INSIGHTS
Trump’s Authoritarian Crackdown Weaponizes Antisemitism
by Avraham Spraragen
From the US capital to Colorado, Jewish blood is being spilled on American streets. Last month at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., a young couple was shot dead as they exited an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee. On June 1st, a Holocaust survivor was among the victims of a targeted flamethrower attack in Boulder, Colorado. And rather than focus on preventing this antisemitic violence, the Trump administration is cynically manipulating concerns about Jewish safety to advance an undemocratic and illiberal agenda.
Under the guise of combating antisemitism, President Trump is spearheading an authoritarian crackdown on campus free speech and academic freedom. His administration is investigating numerous institutions of higher education for alleged “antisemitic discrimination and harassment,” cancelling federal grants to universities, revoking student visas, and suppressing pro-Palestine activism on campuses nationwide. My alma mater, Cornell University, was recently stripped of over $1 billion in government funding.
Title VI investigations of real antisemitism on campus are legitimate and should be conducted without violating civil liberties. However, the Trump administration is instead wrongfully conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism, blurring the lines between true hatred of Jews and mere criticism of Israel. This illiberal assault has had the desired chilling effect for students and faculty across the country: silencing critics of Israel (and Trump), undermining constitutional rights, and compromising the quality and reputation of world-leading US universities.
On top of threatening universities with funding cuts, the Trump administration has adopted a “Catch and Revoke” policy of rescinding student visas, green cards, and social security numbers, as well as arresting, detaining, publicly shaming, and even deporting pro-Palestine student protesters at universities nationwide. In true Orwellian form, the US government is monitoring the social media of student protesters using artificial intelligence. More recently, the administration ordered consular officers to screen student and scholar visa applicants for social media posts “hostile” to the United States.
Ironically, Trump’s “Catch and Revoke” policy relies on the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, an antisemitic law from the McCarthy era that targeted Holocaust survivors by identifying them as “threats” to national security. The Jewish people know the experience of being victimized by a tyrannical government all too well. In our name, the Trump administration is exploiting genuine fears about growing antisemitism to victimize Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and their allies. All the while, the Republican Party continues to embolden white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and Christian nationalist antisemites.
According to the latest polling, a majority of American Jews reject Trump’s weaponization of the fight against antisemitism. In the words of Rep. Jerry Nadler, co-chair of the newly-formed Congressional Jewish Caucus: “Trump obviously doesn’t give a damn about antisemitism, this is just an expression of his authoritarianism.” By doing so in the name of protecting Jewish safety and the state of Israel, Trump is setting Jews up to be blamed for his unraveling of democracy. Amid rising antisemitism in the United States, he is placing yet another target on our backs, pitting us against our allies, and pushing the Jewish people over to the wrong side of history.
Shortly after returning to office, Trump signed Executive Order (EO) 14188, titled “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism,” which identifies “alien students and staff” for removal from the US “if warranted.” The first student to be identified under the new order was Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian refugee from Syria and a graduate student at Columbia University. Despite his green card and zero evidence of criminal wrongdoing, Khaill was abducted from the New York City campus by federal agents, which, according to the latest court ruling, is likely “unconstitutional.”
After the arrest, Trump mocked Khalil by posting “Shalom Mahmoud” on social media. Jewish Columbia alumni, Jewish lawmakers, and several Jewish groups swiftly condemned this gross injustice and shameful exploitation of the Hebrew language. Thousands of Jewish faculty, staff, and students at universities throughout the country have also signed a letter in support of Khalil, decrying Trump’s “use [of] Jews as a shield to justify a naked attack on political dissent and university independence.” Meanwhile, the judge who halted Khalil’s deportation, himself an observant Jew, has come under attack by Trump supporters.
Leading up to Khalil’s arrest, the Trump administration’s “Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism” canceled $400 million in federal funding to Columbia and issued an ultimatum to the university. To avoid imperiling dozens of life-saving medical research projects, Columbia acceded to Trump’s ransom demands by overhauling its admissions, curriculum, and disciplinary policies. Students were suspended, expelled, and stripped of their diplomas. Most egregiously, the university effectively surrendered its Middle Eastern Studies department to Trump, who is now seeking judicial enforcement of his departmental oversight.
