In Washington, DC, on March 23, 2025, a group of Georgetown University students and community leaders protest. Photo: Andrew Thomas via Reuters Connect.

Georgetown University’s student government has rescheduled an anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) referendum that it initially scheduled to take place during the Passover holiday following outcry from Jewish students, who argued the original timing effectively disenfranchised them by depriving them of a chance to express opposition to the measure at the ballot box.

As previously reported, the Georgetown University Student Association’s (GUSA) senators voted via secret ballot for a resolution to hold the referendum — which will ask students to decide whether they “support … divesting from companies arming Israel and ending university partnerships with Israeli institutions” — on April 14-16. The move outraged Jewish students, as well as GUSA senators who deplored the body’s passing the measure by allegedly illicit means.

“This referendum, cloaked in the language of human rights, represents not only a troubling overstep into Georgetown’s academic and fiduciary independence but also a campaign rooted in the discriminatory logic of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement,” said a letter the university’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) sent to university president Robert Groves. “The passage of this measure would not occur in isolation. It would embolden future efforts to marginalize Jewish and Israeli students, deepen campus polarization, and risk fueling the disturbing rise in antisemitism seen at other institutions. Universities that have permitted such one-sided campaigns are now facing not only fractured communities and repetitional harm but growing federal scrutiny — including potential impacts to public funding.”

GUSA said on Monday that it moved the referendum date, issuing a statement which acknowledged concerns raised by SSI, as well as Chabad Georgetown, Georgetown Israel Alliance, and the Jewish Student Association.

“We made this decision after hearing concerns about the placement of the election during a religious holiday,” the governing body said in a statement posted on Instagram. “Although the election has been rescheduled, formal campaigners may continue to campaign for the referendum until the end of the campaigning period. Individuals may continue to register as formal campaigners until the end of the campaigning period.”

The referendum must still be contested for other reasons, SSI told The Algemeiner on Tuesday.

“We commend the decision to move the vote past Passover but are still intent on combating the procedural irregularities surrounding the referendum,” the group said, referring to the fact that the resolution only passed because GUSA senators, the campus newspaper reported, “voted to break rules” which require referenda to be evaluated by the Policy and Advocacy Committee (PAC), a period of deliberation which establishes their merit, or lack thereof, for consideration by the senate.

Georgetown is one of 60 colleges and universities being investigated by the federal government due to being deemed by the Trump administration as soft on antisemitism and excessively “woke.” Such inquiries have led to the scorching of several billion dollars’ worth of federal contracts and grants awarded to America’s most prestigious institutions of higher education.

On Monday, the administration impounded more than $2 billion in federal funding previously awarded to Harvard University over the institution’s refusal to agree to a wishlist of reforms that Republican lawmakers have long argued will make higher education more meritocratic and less welcoming to anti-Zionists and far-left extremists.

In March, it canceled $400 million in federal contracts and grants for Columbia University, a measure that secured the school’s acceding to a slew of demands the administration put forth as preconditions for restoring the money. Princeton University saw $210 million of its federal grants and funding suspended too, prompting its president, Christopher Eisgruber to say the institution is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination.” Brown University’s federal funding is also reportedly at risk due to its alleged failing to mount a satisfactory response to the campus antisemitism crisis, as well as its alignment with the DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] movement.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy-designate Steve Witkoff gives a speech at the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena on the inauguration day of Trump’s second presidential term, in Washington, DC, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria

US President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East on Tuesday called on Iran to “stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program,” apparently toughening his position against Tehran less than 24 hours after suggesting the Islamic Republic would be allowed to maintain its nuclear program in a limited capacity.

“A deal with Iran will only be completed if it is a Trump deal,” Steve Witkoff posted on the social media platform X/Twitter. “Any final arrangement must set a framework for peace, stability, and prosperity in the Middle East — meaning that Iran must stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program. It is imperative for the world that we create a tough, fair deal that will endure, and that is what President Trump has asked me to do.”

Witkoff’s statement appeared to be a complete reversal from comments he made to Fox News during an interview on Monday night, in which he indicated that the White House would allow Iran to enrich uranium to a 3.67 percent threshold, allowing Tehran to create a “civil nuclear program.”

“Iran does not need to enrich past 3.67 percent. In some circumstances, they’re at 60 percent; in other circumstances, 20 percent. That cannot be,” Witkoff said. “You do not need to run — as they claim — a civil nuclear program where you’re enriching past 3.67 percent.”

Negotiations between the US and Iran regarding a potential deal over the latter’s nuclear program began this past weekend in Oman. Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi each led their respective delegations in the discussions, which were facilitated indirectly via mediators. The White House touted the deliberations as “positive and constructive” and confirmed a second round of deliberations set for Saturday. 

During Monday’s interview, Witkoff confirmed that the next round of negotiations will center on “verification on the enrichment program and then ultimately verification on weaponization.”

“That includes missiles — the type of missiles that they have stockpiled there. And it includes the trigger for a bomb,” Witkoff said. 

