Jacob Naimark, a law student at the University of Pennsylvania, has worried ever since he learned that Trump administration investigators had demanded that his school turn over the names of many Jewish people on campus.
“It was disturbing,” said Mr. Naimark, a co-president of the school’s Jewish Law Students Association, adding: “We know very well the history of governments assembling lists of Jews does not end well.”
On Tuesday, a federal judge in Philadelphia will consider whether the government’s tactics went too far.
The government has argued it was investigating harassment and other potential episodes of antisemitism on campus, including some related to campus protests over the war in Gaza. But the request upset many Jewish faculty and students, and Penn has refused to comply, calling the Trump administration’s demands unconstitutional and “disconcerting.” Some say the campaign to force the university to give information about Jewish people makes them feel less safe, in part because it recalls the methods of Nazi-era Germany.
The two sides will meet in court after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission asked a judge, Gerald J. Pappert, to enforce a subpoena requiring Penn to turn over the information. Mr. Naimark’s group is among those that have joined the case opposing the government.
The Trump administration has repeatedly adopted a hard line toward elite universities, which it regards as opposed to its ideology and as hot spots of discrimination. Last year, the government paused $175 million in federal funding to Penn amid a dispute about a transgender swimmer, before it reached a settlement with the university.
The antisemitism case is testing how far the government can go to investigate its suspicions about American universities. It could determine how aggressively the Trump administration pursues inquiries on other campuses.
The E.E.O.C. has argued to Judge Pappert that there is nothing out of the ordinary about its investigation. A commissioner, Andrea R. Lucas, a Penn alumna, launched the case in 2023, asserting that she believed Penn had “engaged in a pattern or practice of harassment based on national origin, religion and/or race against Jewish employees.” Ms. Lucas is now the chairwoman of the E.E.O.C.
She said the allegations were based on information published in news reports and congressional testimony, among other sources.
In March 2025, the commission asked for a range of records, including complaints about antisemitism. It also asked for a list of “all clubs, groups, organizations and recreation groups” that were “related to the Jewish religion, faith, ancestry/national origin,” as well as membership rosters of those groups, so it can speak with students and faculty members about discrimination on campus.
It also sought a list of employees in Penn’s Jewish Studies Program since November 2022. After Penn balked, the commission issued a subpoena for the records and added more demands, including notes taken during “listening sessions” of a campus antisemitism task force.
Instead, Penn, according to its court filings, told the commission it was willing to inform all employees about the inquiry and how to contact the commission directly.
The government refused the offer as unworkable and said it was not seeking to “imperil any individual.” In a court filing last month, Trump officials called the request routine and the criticism speculative.
In an earlier filing, the commission said that Penn was waging “an intensive and relentless public relations campaign” that yielded “dark prognosticating.”
A spokesman for the E.E.O.C. declined to comment. The commission’s case was filed by Debra Lawrence, a veteran civil rights lawyer who was named the top lawyer for the commission’s Philadelphia district in 2010.
Penn declined to make an administrator available for an interview for this article, and university officials have repeatedly declined to comment beyond court filings. Penn’s legal team includes Debo P. Adegbile, a former member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and Seth P. Waxman, a former U.S. solicitor general, who are partners at WilmerHale.
In one filing in January, the university argued that the government’s approach was unwarranted because Ms. Lucas’s charge failed “to identify a single allegedly unlawful employment practice or incident involving employees.”
Among other contentions, the university has also argued that the government’s demands threaten employees’ First Amendment right of association, and that the university does not even possess some of the information the commission has subpoenaed.
Some at Penn say the case has unified the campus after years of acrimony tied to the campus protests.
“Somehow, the E.E.O.C. has managed to find the one thing in the last three years that at least everybody I’ve talked to agrees on,” said Lorena Grundy, the vice president of Penn’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which has also joined the case.
“There’s a lot of division right now,” she added, but “I have not talked to a single person who wants the list of information to be released.”
Dr. Grundy did not know how many A.A.U.P. members might be affected by the subpoena. “I don’t have a list, and I shouldn’t have a list,” she said. “There shouldn’t be a list!”
The E.E.O.C. has been central in other Trump administration’s negotiations with top universities. It has broad powers to investigate discrimination, and universities routinely cooperate with government investigations of all kinds.
But the Penn inquiry has revived concerns about the aggressive tactics the Trump administration is using to stamp out antisemitism.
“It’s good for governments to be concerned about prejudice and to combat it,” said Steven Weitzman, the director of Penn’s Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. “But the tactics from the Trump administration have been too coercive.”
Mr. Naimark, whose grandfather survived the Holocaust, said he did not believe that the sharing of the names would swiftly lead to a “second Holocaust.” But, he said, he and others feared what could happen if the list fell into the hands of a bad actor inside or outside the government.
“We’d like to sound the alarm before there’s a five-alarm fire,” he said.
Dr. Grundy warned that a victory for the E.E.O.C. could lead to similar scenarios for other institutions, because the commission’s purview extends beyond universities.
“It is absolutely the slipperiest of slopes,” she said.
Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education.
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