Connect with us

RSS

Northwestern U is facing a new federal antisemitism investigation — and criticism of its new antisemitism task force

(JTA) – On the same day the president of Northwestern University announced the new members of a task force formed to combat antisemitism on campus, the school became a target of a federal investigation into its handling of antisemitism.

The confluence on Tuesday would seem to be good timing for the private Big Ten school in Evanston, Illinois, as it tries to restore its Jewish community’s faith in the institution. Except the committee itself has already come under fire in some circles before it has even begun its work.

Some Jewish critics of higher education — including the conservative activist who filed the Title VI complaint that triggered Northwestern’s U.S. Department of Education investigation — have attacked the committee and its members in a pattern reminiscent of recent controversies at Stanford and Harvard. The critics have taken aim at the committee’s stated desire to combat Islamophobia as well as antisemitism, and at some members’ views on Israel and critical race theory.

“​​Northwestern President’s ‘Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate’ launches with clear intent to block any recognition of antisemitism at the university,” posted Richard Goldberg, a Jewish former intelligence officer and Northwestern alum who worked in the Trump White House and, before that, for a Republican governor of Illinois. “The co-chair and membership make that clear. This is absurd.”

Goldberg cited committee co-chair Bryan Brayboy’s past work advocating for a “Tribal Critical Race Theory in Education” for Indigenous people. Goldberg also objected to another member’s work in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel; that member, Jessica Winegar, was a key voice pushing the American Anthropological Association’s vote last summer to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

Other committee members include the director of the campus Hillel, student representatives and members of the board of trustees; there are no rabbis on the committee.

Undeterred by the criticism, the committee’s co-chairs have said they aren’t going anywhere, and a spokesperson for Northwestern says the school stands behind them.

“Our committee will not weigh in on geopolitics. We will not be distracted by the outside noises that suggest we cannot work for whatever reasons,” Brayboy and co-chair Effi Benmelech, an Israeli-born finance professor, wrote in an open letter announcing their work on Tuesday.

They defined their committee’s chief responsibilities: “Listen to members of our community through a lens of curiosity and empathy”; create new “pedagogical opportunities for Northwestern’s community to learn about antisemitism, hate, and Islamophobia”; and make recommendations to leadership.

The committee did not return a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment. A Northwestern spokesperson said the committee “represents Northwestern’s diverse perspectives,” adding, “We are confident in the work of this committee.”

The debate over the committee comes amid an ongoing parade of federal investigations into college campuses, many of them linked to the Israel-Hamas war. The Department of Education also announced new Title VI investigations this week into Yale University, Arizona State University, Ann Arbor Public Schools and a for-profit online law school. These join a list of more than 50 such investigations the department has opened since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The attack, and the war it sparked, triggered a wave of campus activism and antisemitism.

At least three of the latest investigations, including Northwestern’s, concern antisemitism complaints brought by conservative activists, while Ann Arbor’s concerns a complaint about anti-Muslim sentiment that was brought by a Muslim public affairs group. Some of the complaints are based on unclear incidents.

“Frankly, we don’t even know what the facts are,” Donald Daugherty, Jr., senior counsel at the Defense of Freedom Institute, told JTA about an antisemitism complaint his own organization filed, which triggered the investigation at Yale. “So I guess we need to know what the facts are before we can really decide on an appropriate, mutually acceptable resolution.”

Daugherty said his group, which was formed in 2021 by Trump- and Bush-era education officials, got involved in Title VI because of its focus on “federal education issues.” Its first civil rights complaint, filed against the Oak Park, Illinois, K-12 district in 2022, dealt with that district’s policy of implementing race-conscious grading.

The group switched gears to antisemitism complaints after Oct. 7. Several of the schools the institute has since filed antisemitism complaints about, including Drexel and Rutgers, have also seen investigations opened, though the institute said their complaints did not trigger them.

In his Yale complaint, Daugherty wrote that his institute filed it “as an interested third-party organization that strongly advocates for a republic where freedom, opportunity, creativity, and innovation flourish in our schools.” The complaint goes on to name two specific Jewish Yale students who reported having been blocked from attending a campus event on the war in Gaza. But, Daugherty told JTA, he’s never spoken to either of them.

“We were just observing, monitoring media accounts as to what’s going on,” he said. “And we thought, well, we’ve got to get involved and help push back against it because it’s, among other things, a civil rights violation.”

JTA has reached out to representatives of the two students and to Yale, which recently appointed its first-ever Jewish chaplain, for comment.

Daugherty noted that groups like his are legally entitled to file complaints without working with any affected parties. Indeed, it’s a practice that has grown in recent weeks as Title VI antisemitism complaints have picked up steam among Jews and activist groups.

Zachary Marschall, the Jewish editor-in-chief of the conservative higher education website Campus Reform, said he’s personally responsible for filing 20 complaints, including the ones that prompted new investigations this week into Northwestern and ASU. His complaints have also been responsible for recent investigations at Brown and Temple.

