Purim Edition: Crackdown on Campus Antisemitism Continues; More Fallout for Columbia; the Case of Mahmoud Khalil; the Persistence of DEI at USC; Lessons from Purim; and more

In this newsletter: DOE issues warnings to 60 universities of potential enforcement action for antisemitism; UCLA announces antisemitism initiative; physicists versus poets at Columbia; should Mahmoud Khalil be deported; DEI shape-shifts at USC; Purim-inspired thoughts and stories; and more.

But First—An Important Announcement

Abby Horowitz from the National Library of Israel came across our Substack while searching materials for their collection on campus antisemitism. We were happy to share our exhibits with them. Abby asked us to post the following call for materials. Please contribute, and share this information through your networks:

The National Library of Israel (NLI) is currently collecting materials that document post-Oct. 7 experiences at North American college campuses. NLI is seeking materials that document specific events and incidents and/or capture the broader experiences of Jewish students, faculty, and staff during this pivotal time. These materials will become part of the Library’s centralized Oct. 7 archive, which will serve as a vital resource for scholars and communities in the years to come.

This is a unique opportunity to have your story be part of the historical record. We hope you’ll take part by submitting any relevant materials here: tinyurl.com/NLIarchivesubmit (Note that materials of all forms, and from any perspective, are welcome.)

Please contact Project Coordinator Abby Horowitz with any questions, or if you have a large batch of materials to submit.

Now, on to the news.

Department of Education Warns 60 Universities: Protect Jewish Students from Antisemitism or Face Enforcement Action

The Department of Education on Monday issued letters to 60 universities warning them of potential federal enforcement action should they fail to fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students from antisemitism on their campuses. USC and UCLA were among the 60. Announcing the warnings, the Department’s press release reads:

Today, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent letters to 60 institutions of higher education warning them of potential enforcement actions if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus, including uninterrupted access to campus facilities and educational opportunities. The letters are addressed to all U.S. universities that are presently under investigation for Title VI violations relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination.

“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. University leaders must do better,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “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….”

Background:

The Department’s OCR sent these letters under its authority to enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (1964), which prohibits any institution that receives federal funds from discriminating on the basis of race, color, and national origin. National origin includes shared (Jewish) ancestry.

Pursuant to Title VI and in furtherance of President Trump’s Executive Order “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism,” the Department launched directed investigations into five universities where widespread antisemitic harassment has been reported. The 55 additional universities are under investigation or monitoring in response to complaints filed with OCR. Last week, the Department, alongside fellow members of the Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism including the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. General Services Administration, announced the immediate cancelation of $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University due to the school’s continued inaction to protect Jewish students from discrimination. Last Friday, OCR directed its enforcement staff to make resolving the backlog of complaints alleging antisemitic violence and harassment, many which were allowed to languish unresolved under the previous administration, an immediate priority.

UCLA Announces Initiative to Combat Campus Antisemitism

Is UCLA finally doing something to combat antisemitism? Maybe. Chancellor Julio Frenk has announced that the university will undertake an initiative to combat antisemitism on campus. As explained in the Daily Bruin (Anna Dai-Liu, March 10, 2025):

UCLA will implement a new Initiative to Combat Antisemitism, Chancellor Julio Frenk announced in a Monday email to UCLA community members and parents.

As part of the initiative, the university will improve the complaint system and increase training and education about antisemitism, per recommendations from the UCLA Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias, Frenk said in the email. The initiative’s action group will be led by Stuart Gabriel, a distinguished professor of finance at the Anderson School of Management and the task force’s chair.

The initiative will incorporate on-campus perspectives, as well as those from external leaders, Frenk said in the email. Jeffrey Abrams, the Anti-Defamation League’s Los Angeles regional director, said the ADL – which, according to its website, supports a “secure, Jewish and democratic State of Israel” – has expressed its desire to offer assistance for the initiative.

“Improve the complaint system”? “Incorporate on-campus perspectives”? Color us skeptical…but hopeful.

Faculty-on-Faculty War Erupts at Columbia as Trump Targets Elite School (Douglas Belkin, Wall Street Journal, March 11, 2025)

As we wrote in a previous newsletter, Columbia university is suffering consequences for their antisemitism. Unfortunately, the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration—the cancellation of $400,000,000 in federal funding—disproportionately affect some of the departments in the university least responsible for the problem—the STEM departments. According to a Wall Street Journal oped (archived version here), the STEM faculty are finally starting to realize that the ideological capture of the humanities and related departments at Columbia has consequences for all. Perhaps Greg Lukianoff’s recommendation to make Columbia a technical institute would be the best way to save the place. We stand with our STEM colleagues in their fight against the woke departments:

The second conflict simmers behind the scenes: a faculty civil war that pits medical doctors and engineers against political scientists and humanities scholars over how to handle pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have disrupted campus life.…

Divisions often exist between disciplines at colleges, but the fissures cut particularly deep at Columbia because of the high number of both Jewish faculty who support Israel and faculty who believe Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinians.