Critics pointed out that Witkoff’s proposal seemed to resemble the 2015 deal struck between the US under the Obama administration, Iran, and other world powers which also aimed to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon by prohibiting the regime from enriching uranium past 3.67 percent. The first Trump administration scrapped the deal in 2018, arguing that the agreement would allow Iran to clandestinely pursue a nuclear weapon, and reimposed harsh sanctions on the regime.

Iran has claimed that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes rather than building weapons. However, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reported in December that Iran had greatly accelerated uranium enrichment to close to the 90 percent weapons-grade level at its Fordow site dug into a mountain. The UK, France, and Germany said in a joint statement that there is no “credible civilian justification” for Iran’s recent nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”

Israel has been among the most vocal proponents of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arguing that that the US should pursue a “Libyan option” to eliminate the possibility of Tehran acquiring a nuclear weapon by overseeing the destruction of Iran’s nuclear installations and the dismantling of equipment.

“That could be done diplomatically, in a full way, the way it was done in Libya. I think that would be a good thing,” Netanyahu told reporters during a meeting at the White House last week. “But whatever happens, we have to make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.”

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US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance arrive for a ceremony with the 2025 College Football Playoff National Champions Ohio State Buckeyes on the South Lawn of the White House on Monday, April 14, 2025. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect.

The Trump administration has impounded more than $2 billion in federal funding previously awarded to Harvard University over the institution’s refusal to agree to a wishlist of reforms that Republican lawmakers have long argued will make higher education more meritocratic and less welcoming to anti-Zionists and far-left extremists.

“The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act],” Harvard interim president Alan Garber said on Monday in a statement. “It threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

The Trump administration imposed the $2.2 billion penalty on Harvard shorty after Garber’s statement became public, setting off what The Harvard Crimson said stands to be a “historic legal battle” which tests the conservative movement’s power to reform an elite higher education system that, it believes, is hollowing out American values of merit, patriotism, and civic responsibility.

While the immediate cause of the administration’s dispute with Harvard is the explosion of antisemitism seen on the school’s campus following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, the conversation on how to respond to that issue has since then evolved into a larger debate over elite higher education’s role in advancing so-called “woke” ideologies that have polarized the American public.

Garber alluded to this fact in Monday’s statement, noting that the Trump administration’s proposed polices for Harvard — or “demands,” as he described them — are as much, if not more, about cultural issues as they are about campus antisemitism. Contained in a letter shared by Garber and reviewed by The Algemeiner, the policies called for “viewpoint diversity in hiring and admissions,” the “discontinuation of [diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives],” and “reducing forms of governance bloat.” They also implore Harvard to begin “reforming programs with egregious records of antisemitism” and to recalibrate its approach to “student discipline.”

Harvard, Garber said, is unwilling to do more than address campus antisemitism, dismissing the Trump administration’s other ideas as “assertions of power, unmoored from the law, to control teaching and learning at Harvard and to dictate how we operate.”

In response, US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he is open to levying severer financial sanctions one the university.

“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be taxed as a political entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘sickness?’ [sic],” Trump posted on Truth Social, a social media platform he founded. “Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST.”

Meanwhile, former US President Barack Obama on Monday lauded Garber for “rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom,” and former Harvard president Larry Summers, speaking to The Harvard Crimson, said that the school should spend down its $53.2 billion endowment fund to offset the federal government’s cuts.

Others, however, such as pro-Israel activist Shabbos Kestenbaum expressed more opprobrious views of Harvard, accusing it of “fighting Trump harder than it ever fought antisemitism.” Christopher Rufo, a conservative author and resident scholar of the Manhattan Institute, said Trump “has every right to withhold funding” due to the university’s embrace of DEI and holding of segregated graduation ceremonies.

In the past, Rufo has criticized the pro-Israel movement’s method of advocacy, arguing that it risks legitimating “left-wing racialist concepts.”

The Trump administration may ultimately “prevail” in a “protracted” fight against Harvard University, noting that it has not asked for anything that is not supported by the public, Peter Wood, higher education expert and president of the National Association of Scholars, told The Algemeiner on Monday.

“Harvard will use its considerable resources to wage lawfare, and there will be many stages of judicial intervention before this is settled,” Wood said. “The demands by the task force are reasonable and valid, while Harvard’s ‘resistance strategy’ will fail because it is fundamentally based on arrogance. Harvard considers that it is a law unto itself, and it is greatly at odds with the judgement of the American people.”

Wood added, “Harvard is wealthy enough to play out its tactics for a long time, but the university’s supporters will not be pleased to see the institution’s endowment squandered in a losing fight with the federal government.”

The Trump administration last week paused nearly $1.8 billion in combined federal funding to Cornell University and Northwestern University.

In March, it cancelled $400 million in federal contracts and grants for Columbia University, a measure that secured the school’s acceding to a slew of demands the administration put forth as preconditions for restoring the money. Princeton University saw $210 million of its federal grants and funding suspended too, prompting its president, Christopher Eisgruber to say the institution is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination.” Brown University’s federal funding is also reportedly at risk due to its alleged failing to mount a satisfactory response to the campus antisemitism crisis, as well as its alignment with DEI movement.

“Jewish students studying on elite US campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year,” US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement last month. “US colleges and universities benefit from enormous public investments funded by US taxpayers. That support is a privilege, and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal antidiscrimination laws.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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