Marschall told JTA he files his complaints as a concerned citizen who has less to fear than Jewish students at these schools. “Since I’m in a position to speak out, I feel morally obligated to do what I can to fight antisemitism on college campuses,” he said.

Marschall said his complaint at Northwestern involves two allegations. The first concerns reports of a pro-Palestinian rally on campus at which the colors of the Palestinian flag were projected onto a building. The second involves an Oct. 17 open letter from the university’s Asian American Studies program that described Hamas as “a political group” and described posters comparing the group to ISIS as “Islamophobic messaging” and “anti-Palestinian war propaganda.”

The program director did not reply to a JTA request for comment. A Northwestern spokesperson said the school “does not tolerate antisemitism” and added, “The complaint against Northwestern was not filed by a member of our community but instead by an outside organization.”

Marschall said he wasn’t impressed by the language Northwestern used to introduce its new antisemitism committee.

“Higher education manipulates ‘empathy’ and ‘inclusivity’ to ignore, erase, and whitewash Jewish suffering,” he wrote to JTA. “Northwestern’s rhetoric contains the same manipulative ‘empathy’ language that has enabled university administrations to ignore Jew hate and anti-Jewish discrimination.”

He said his other newly opened Title VI complaint, against ASU, cites events and rallies put on by the Tempe, Arizona, state school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine in the days after Oct. 7. In response, an ASU spokesperson took a swipe at Marschall’s organization.

“Campus Reform, which says it ‘holds itself to rigorous journalism standards and strives to present each story with accuracy, objectivity, and public accountability,’ first learned about the letter to the Department of Education – because they sent the letter to the Department of Education,” the spokesperson wrote to JTA.

The spokesperson added that the university condemns “antisemitism and other hateful rhetoric in all its forms,” but emphasized, “ASU also is responsible for upholding free speech, as granted by the U.S. Constitution. The university neither endorses nor restricts opinions voiced at campus demonstrations. People on our campuses have the right to peacefully express their opinions as long as they comply with the law and the student Code of Conduct.”

Members of the Ann Arbor Public Schools board wordsmithed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, Jan. 18, 2023. (Andrew Lapin)

Meanwhile, the federal investigation into Ann Arbor Public Schools in Michigan concerns a complaint focused on anti-Palestinian sentiment that was filed by the state’s chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. The complaint alleges that a middle school counselor told a Palestinian student, “I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” and that the school board did not respond properly when the incident was brought to its attention.

“CAIR-MI welcomes the Office of Civil Rights opening a formal investigation into whether Ann Arbor Public Schools adequately addressed the alleged comments made by the counselor at Tappan Middle School,” Dawud Walid, CAIR Michigan’s executive director, said in a statement.

Walid continued, “Calling a Palestinian Muslim student a ‘terrorist’ is a very offensive and hurtful comment that was compounded by the school board’s seeming lack of concern for the student when it was brought to their attention.”

A spokesperson for the school district did not return a JTA request for comment, but the former board president, who is Palestinian, previously issued a statement saying the board is “deeply concerned and dismayed” over the incident and promised to address it properly. The school board recently made headlines for becoming one of the only school districts to call for a bilateral ceasefire in Israel and Gaza.

Finally, Abraham Lincoln University, a private, for-profit online law school based in California, is also the target of a new federal shared ancestry investigation. The school did not return JTA requests for comment.


The post Northwestern U is facing a new federal antisemitism investigation — and criticism of its new antisemitism task force appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Continue Reading

RSS

Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire

Explosions send smoke into the air in Gaza, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, July 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

The spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing said on Friday that while the Palestinian terrorist group favors reaching an interim truce in the Gaza war, if such an agreement is not reached in current negotiations it could revert to insisting on a full package deal to end the conflict.

Hamas has previously offered to release all the hostages held in Gaza and conclude a permanent ceasefire agreement, and Israel has refused, Abu Ubaida added in a televised speech.

Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have hosted more than 10 days of talks on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day truce in the war.

Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on a call he had with Pope Leo on Friday that Israel‘s efforts to secure a hostage release deal and 60-day ceasefire “have so far not been reciprocated by Hamas.”

As part of the potential deal, 10 hostages held in Gaza would be returned along with the bodies of 18 others, spread out over 60 days. In exchange, Israel would release a number of detained Palestinians.

“If the enemy remains obstinate and evades this round as it has done every time before, we cannot guarantee a return to partial deals or the proposal of the 10 captives,” said Abu Ubaida.

Disputes remain over maps of Israeli army withdrawals, aid delivery mechanisms into Gaza, and guarantees that any eventual truce would lead to ending the war, said two Hamas officials who spoke to Reuters on Friday.

The officials said the talks have not reached a breakthrough on the issues under discussion.

Hamas says any agreement must lead to ending the war, while Netanyahu says the war will only end once Hamas is disarmed and its leaders expelled from Gaza.

Almost 1,650 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed as a result of the conflict, including 1,200 killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Over 250 hostages were kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught.

Israel responded with an ongoing military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.

