Jewish Scholars, Israeli Academics Denounce Trump Weaponization of Antisemitism

Jewish voices ranging from academics in Israel to a coalition of mainstream American Jewish organizations this week spoke out against the Trump administration, arguing that the White House's has used the fight against antisemitism as a pretext for targeting higher education. Some said the tactic actually makes Jews less safe.

In January, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order with the purported aim of rooting out antisemitism at higher education institutions, and vowed to target foreign-born students who have engaged in "pro-jihadist" protests.

Since then, Trump immigration officials have detained multiple people involved in pro-Palestine campus demonstrations on Columbia University's campus, including Palestinian green-card holders Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi.

The administration's antisemitism task force in February announced investigations into several of universities, and has also targeted funding at multiple universities.

In response to these developments, hundreds of Israeli academics—both in and outside of Israel—signed an open letter published Thursday, alleging the Trump administration is cynically using the goal of combating antisemitism to crack down on Columbia University and other U.S. universities.

"By singling out Jews as a homogeneous group to be protected at the expense of other marginalized groups and minorities, the administration is in fact fostering anti-Jewish sentiments," according to the letter, which also notes the signatories are alarmed by the persecution of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students and faculty.

"We condemn the weaponization of Jewish students' safety as grounds to silence, harass, suspend, punish, or deport pro-Palestinian members of U.S. academia," the letter states.

Other figures in U.S. academia also aired similar concerns this week.

University of Southern California journalism professor Sandy Tolan, who has written a book about Israel-Palestine, argued in commentary published Wednesday by Rolling Stone that the administration's "witch hunt" in higher education settings "has little to do with actual antisemitism."

"If it did, Trump would have fired Elon Musk immediately after his straight-armed salute on Inauguration Day—a gesture widely interpreted as a 'Sieg Heil,'" he wrote of Trump's billionaire adviser.

Similarly, the Jewish president of Wesleyan University, Michael Roth, told NPR on Thursday that Trump's scrutiny on universities "is like using antisemitism as a cloak to do other things, to get universities to express loyalty to the president." Earlier in April, Roth wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times making this same point.

According to the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, over 30 prominent Jewish scholars of antisemitism, Holocaust studies, and Jewish history on Thursday challenged the Trump administration's embrace of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism, which critics say conflates legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and practices with anti-Jewish bigotry. The group said this definition has been used as a tool for the administration to attack higher education.

Meanwhile, a coalition of 10 organizations representing three out of four of the major Jewish denominations in American Jewry issued a statement on Tuesday taking issue with what they called a "false choice" between combating antisemitism and protecting democracy and the rule of law.

"In recent weeks, escalating federal actions have used the guise of fighting antisemitism to justify stripping students of due process rights when they face arrest and/or deportation, as well as to threaten billions in academic research and education funding. Universities have an obligation to protect Jewish students, and the federal government has an important role to play in that effort; however, sweeping draconian funding cuts will weaken the free academic inquiry that strengthens democracy and society, rather than productively counter antisemitism on campus," wrote the coalition, which was brought together by the progressive Jewish Council for Public Affairs, but also included conservative groups like the Rabbinical Assembly.

"There should be no doubt that antisemitism is rising," the coalition wrote, but "these actions do not make Jews—or any community—safer. Rather, they only make us less safe."