A half-century ago, Columbia professor Edward Said was among the founders of postcolonial studies that laid the intellectual groundwork for the current protest movement against Israel. A nucleus of his acolytes remain at Columbia and are active on campus.

Those faculty more sympathetic to Palestinians control key committees on the faculty senate and have sought to limit discipline against protesters and restrictions on protests. That helps explain why Columbia didn’t restrict student disruptions on campus as aggressively as other schools, according to interviews with faculty members.

Across campus, scientists and engineers have been less invested in the protests partly, several said, because they were too focused on their work to get involved. Now those researchers are being disproportionately punished by having grants and contracts canceled, said Larisa Geskin, a professor in the school of medicine at Columbia and cancer researcher.

“We’re actually quite busy. We’re actually doing our job,” said Geskin. Medical doctors and scientific researchers “are trying to save lives. We don’t have the time to ruminate on all this….”

Science faculty are unhappy Trump has pulled funding, but some alumni said they are glad the situation is finally coming to a head. They hope his moves will strengthen resolve within the board of trustees and president’s office.

Columbia’s $400 Million Debate: How to Meet Trump’s Demands? (Douglas Belkin, Jessica Toonkel, and Liz Essley Whyte, Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2025)

On Thursday, the Trump administration delivered a list of nine far-reaching demands the university must comply with by next Thursday or lose a group of federal grants or contracts. The government canceled the funds earlier this month over concern about antisemitism, but set a 30-day review period.

The requests from the Trump administration include banning masks that conceal identity, giving the university president rather than faculty disciplinary power over students and empowering campus law enforcement to be able to arrest “agitators who foster an unsafe or hostile work or study environment.”

Government negotiators also want the school to place the department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies under “academic receivership” for a minimum of five years. Receivership means it would no longer be under the control of the faculty and is considered a sign of mismanagement.

The university’s senior leadership has been divided about how to handle contentious demands in the past, and failed to reach consensus over issues such as what to do about masks, according to people familiar with their deliberations.

Columbia Is Also Being Investigated by the EEOC

Two janitors who were trapped in Columbia’s Hamilton Hall by a pro-Hamas mob occupying the building have filed a federal complaint. As The Free Press reports:

Columbia University is facing a new federal investigation over allegations from two janitors who said they were forced to scrub off spray-painted swastikas on campus before later being attacked and trapped by an anti-Israel mob that took over Hamilton Hall last spring. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is looking into complaints filed by the two, who say Columbia fostered a hostile work environment. The Free Press’s Frannie Block interviewed one of the janitors, Mario Torres, last year. Watch that interview here.

Who is Mahmoud Khalil and Should He be Deported?

Pro-Palestinian protesters in New York City, March 10, 2025. Image via The Free Press

By now, we’ve all heard of Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia student who has been arrested by ICE and is facing revocation of his green card and deportation over his role in the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia. The legal questions surrounding the case are complex and opinions in the media are all over the place. Here, we recommend two of the clearest and most-balanced discussions of the case we have read.

A great summary is the Free Press article “Both Left and Right Are Wrong About Mahmoud Khalil” by Jed Rubenfeld. As the article explains, “anyone who says the law is obvious here is not telling the truth.”

Despite what you may read in The New York Times or on MAGA social media, the Trump administration’s planned deportation of Mahmoud Khalil is not an easy case. In fact, it’s a maze of statutory and constitutional issues.

Khalil…played a leading role in the anti-Israel protests there. He is said to be the primary spokesperson and negotiator for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which describes itself as “fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.” The group has been the engine behind much of the chaos on Columbia’s campus since October 7—including the encampments and takeover of Hamilton Hall last spring, Barnard’s Milbank Hall last month, and Milstein Library just last week, where Khalil allegedly led the occupation efforts….

Arrested on March 8, Khalil is currently being detained in Louisiana.

The administration has not yet definitively stated its legal grounds for deporting Khalil, but a federal statute, the Immigration and Nationality Act, says that aliens—even those who, like Khalil, have green cards—can be deported if they “espouse or endorse terrorist activity.” It also permits deportation on the basis of an alien’s beliefs or statements if the Secretary of State determines that the alien’s continued presence here “would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.”