The post Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel

People hold images of the victims of the 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community center, marking the 30th anniversary of the attack, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Irina Dambrauskas

Iran on Friday marked the 31st anniversary of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires by slamming Argentina for what it called “baseless” accusations over Tehran’s alleged role in the terrorist attack and accusing Israel of politicizing the atrocity to influence the investigation and judicial process.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the anniversary of Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 300.

“While completely rejecting the accusations against Iranian citizens, the Islamic Republic of Iran condemns attempts by certain Argentine factions to pressure the judiciary into issuing baseless charges and politically motivated rulings,” the statement read.

“Reaffirming that the charges against its citizens are unfounded, the Islamic Republic of Iran insists on restoring their reputation and calls for an end to this staged legal proceeding,” it continued.

Last month, a federal judge in Argentina ordered the trial in absentia of 10 Iranian and Lebanese nationals suspected of orchestrating the attack in Buenos Aires.

The ten suspects set to stand trial include former Iranian and Lebanese ministers and diplomats, all of whom are subject to international arrest warrants issued by Argentina for their alleged roles in the terrorist attack.

In its statement on Friday, Iran also accused Israel of influencing the investigation to advance a political campaign against the Islamist regime in Tehran, claiming the case has been used to serve Israeli interests and hinder efforts to uncover the truth.

“From the outset, elements and entities linked to the Zionist regime [Israel] exploited this suspicious explosion, pushing the investigation down a false and misleading path, among whose consequences was to disrupt the long‑standing relations between the people of Iran and Argentina,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.

“Clear, undeniable evidence now shows the Zionist regime and its affiliates exerting influence on the Argentine judiciary to frame Iranian nationals,” the statement continued.

In April, lead prosecutor Sebastián Basso — who took over the case after the 2015 murder of his predecessor, Alberto Nisman — requested that federal Judge Daniel Rafecas issue national and international arrest warrants for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over his alleged involvement in the attack.

Since 2006, Argentine authorities have sought the arrest of eight Iranians — including former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died in 2017 — yet more than three decades after the deadly bombing, all suspects remain still at large.

In a post on X, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the country’s Jewish umbrella organization, released a statement commemorating the 31st anniversary of the bombing.

“It was a brutal attack on Argentina, its democracy, and its rule of law,” the group said. “At DAIA, we continue to demand truth and justice — because impunity is painful, and memory is a commitment to both the present and the future.”

Despite Argentina’s longstanding belief that Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah terrorist group carried out the devastating attack at Iran’s request, the 1994 bombing has never been claimed or officially solved.

Meanwhile, Tehran has consistently denied any involvement and refused to arrest or extradite any suspects.

To this day, the decades-long investigation into the terrorist attack has been plagued by allegations of witness tampering, evidence manipulation, cover-ups, and annulled trials.

In 2006, former prosecutor Nisman formally charged Iran for orchestrating the attack and Hezbollah for carrying it out.

Nine years later, he accused former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — currently under house arrest on corruption charges — of attempting to cover up the crime and block efforts to extradite the suspects behind the AMIA atrocity in return for Iranian oil.

Nisman was killed later that year, and to this day, both his case and murder remain unresolved and under ongoing investigation.

The alleged cover-up was reportedly formalized through the memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 between Kirchner’s government and Iranian authorities, with the stated goal of cooperating to investigate the AMIA bombing.

The post Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns

Murad Adailah, the head of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, attends an interview with Reuters in Amman, Jordan, Sept. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jehad Shelbak

The Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements, has been implicated in a wide-ranging network of illegal financial activities in Jordan and abroad, according to a new investigative report.

Investigations conducted by Jordanian authorities — along with evidence gathered from seized materials — revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood raised tens of millions of Jordanian dinars through various illegal activities, the Jordan news agency (Petra) reported this week.

With operations intensifying over the past eight years, the report showed that the group’s complex financial network was funded through various sources, including illegal donations, profits from investments in Jordan and abroad, and monthly fees paid by members inside and outside the country.

The report also indicated that the Muslim Brotherhood has taken advantage of the war in Gaza to raise donations illegally.

Out of all donations meant for Gaza, the group provided no information on where the funds came from, how much was collected, or how they were distributed, and failed to work with any international or relief organizations to manage the transfers properly.

Rather, the investigations revealed that the Islamist network used illicit financial mechanisms to transfer funds abroad.

According to Jordanian authorities, the group gathered more than JD 30 million (around $42 million) over recent years.

With funds transferred to several Arab, regional, and foreign countries, part of the money was allegedly used to finance domestic political campaigns in 2024, as well as illegal activities and cells.

In April, Jordan outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s most vocal opposition group, and confiscated its assets after members of the Islamist movement were found to be linked to a sabotage plot.

The movement’s political arm in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, became the largest political grouping in parliament after elections last September, although most seats are still held by supporters of the government.

Opponents of the group, which is banned in most Arab countries, label it a terrorist organization. However, the movement claims it renounced violence decades ago and now promotes its Islamist agenda through peaceful means.

The post Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2017 - 2023 Jewish Post & News