Palestine Exception: What’s at Stake in the Campus Protests?
Thank you, Jennifer, for this informative post. I have little doubt that there has, alas, been an upsurge of genuine antisemitic activity on college and university campuses — indeed, in the US more generally. But I also have little doubt that such activity is not at all the intended target here, as the emphasis on the problematic IHRA definition suggests. The historian Richard Hofstadter famously suggested that during the McCarthyite purges of the 1950s “Communism was not the target but the weapon.” Today, it would seem, antisemitism is not the target but a weapon against free speech, wielded by actors who not long ago had postured as free speech’s most devoted champions (which, of course, they have never been).
Thanks Hank. That’s an apt adaptation of Hofstadter’s formulation.
Particularly concerning, I should have underscored in the post, is that the Task Force moves the authority for investigating, dispersing it among the agencies, with the DOJ in the lead. This is a big and alarming change from how these investigations functioned up to now.
I said my thoughts on these protests in 2023 and last year. Not a complicated stance. Now what maddens me, this becomes pretense for malicious actors re: higher education as such.
And the narrative will be that there is a causal relation here, and there is nothing academia can do about it.
Never give them a pretense. But it’s too late for that lesson now.