There is certain to be a dispute about whether Khalil is deportable under these provisions, and the case against him could fail out of the gate on statutory grounds. In other words: Did he actually endorse or espouse terrorist activities? Does his continued presence in the country threaten a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest? The White House alleged yesterday that Khalil personally distributed pro-Hamas flyers extolling “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”—the Hamas name for October 7—which, if true, sounds like a pretty clear endorsement of a terrorist act.

The more fundamental question is whether these statutory provisions are constitutional. And this much is clear. If Khalil has been arrested solely for espousing or endorsing terrorist acts, his detention would undoubtedly violate the First Amendment—if he were a citizen….

But he’s not a citizen. His green card makes him a lawful permanent resident, but he’s still an alien. Thus the real question is whether, or when, or to what extent aliens have the same constitutional rights as citizens. Unfortunately for both left and right, the answer is complicated.

On the right, people point to Supreme Court cases like Turner v. Williams (1904), which upheld the deportation of aliens who express views determined by Congress to be “so dangerous to the public weal that aliens who hold and advocate them would be undesirable additions to our population.”…

On the left, Rubenfeld explains, advocates point to cases such as Bridges v. Wixon that held that freedom of speech is accorded aliens residing in the U.S.

How do we reconcile Turner with Bridges? The answer is that the Turner decision applied only to aliens who entered the country illegally, whereas Bridges applied to aliens who entered the country legally and resided here for at least five years.

Khalil apparently entered the country legally, but has only been here for three years. Where does that leave him in terms of free speech protections? In a gray area. In such cases, the courts have looked to whether the alien has “developed substantial connections” to the U.S. Khalil, who has a green card and who is married to a U.S. citizen who is pregnant with their first child, would clearly have precisely the kind of connections to the U.S. that the courts look for.

So, that’s it: Criminal prosecution of Khalil for his actions at Columbia would fail because his actions were protected by the First Amendment. Case closed, right? Wrong. Why?

[Because] Khalil is not being criminally prosecuted; he is in deportation proceedings. And those who support Khalil’s deportation will say this makes all the difference, because as the Supreme Court held in 1953, “Courts have long recognized the power to expel or exclude aliens as a fundamental sovereign attribute exercised by the Government’s political departments largely immune from judicial control.”

Trump’s supporters are likely to point in particular to Harisiades v. Shaughnessy (1952), which upheld the deportation of lawful aliens who had been in America for decades but who had once (years before) been members of the Communist Party…. The Court held that staying “within the country is not [an alien’s] right, but is a matter of permission and tolerance. The Government’s power to terminate its hospitality has been asserted and sustained by this Court since the question first arose.” And the Court emphasized that Congress has virtually plenary power on immigration issues.

But the Court made the above remarks in the context of a Fifth Amendment case. The free speech issues of Khalil’s case pertain to the First Amendment, and whether Haisiades would apply is unknown. However, in a concurrence to Harisiades, Justice Frankfurter emphasized that:

“The conditions for entry of every alien, the particular classes of aliens that shall be denied entry altogether, the basis for determining such classification, the right to terminate hospitality to aliens, the grounds on which such determination shall be based, have been recognized as matters solely for the responsibility of the Congress and wholly outside the power of this Court to control…”

Rubenfeld elaborates:

In fact, today’s justices might add that when Khalil entered this country in 2022, the statutory provision permitting deportation of aliens for espousing or endorsing terrorist acts was already on the books. (It was passed in 2005.) In other words, Khalil was on notice that if he chose to come to this country on a student visa, America’s hospitality was conditional on his refraining from endorsing terrorist acts. People can consent to limitations on their constitutional rights when they accept governmental benefits. By choosing to come to this country and enjoying America’s protections and educational system—the argument would go—Khalil accepted the conditions that Congress imposed on him and cannot now try to evade them.

And he concludes:

Given these crosscutting precedents, it is sadly probable that judges’ reactions to cases like Khalil’s will tend to divide along partisan lines. A good bet is that the Southern District of New York judge currently hearing Khalil’s case will (if the case isn’t transferred to Louisiana) likely enjoin the administration from deporting him. Another fair bet is that the more conservative judges of the Fifth Circuit (if the case is transferred) will likely uphold the deportation.

But anyone who says the law is settled or obvious here is wrong, as is anyone who thinks they know how the Supreme Court will rule.