Columbia faculty decried the decision with a stark warning about Trump’s “clear authoritarian playbook meant to crush academic freedom and critical research in American higher education.” Meanwhile, under EO 14188, about 600 student visas have been revoked across the country, a number that continues to grow. Among those targeted for deportation was Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at my graduate school, Georgetown University, whose ‘crime’ was marrying a Palestinian student. Another notable case is that of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish Muslim graduate student at Tufts University. On her way to a Ramadan Iftar in March, Ozturk was snatched off the streets of Boston for the ‘crime’ of co-authoring an op-ed critical of Israel.
Scenes like these, involving masked officers and unmarked cars, are plainly un-American. The draconian measures taken by the Trump administration to silence pro-Palestine speech have instilled fear in student visa holders, especially those with Middle Eastern backgrounds. These students worry that each day could be their last in the country, given their public opposition to the ongoing Gaza war. Some foreign students worry they will be deported before receiving their diplomas. Trump even attempted to ban enrollment of foreign students at Harvard. Inside and outside the classroom, students are being advised to censor their speech, delete their social media activity, reconsider visiting home, and avoid public protests. At Columbia, students were cautioned: “Nobody can protect you.”
Make no mistake: this assault has nothing to do with combating antisemitism and everything to do with the autocratic impulse to control what is taught at schools and other educational institutions. Donald Trump is weaponizing the fight against antisemitism by using it as a pretext for his larger authoritarian project against so-called “wokeness” on university campuses and beyond. Straight out of a dystopian novel, hundreds of words have been added by federal agencies to a list of discouraged “woke” terminology. The president is purging the “improper ideology” of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) from Smithsonian museums, library services, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as well as national parks and zoos.
Further exerting control over US knowledge production, the Trump administration is targeting our most prestigious scholarships, coveted research institutions, and educational broadcasting programs. During his first term, Trump established the 1776 Commission to sanitize the history of systemic racism in America. His second-term executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” promotes a revisionist history of the United States that whitewashes the genocide of Native Americans, enslavement of African Americans, and the legacy of Jim Crow segregation.
Many of these measures are outlined in Project 2025 – a 920-page playbook for the Trump administration published by the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation – such as gutting the Department of Education. His targeting of universities is directly informed by Project Esther, Heritage’s corresponding “National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism.” Crucially, this National Strategy relies on support from evangelical Christian groups but not from a single major Jewish organization. Stealing its name from the Jewish Purim story, Project Esther reinforces antisemitic tropes, ignores right-wing antisemitism, and stirs up a moral panic against critics of Israel, the broader left-wing, and higher education.
As the famous Holocaust confessional poem goes, “first they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out. Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me. And there was no one left to speak for me.” American Jewry must continue to speak out against these gross injustices being perpetrated in our name – not only to protect vulnerable communities and our fragile democracy but because the far-right, emboldened by Trump (whom 52% of American Jews believe is antisemitic), will invariably come for the Jews too.
Antisemitism is undeniably on the rise in America. That is, the deliberate targeting of Jews for their Judaism, antisemitic stereotyping, resurgent neo-Nazism, and overt anti-Jewish discrimination. President Trump’s first term witnessed the deadliest attack on American Jews in history. His second term has already seen two more. While feigning concern for Jewish safety, the Trump administration is fanning the flames of far-right antisemitism, hyperfixating on student protests, and upending liberal democratic norms. Indeed, the president is actively rewriting the American past and present and erasing our free speech rights, all while using the Jewish people as his metaphorical pencil.
Avraham Spraragen is a board member at Partners for Progressive Israel and a J.D. candidate at Georgetown Law. He also serves as a Rising Expert on the Middle East at Young Professionals in Foreign Policy (YPFP). Avraham holds an M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and certificates from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University.
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