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antisemitism
Blocking Trump's Harvard Funding Freeze, Judge Says Courts Must Safeguard Freedom of Speech
"We must fight against antisemitism, but we equally need to protect our rights, including our right to free speech, and neither goal should nor needs to be sacrificed on the altar of the other," said Judge Allison Burroughs.
Sep 03, 2025
A Boston-based US district judge on Wednesday ruled against President Donald Trump's funding attack on Harvard University, which froze more than $2 billion in federal grants to the Ivy League institution.
When Harvard sued over the freeze in April, the university's president, Alan Garber, directly addressed the Trump administration's claims that it was responding to the school's handling of discrimination against Jewish people. Garber said that "as a Jew and as an American, I know very well that there are valid concerns about rising antisemitism," and pledged to "fight hate with the urgency it demands as we fully comply with our obligations under the law."
US District Judge Allison Burroughs, who is also Jewish, wrote in her 84-page opinion on Wednesday that "as pertains to this case, it is important to recognize and remember that if speech can be curtailed in the name of the Jewish people today, then just as easily the speech of the Jews (and anyone else) can be curtailed when the political winds change direction."
"Defendants and the president are right to combat antisemitism and to use all lawful means to do so. Harvard was wrong to tolerate hateful behavior for as long as it did," wrote Burroughs, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama. "The record here, however, does not reflect that fighting antisemitism was defendants' true aim in acting against Harvard and, even if it were, combating antisemitism cannot be accomplished on the back of the First Amendment."
"We must fight against antisemitism, but we equally need to protect our rights, including our right to free speech, and neither goal should nor needs to be sacrificed on the altar of the other," she asserted. "Harvard is currently, even if belatedly, taking steps it needs to take to combat antisemitism and seems willing to do even more if need be."
The judge concluded that "now it is the job of the courts to similarly step up, to act to safeguard academic freedom and freedom of speech as required by the Constitution, and to ensure that important research is not improperly subjected to arbitrary and procedurally infirm grant terminations, even if doing so risks the wrath of a government committed to its agenda no matter the cost."
Stand up to the bully. Do not surrender in advance:Judge rules Trump administration cannot withhold funding from Harvard www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...
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— Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis.bsky.social) September 3, 2025 at 5:59 PM
Burroughs is the same judge who previously ruled against the Trump administration's ban on international students at Harvard. As Harvard begins a new academic year, Abdullah Shahid Sial, a junior who is co-president of the undergraduate student body, told CNN this week that "I do think there's a big, big spike in how much people feel scared."
In a statement to Reuters on Wednesday, White House spokesperson Liz Huston called Burroughs an "activist Obama-appointed judge" and said that Harvard "does not have a constitutional right to taxpayer dollars and remains ineligible for grants in the future."
"We will immediately move to appeal this egregious decision, and we are confident we will ultimately prevail in our efforts to hold Harvard accountable," she added.
The latest court decision comes after The New York Times reported in July that Harvard was open to spending hundreds of millions of dollars to settle its battle with the administration—as other schools have—but also aimed to protect its independence.
As the newspaper noted Wednesday:
Although the university and the administration have continued to move toward a potential agreement, they have not reached a settlement. President Trump, who has taken a special interest in the financial terms of pacts his administration has reached with universities, said last week that he wanted "nothing less than $500 million from Harvard."
"They've been very bad," Mr. Trump told the education secretary, Linda McMahon, during a televised Cabinet meeting. "Don't negotiate."
The Times added that "Harvard officials had anticipated that a favorable decision from the judge could help the university's approach to the negotiations" by boosting pressure on the government not to keep fighting until they reach the US Supreme Court and allowing the school to present any deal as a win against the Trump administration.
This article has been updated with a statement from the White House.
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GOP Investigation Pressures Wikipedia to Reveal Identities of Editors Accused of 'Bias' Against Israel
The effort furthers the goals of the Heritage Foundation, which has launched a plan to "identify and target Wikipedia editors" using a number of underhanded tactics.
Aug 28, 2025
A pair of House Republicans is moving forward with an investigation that will seek to reveal the identities of Wikipedia editors who have edited articles to include information that portrays Israel negatively.
On Wednesday, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), chair of the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation, sent a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that owns the free encyclopedia.
The representatives asked Wikimedia's CEO, Maryana Iskander, for "assistance in obtaining documents and communications regarding individuals (or specific accounts) serving as Wikipedia volunteer editors who violated Wikipedia platform policies as well as your own efforts to thwart intentional, organized efforts to inject bias into important and sensitive topics."
The letter requested information about "nation state actors" or "academic institutions" that may have been involved in efforts to "edit or influence content identified as possibly violating Wikipedia policies."
A spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation told The Hill that they were reviewing the request.
"We welcome the opportunity to respond to the committee's questions and to discuss the importance of safeguarding the integrity of information on our platform," the spokesperson said.
The GOP investigation coincides with a long-standing objective of the far-right Heritage Foundation, which has accused Wikipedia of anti-conservative bias and promoting content that portrays Israel in a negative light, and sought to unmask the identities of the internet users who run it.
