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Education Secretary Miguel Cardona finds campus antisemitism ‘repulsive.’ He told us what he’s doing about it.
(JTA) — A Jewish college student recently told Miguel Cardona that he believed antisemitism has become “normalized” on campuses. For the secretary of education, the comment stuck.
“That, to me, was repulsive,” Cardona told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Wednesday. “As a father that really got to me, that there’s a student that thinks antisemitism is normalized and treated differently. And that was even before the attacks.”
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, of course, antisemitism on college campuses has only more forcefully drawn public attention. The heads of three elite universities appeared to downplay the matter during a congressional hearing last month; two have since resigned amid the fallout. The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has opened dozens of investigations into allegations of discrimination at universities and K-12 schools since Oct. 7, and while it does not reveal many public details about them, JTA has confirmed that many involve reports of antisemitism or Islamophobia.
Speaking to JTA Wednesday following a conversation with Jewish and Muslim students at Dartmouth College, Cardona said his department was taking steps to deal with the problem. He also praised the efforts of Dartmouth, which has been celebrated in the media for its attempts to host sessions bridging the gap between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students — an effort that the school formalized on Thursday with the announcement of “Dartmouth Dialogues.” And he defended oft-criticized Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion offices, saying that Jewish students should be able to think of them as resources.
Here is what Cardona told JTA about how his department is handling the problem.
JTA: You just spoke to Jewish and Muslim students at Dartmouth about antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus. What did you learn from them?
Cardona: I learned that we’re able to create safe learning environments while also giving students an opportunity to express themselves. I learned that the more you engage students in problem solving, the more likely it’s going to be successful. And what I learned also is that you need a culture and a climate on campus that is willing to engage in problem-solving when conflicts arise. They have that at Dartmouth. It was there before Oct. 7. And clearly it’s part of the reason why they’re finding success.
You have spoken about how antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus have been problems since Oct. 7. How do you understand this problem at this moment, and how can the department address it?
I said that it’s been a problem before Oct. 7. As a matter of fact, it’s been getting increasingly worse even before the Oct. 7 attacks — to the point where I had a student when I visited Towson University, a Jewish student, who told me that he believes that it’s become normalized in our country to kind of brush aside antisemitism, more so than any other form of hate and discrimination. That to me was repulsive. As a father that really got to me, that there’s a student that thinks that antisemitism is normalized and treated differently. And that was even before the attacks.
I think this is an opportunity for colleges to stand up forcefully in protecting the safety of students on campus. I don’t want any Jewish students to feel like they have to hide symbols of their faith because of what’s happening on campus. I don’t want any student to feel that they have to hide their identity to be successful on campus.
We’ve released Dear Colleague letters, which are basically letters of guidance to the field, to make sure that they know their responsibility under Title VI to keep students safe. But even more fundamental than that, I think we’re at a point now where we have to be very direct, that students should not have to hide their identity or be ashamed of who they are or hide who they are on our college campuses. And it’s the responsibility of college presidents to act very clearly and unambiguously that student safety is their priority and that they’re going to listen and make sure that students feel that it’s taken seriously.
You mentioned Title VI investigations. Your department has opened close to 50 such investigations since Oct. 7. Many of them involve antisemitism. How do you choose what to investigate?
The decisions on how to investigate are made by the Office for Civil Rights. When they have the request, they look at them very carefully. A lot of folks don’t know this, but it’s important to note that the investigation requests, when accepted, open up an investigation [that is] very thorough. Students are spoken to and listened to, and it could even uncover something that wasn’t in the original investigation request.
We’ve opened over 45 in three months, which is almost double what was opened in four years in the last administration, which is testament that we take this very seriously. We take these threats and these beliefs of students of being unsafe on campus very seriously, and we’re going to thoroughly investigate them.
In the past, it took patterns of misbehavior before many Title VI investigations would be opened. Now some are being opened over single isolated incidents. Why?
Again, we recognize how important safety is on campus. And while we might open these cases, it doesn’t necessarily assume that the investigation is going to find Title VI violations. But we are committed to ensuring, through our enforcement arm, that we are sending the message and investigating, thoroughly, issues that lead to student safety concerns on campus.
You mentioned how many investigations there are. I imagine that takes a lot of resources. Are you directing more departmental resources to Title VI, or to other ways of combating antisemitism?
Absolutely. First of all, I think it’s really important that I share with you: In November, I asked Speaker of the House [Mike] Johnson for additional funding for the Office for Civil Rights. We had 10,000 complaints in 2019 lodged to the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. We had 90,000 in 2022. So we’re fighting for additional dollars there, instead of cuts, to the Office of Civil Rights.
But, you know, we’re also not going to change culture through memos, or through investigations. We are just as passionate, and just as urgent, on developing resources, guidance, exemplars, technical assistance mechanisms for universities. We’ve visited dozens of universities, members of our team. We’ve met with attorneys, we met with college presidents. You’ll see on our website a list of dozens of resources for campuses. My visit today to Dartmouth was to see for myself and hear from students myself, on what works, so that we could lift up best practices across the country.