Another excellent discussion of the case is the debate, also in The Free Press, “Deporting ‘Pro-Jihadist’ Students: Censorship or Good Governance?” between constitutional scholar Ilya Shapiro of the Manhattan Institute and Robert Shibley, special counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Unfortunately, like most Free Press articles, this article is behind a hard paywall, which means we cannot link to an archived version of it. Moreover, because of the debate format, it is difficult to present a synopsis of the article. We find The Free Press to consistently be one of today’s highest-quality media outlets, and we wholeheartedly encourage readers to become subscribers and to read the debate.

More on Mahmoud: The ICE Detention of a Columbia Student Is Just the Beginning (Gabe Kaminsky, Madeleine Rowley, and Maya Sulkin, The Free Press, March 10, 2025).

And yet another detail from TGIF: Everything’s Computer (The Free Press, March 14, 2025)

→ Mahmoud Khalil had British security clearance: Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia pro-Palestinian demonstrator now facing deportation, was found to have held a senior position at the British embassy in Beirut, and had security clearance in the UK to work on sensitive issues.

In America, he’s been a spokesman for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, whose stated aim is “fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.” Posts from the group say: “We seek community and instruction from militants in the Global South.” A video also emerged of Khalil at Columbia saying “We’ve tried armed resistance,” which I’m assuming is a royal we, but still—kinda weird.

Regardless, his side is certainly winning the press tour. My favorite part is that they have a random gorgeous woman speaking about him, and even though she clarifies that she’s the attorney, the movement is pretending she’s his pregnant wife, but she’s literally not. Gotta respect the game. If I get arrested, please make sure to hire Amal Clooney to read Bari’s statements, thank you.

Five Things to Remember as the Mahmoud Khalil Case Develops (Greg Lukianoff, Eternally Radical Idea, March 13, 2025)

We keep an eye on what the leaders of free speech have to say. Here is some analysis from Greg Lukianoff:

There are a lot of questions left unanswered on this topic. (We recommend checking out Steve Vladek’s recent piece about this.) And there’s a lot that may have changed or come to light just in the time it takes to publish this piece. It’s going to take some time to disentangle the details. On March 10, FIRE sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, ICE, and the State Department asking for answers, and we will be following this case closely.

In the meantime, here are five things you should keep in mind as the case develops:

1. Many campus protests after Oct. 7 at Columbia and elsewhere veered into lawlessness

2. The First Amendment applies to green card and student visa holders, but how it applies is complicated.

3. The deportation violates a bedrock principle of the First Amendment.

4. Remember the lessons from ‘Defending My Enemy’.

5. Don’t let what just happened at Georgetown slip by you.

Purim Thoughts and Stories

Purim may have come and gone, but the lessons of Purim and the thoughts they inspire do not have an expiration date. We wish our readers belated chag sameach and share a couple of Purim-inspired essays.

Our Grandmothers, and the Scrolls They Gave Us (Polina Fradkin and Amit Shemesh, The Free Press, March 13, 2025)

Purim scrolls that belong to the families of Fradkin and Shemesh. Image via The Free Press

This is the story of two identical heirlooms—one from Ukraine, and another from Iraq—that have ended up in the same apartment, right here in Jaffa, Tel Aviv.

We’ve been best friends since we met on the beach in our early twenties, and when we moved in together three years ago, we decided we wanted our apartment to be a hub for celebrating Jewish holidays. That first winter, we were planning our first Purim party, when we simultaneously exclaimed: “You know, I have an antique family scroll!” It was like The Parent Trap, but for old Judaica.

Thanks to not one, but several twists of fate, both of us have inherited a Megillat Esther, or Book of Esther: a biblical scroll that recounts the Purim story, in which Queen Esther and Mordecai prevent a plot to destroy the Jewish people in ancient Persia. The average Jewish family does not have something like this laying around on their bookshelf.

Both of our scrolls are at least five generations old, made of handsewn parchment. Both have survived famine and pogroms, fallen empires and forced exile. And both are the oldest, and most prized, possessions left in each of our families. Also, both of us were given our scroll by women who, like Esther, made great sacrifices so that their descendants could live in freedom: our beloved grandmothers….

But in the run-up to this year’s celebration, we decided to do one more thing to mark the holiday: record our grandmother’s memories. The story of Purim is one of survival against all odds, just like the stories of our Russian and Iraqi grandmothers. So we sat down with them, and asked: How did you survive?

Polina and Amit then share two amazing and deeply moving family stories.

Purim-Inspired Thoughts from an Atheist: Will Our Queen Esthers Rise above their Fears and Save STEM from Wokeness? (Anna Krylov, HxSTEM, March 25, 2022)

This Purim-inspired post is three years old—but still relevant today.