The letter sent by Comer and Mace requests that Wikimedia provide Congress with "records showing identifying and unique characteristics of accounts (such as names, IP addresses, registration dates, user activity logs) for editors" who have been "subject to actions" by Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee, which resolves internal disputes between editors.
It was, in essence, a request by Congress for Wikipedia to "dox" many of its editors.
"In the culture of Wikipedia editing, it is common for individuals to use pseudonyms to protect their privacy and avoid personal threats," wrote tech writer and Wikipedia expert Stephen Harrison for Slate in February. "Revealing an editor's personal information without their consent, a practice known as doxing, is a form of harassment that can result in a user's being permanently banned from the site."
Of chief concern to the legislators is investigating Wikipedia's handling of content related to Israel. They cited a report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a pro-Israel lobbying group, which the legislators said "raised troubling questions about potentially systematic efforts to advance antisemitic and anti-Israel information in Wikipedia articles related to conflicts with the state of Israel."
The ADL report makes the allegation that 30 "bad-faith" Wikipedia editors, whose identities are not public, were collaborating to edit pages about the Israel-Palestine conflict by "spotlighting criticism of Israel and downplaying Palestinian terrorist violence and antisemitism," and in the process violating Wikipedia's commitment to neutrality.
That report, however, has been heavily criticized, including by some of the academics it cited. In a piece for The Forward, Shira Klein, whose research on Wikipedia's documentation of the Holocaust appears in the report, said the ADL "inaccurately" used her work, and the work of others, as part of its "ramped-up efforts to police public discourse about Israel," and quoted other researchers who felt the same.
Klein described the study's interpretation of the facts as "very skewed" and said it was reliant "on a faulty premise: that criticism of Israel or Zionism is inherently antisemitic."
"To establish foul play, the ADL would need to demonstrate that Wikipedia content about Israel and Zionism regularly expresses as fact ideas that diverge from broadly held scholarly opinions on the matters in question," Klein said. "But where is the evidence of editors repeatedly misrepresenting or contradicting peer-reviewed literature? There is none. The report simply wants us to take the ADL's word for it."
The ADL's report, as well as a similar report from the Atlantic Council alleging that Wikipedia editors had conspired to spread pro-Kremlin propaganda, are the sole pieces of evidence cited by Comer and Mace in their request for identifying information on Wikipedia's editors.
However, right-wing efforts to undermine Wikipedia's independence and attack the privacy of its editors go back much further.
In January, documents obtained by The Forward's Arno Rosenfeld revealed a secret plan by Heritage, the think tank behind the authoritarian Project 2025 playbook, to "identify and target Wikipedia editors" who the organization said were "abusing their position."
Among the methodologies it directed Heritage employees to use include "analyzing text patterns, usernames, and technical data through data breach analysis, fingerprinting, [human intelligence], and technical targeting."
The targeting methods also included "creating fake Wikipedia user accounts to try to trick editors into identifying themselves by sharing personal information or clicking on malicious tracking links that can identify people who click on them."
According to Rosenfeld, "The Heritage Foundation sent the pitch deck outlining the Wikipedia initiative to Jewish foundations and other prospective supporters of Project Esther, its roadmap for fighting antisemitism and anti-Zionism."
Jewish Voice for Peace has described Project Esther as Heritage's "blueprint for using the federal government and private institutions to dismantle the Palestine solidarity movement and broader US civil society, under the guise of 'fighting antisemitism.'"
"Even if you take issue with how the site is currently framing the conflict, that doesn't justify Heritage's plan," Harrison wrote. "Targeting Wikipedia editors personally, instead of debating their edits on the platform, marks a dangerous escalation."
Coming amid the Trump administration's crackdowns against campus protests and efforts to deport immigrants over pro-Palestine speech, critics have described the House Republican investigation as the latest GOP attempt to censor criticism and the spread of unflattering information about Israel.
Adam Johnson, a co-host for the political podcast Citations Needed, described it in a post on X as "House Republicans working with the ADL and Atlantic Council to discipline Wikipedia into parroting the Israeli and NATO line."
Johnson noted that this push was coming as the clear majority of Americans, including an overwhelming number of Democrats, now oppose US support for Israel, with many now believing the country is committing a genocide.
"Rather than end the genocide," Johnson said, "the response instead is to continue firing, doxing, smearing, and attempting to censor inconvenient narratives."
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In a Just World, Trump and Netanyahu Will Someday Share a Prison Cell
Israel has become a global pariah due to Netanyahu's crime spree. And Trump is a laughing stock among world leaders for his authoritarian policies, his ignorance, his megalomania, and his pathological lies.
Aug 04, 2025
Israel has become a global pariah—“increasingly isolated,” the New York Times recently reported. Polls in the United States and around the world reveal growing opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza, particularly since Israel has no obvious plan to end its war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has himself, and his right-wing government partners, to blame. He doesn't give a damn about Palestinian lives or the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. He primarily cares about expanding his power and staying out of prison on corruption charges. He thinks that extending the war in Gaza will help him do that. Sound familiar?