So yes, we’re going to enforce and we’re unapologetic about them. But we’re also going to build capacity and give universities tools that we know work in other places to create safe learning environments where students could oppose, have different beliefs, but do so civilly. At the end of the day student safety is our No. 1 priority.
If you look at the Department of Education, what we’ve done since Oct. 7, you won’t find another administration that has come close to the work that we’ve done not only to investigate, but also to build capacity on campuses to create safe learning environments.
An official in your department, Tariq Habash, recently resigned over what he said was your failure to protect students who nonviolently advocate for Palestinians. How do you respond to the charge that doing what you do is actually chilling free speech on campus?
I wish Tariq well. He was a valued member of our team. And what I will tell you is the work that we’ve done at the Biden-Harris administration, and in particular at the Department of Education, around protecting students, including students who are feeling threatened with antisemitism, we’ve done more than any other administration. We’re going to continue to do it. Student safety for me is not something that we go light on, we have to make sure we’re clear on it.
We need to be very clear with college presidents that it’s our expectation that when students are feeling unsafe, they are responding to students right away. And that they’re taking it very seriously.
A lot of university administrators seem to have been slow to acknowledge that there is a problem. What are you actually able to compel administrations to do for Jewish students?
I think you’re right. I think that if there’s a lack of visibility from the leadership, it’s more likely that students are going to find unsafe ways to channel their frustrations. What we saw today at Dartmouth was when students are given an opportunity, because leadership owns the responsibility and acts on it, to create a safe learning environment and to listen to students.
I’ve been very clear from day one, calling out college presidents in terms of their responsibility to address this issue head on. We’ve not only provided accountability, but we’ve provided a lot of resources. I have my team ready to pick up the phone for any leader that is struggling with this and needs guidance and support. We have a technical assistance team that has been assembled. We have done numerous webinars, we’ve traveled to college campuses. We’ve engaged with the Muslim Jewish Advocacy Center in New York City and worked with them to help them serve as almost mentors to colleges and to K-12 district leaders. So we’re really modeling what we want to see from college leaders.
The student that told me that in this country he feels like we’ve normalized antisemitism: that message really resonated with me, and it upset me, to the point where, if that were my child, I would not feel comfortable wanting to send my child to a campus far away. I want for that child what I would want for my own child, and that’s leadership that’s willing to stand up on the values that we have in this country that students should be safe on campus.
A lot of critics of the rise of DEI programs have said that this is actually contributing to a hostile rhetoric for Jews in schools because Jews are not always included as part of the curricula, or they’re painted as oppressors in some of these frameworks. How do you think about the role of DEI in this problem?
I think in so many places across the country, we see DEI efforts reduced to just Black and brown issues. And as a Latino but also as an education leader, I think that’s unfortunate. We need to look at Diversity, Equity, Inclusion as a place where conversations about religious identity or difference of opinions could be handled respectfully and civilly, like what I saw today on Dartmouth’s campus.
I think it’s unfortunate if they’re being viewed as anything but the right place to go when there are issues of inclusion or safety or belonging that plague our universities. I think a well-developed DEI model includes opportunities for students to share the frustrations or concerns that they have on campus, relative to how they might be feeling with regard to antisemitism, Islamophobia or anti-Arab sentiment.
We’ve heard from Jewish parents who are now saying that, since Oct. 7, they’ve become uncomfortable with the idea of sending their children to some of these universities because the climate of antisemitism there has gotten so bad. What would you say to them?
My heart goes out to those parents and it’s frustrating as secretary of education to hear that, in 2024, that is the case. What I would tell those parents is that they have the right to discuss with the leadership of the university their feelings, because, quite frankly, parents can decide where they send their children. And it would be a disservice, not only to the students who are of Jewish descent, but to all students, to have a university whose membership is limited based on feelings of antisemitism by some of the students. Students learn best in a diverse learning environment. Students learn best when they can be on campus, unapologetic of who they are. And I wouldn’t want Jewish students to not feel comfortable expressing who they are, their feelings, even if it’s in disagreement with some other students on campus.
Those parents have the right, and those universities have the responsibility to ensure to those parents, that their students are going to learn in a safe learning environment and that there are resources on campus, not only for the students to go if they feel unsafe, but also where those students could go to express their pride in their culture and their religious background and in their ancestry.
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The post Education Secretary Miguel Cardona finds campus antisemitism ‘repulsive.’ He told us what he’s doing about it. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote
Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.
Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.
Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”
“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”
Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.
UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.
Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.
Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.
“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations
Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.
The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.
“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”
I commend Paraguay and @SantiPenap for the landmark decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.
Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens… https://t.co/OzWACbWcno— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 24, 2025
On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”
The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.
“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.
Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.
Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.
“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.
“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.
“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”
During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”
At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”
“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.
The post Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’
Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.
As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.
Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.
For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance.
On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.
One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”
The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.
These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference.
Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.
This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students.
Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.
As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.
These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.
McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction.
This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.
We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”
Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.
The post Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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