Dozens of universities across the country received a federal government warning Monday over their obligation to protect Jewish students on campus, just as President Donald Trump’s administration clamps down on pro-Palestinian protesters.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote to 60 institutions — many of which were the site of lengthy, and at times fractious, protests last year — telling them they would face “potential enforcement actions” if they failed to uphold Title VI of the Civil Rights Act in regard to Jewish students.
That part of the law makes it illegal to discriminate “on the basis of race, color, and national origin” in any activities that get federal funding.
Six out of eight Ivy League institutions are on the list, including Columbia University and Harvard University.
The move comes as hundreds of protesters gathered in New York City on Monday to demand the release of pro-Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, while a court decides whether to deport the Syrian-born man after his student visa was revoked. A detention hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.
Students of at least 84 colleges held protests, set up camps or occupied university buildings last year as the Israel-Hamas war raged in the Gaza Strip, with some protests lasting weeks. More than 3,000 people were arrested, including more than 220 at Columbia, according to an NBC News tally.
The protesters were calling for the government to withdraw support for Israel’s incursion into and aerial bombardment of Gaza, which has killed more than 48,000 people there, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
Jewish organizations called on colleges to do more to protect students amid reports of antisemitic posters and slogans on campus.
In a statement, McMahon said that the department is “deeply disappointed that Jewish students studying on elite U.S. campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year.”
“U.S. colleges and universities benefit from enormous public investments funded by U.S. taxpayers. That support is a privilege and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal antidiscrimination laws,” she continued.
The Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights wrote to the colleges after Trump signed an executive order to “combat antisemitism” on Jan. 29, calling for tougher action on colleges and for the removal of “aliens” who carry out antisemitic activity.
Monday’s intervention could be one of the department’s final acts, as the Trump administration prepares to dismantle it to redistribute authority to individual states, which the president pledged to do so as early as September 2023.
The federal government last week canceled $400 million in grants due to Columbia, the center of last year’s protest movement, for its “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”
Following the arrest of Khalil on Saturday, Palestine Legal, a Chicago-based nonprofit that offers legal advice to pro-Palestinian activists, called on colleges to not collaborate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in attempts to arrest and deport activists.
“Abducting and detaining students over their political ideology represents a significant escalation in the McCarthyite attacks on the student movement for Palestinian liberation,” Palestine Legal staff attorney Sabiya Ahamed said in a statement.
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