Why is the story of Purim relevant to our times? In a moving piece he calls “My Purim Rabbi’s Hat,” Judea Pearl speaks of the rise of “academic McCarthyism,” an existential threat to institutions whose telos is to foster science and education. Judea writes, “I have started using Mordecai's words on friends and colleagues who remain silent upon seeing their students intimidated by BDS cronies or seeing their junior colleagues 'cancelled' or interrogated by various vice-squads.” He says, “We owe our academic stature to many who spoke out in such crises before. It’s now time for us to pay back our debt to the community by making our voices heard, despite the risks involved, or we'll all perish.”

Indeed, today, we—the community of scientists and educators—face an existential threat. The core, liberal values of The Enlightenment—humanism, rationality, fairness, equality of opportunity—are under attack. An illiberal, regressive ideology known as “Critical Social Justice” (CSJ) or Wokeism has taken hold of our schools, universities, professional societies, and publishing houses. Cloaked in deceptive words (e.g., “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion”) like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, this ideology seeks to disrupt and dismantle our institutions. It seeks to replace liberal epistemology (i.e., the way we produce knowledge) by a non-sensical post-modern one, which rejects objective reality in favor of “multiple narratives” (held by various identity groups) and “alternative ways of knowing.” It seeks to replace the modern scientific enterprise—built on merit, objectivity, organized skepticism, and universalism—with a social engineering agenda built on a supposed hierarchy of victimhood. It aims to replace the ideal of equal opportunity for individuals with the goal of equal outcomes for identity groups.

The ideology has spread through our institutions by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) apparatchiks backed by big money—the multi-billion DEI industry (the annual DEI budget of UC Berkeley alone is 41 million dollars).

And, executive orders or not, we are not out of the woods with DEI. As at other universities, at USC, DEI is shapeshifting and rebranding:

DEI Is Here to Stay (Heterodox at USC, March 10, 2025)

Reporting would make many assume that USC is backing away from DEI ideology. That doesn’t actually seem to be the case.

As we discussed last week, DEI has found a comfortable new home over in the Culture Team/Commission (whatever) and its “Unifying Values,” which lists “DEI” as one “our” values. Even though, again, no one actually voted for it as a unifying value.…

DEI is continuing to influence all sorts of elements of the university, such as our Student Recognition Awards. The award required nominators to select two “unifying values” which their nominee exemplifies, one of which could be DEI….

We also continue to have DEI activists on pay-roll. One recently sent around a mass (unsolicited) email to numerous USC faculty, alerting them to the National DEI Defense Coalition hosted on a USC website. This comes with a 65-page report on why DEI is good, actually.

This is one of the many problems with hiring activist faculty. They spend their workweek advancing an ideological cause, subsidized by the university. Anyone in opposition to the cause is on an immediate back foot, required to combat politicization in their spare time and without the university’s tacit approval.

The need to speak up and fight against this malady, which has not only been destroying our institutions from within, but is now causing a backlash from outside, is as urgent as ever. And to that point speakes the following essay by Adrienne Wootten.

Warnings of the Past, Foreshadowing the Future (Adrienne Wootten, HxSTEM, March 16, 2025)

Writing for HxSTEM, Adrienne uses another Torah story—the exodus from Egypt—to describe the backlash faced by academia today.

[M]y heart breaks for my colleagues in federal agencies who have lost their positions. I console other colleagues who have lost grant funding (knowing that I may lose funding myself). However, none of what is occurring is surprising…

Adrienne documents the ideological capture of our institutions that is responsible for public loss of trust in science, scientists, and higher education. She compares the backlash with the plagues unleashed on Egypt in response to their stubborness, pride, and arrogance:

the plagues are not the Trump administration, it's the public opinion of academia and scientists. The ire of the U.S. public has been earned, and it is no surprise that any administration would react to public furor…

We warned our colleagues and were ignored (or worse derided). Now I think many of us lament the stubborn pride of academia and scientists that is, at least in part, the cause of such suffering given to students and young professionals in this time of chaos. Now the plagues strike.

Unfortunately, there is still no reckoning, no self-reflection, no indication of willingness to change. Instead, universities are rebranding DEI while academics are “marching for science,” vandalizing Teslas, and protesting against measures to counteract antisemitism on campuses. Why did no one march when funding agencies demanded DEI loyalty oaths as a precondition for funding? Why did no one march when scientific papers were retracted in response to Twitter mobs? Why did no one march when merit-based hiring was being subjugated to DEI? The chickens have come home to roost.