I'm proud to be Jewish. I'm proud of the fact that Jews have disproportionately been involved in all the major American progressive movements since the 1800s. I believe in the core Jewish value of tikkun olam – repairing the world and ending human suffering.
I support Israel's right to exist. I've been to Israel three times—the first time in 1965 and most recently in 2015. I have family members there. But I am 100% opposed to Netanyahu's government, its war crimes in Gaza, its support for Jewish settlements on the West Bank, its racism, its attacks on the country’s progressive organizations (which I wrote about in 2016), and its efforts to undermine what’s left of Israeli democracy. I support Palestinians' right to a sovereign homeland, but not one run by Hamas, a theocratic, fascist, anti-woman, anti-gay terrorist organization.
I'm pleased that most American Jews, and a small but growing number of American Jewish organizations—including, most recently, the Union of Reform Judaism, the largest and most liberal of all Jewish religious movements—oppose Israel's atrocities in Gaza, including thwarting food, water, medical, and other aid from reaching those who need it. (Yes, Hamas stole some of the aid that was sent there, but not much of it. That's Netanyahu's lame excuse for blocking all humanitarian aid. That's an outrage).
I believe, along with a majority of Democrats in the Senate, that the U.S. should end military aid to Israel until there is a ceasefire and ultimately a peace agreement.
I know there's been an upsurge of antisemitism and hate crimes against Jews in the United States. And yes, some of those incidents have occurred on a handful of college campuses. But the overall number is quite small—not close to the level that ADL wants you to believe, which they falsely quantify by equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
A few anti-Israel protesters use rhetoric that can be described antisemitic and that understandably makes some Jews feel uncomfortable. But college campuses are not hotbeds of Jew hatred. That's a big lie that Trump and the ADL and groups like Mothers Against College Anti-Semitism use for their own overlapping purposes.
In fact, most people protesting Israel's actions are not anti-semites. They just want the killing and suffering in Gaza to end. I've protested Israel's atrocities and I'm not an anti-semite.
If colleges want to address antisemitism, limiting protest and free speech (and caving in to Trump's demands over curriculum, admissions, and DEI programs) is not the way to do it. Instead, colleges should do more to educate students, faculty and staff about the history and current reality of antisemitism—and how it is similar to and different from other kinds of bigotry, including racism, sexism, nativism, Islamophobia, and homophobia. More courses, more speakers, more dialogue, and more opportunities for Jewish, Muslim, and Christian students to work together on regular academic, extracurricular, community-oriented, and social justice projects to build and foster connections and trust.
The biggest threat to American Jews are not on college campus. They are the right-wing hate groups who Trump has encouraged, emboldened, and pardoned. These are the "Jews will not replace us" Nazis who marched in Charlottesville. These are the insurrectionists who wore "Camp Auschwitz" sweatshirts on January 6, as they invaded the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. to try to overturn the 2020 election. These are the Trump supporters who shoot Jews in synagogues (in Pittsburgh and elsewhere), at public parades (like the one in Highland Park, Illinois), and at the Jewish museum in D.C. These are the conspiracy theorists who spout antisemitic stereotypes about an alleged international Jewish cabal run by George Soros and others.
It is no accident that the upsurge of right-wing antisemitism began soon after Trump announced his first campaign for president in 2015. That Trump is himself a long time anti-semite is well-documented. He traffics in antisemitic stereotypes and he cultivates and encourages hate groups, including neo-Nazi groups. He has long admired Hitler.
Trump mainly cares about appealing to his base. Only 26% of Jews voted for Trump last year and few Jews support his policies or actions. A huge part of his base, however, are white evangelical Christians. About 80% of them voted for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024, accounting for almost half of his total vote.
The extreme wing of the evangelical movement are the Christian nationalists (like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and several other high-level Trump appointees), who now account for almost 30% of all Americans. They advocate authoritarianism. They are white supremacists and anti-semites. They believe that the United States is and should be a Christian nation, governed by Biblical doctrine and not by the Constitution. In that scenario, Jews are, at best, second-class citizens.
Trump doesn't give a damn about protecting Jews from antisemitism. His attacks, and those of the Republicans in Congress (led by Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York), on universities for allegedly fostering antisemitism are really about intimidating a major bastion of liberalism and free speech. Trump is on a crusade against institutions he considers his enemies—unions, artists and performers (and institutions like the Kennedy Center), the courts, the media, and universities and colleges. He wants to intimidate and silence them. He is weaponizing antisemitism to gain more power and stifle his opponents.
And so is Netanyahu. But it is backfiring on both of them. Israel has become a global pariah. And Trump is a laughing stock among world leaders for his authoritarian policies, his ignorance, his megalomania, and his pathological lies. Trump’s declining support in the U.S. is likely to help the Democratics win a major of House seats next year, which would allow them to neutralize many of Trump’s policies, hold investigations and hearings to expose his corruption, and even put pressure on Israel by limiting or ending U.S. arms sales.
In my fantasy world of the not-too-distance future, Trump and Netanyahu share a prison cell. That would be equal justice under the law.
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