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‘Too Few Consequences’: ADL Tells US Colleges to Protect Jewish Students’ Civil Rights, Crack Down on Antisemitism

New York University students stage a protest in Washington Square Park in Manhattan to oppose Israel and call for a ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas on Oct. 25, 2023. Photo: Gordon Donovan/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Thursday called out American colleges and universities in an open letter, reminding them of their obligation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment and intimidation.

“Shockingly, many students engaging in this activity — including harassment, intimidation, and other clear violations of student codes of conduct — have not faced consequences,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote.

“This is unacceptable. Full stop,” he continued. “Universities have by and large been derelict in their duty to protect Jewish communities on campus, in many cases raising serious concern under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Simply put, to date, there have been too few consequences — that must change.”

The letter came amid mounting pressure on college presidents to take a firm stance against extreme anti-Zionist and antisemitic rhetoric. In the past month, at least one president has been ousted from office for failing to do so. After telling a congressional committee that calling for a genocide of Jews would only constitute a violation of school rules in “context-dependent” circumstances, Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania resigned after 17 months on the job.

US college campuses have experienced an alarming spike in antisemitic incidents — including demonstrations calling for Israel’s destruction and the intimidation and harassment of Jewish students — since Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Elite universities have been among the biggest hubs of such activity, with students and faculty both demonizing Israel and rationalizing the Hamas atrocities.

In Tuesday’s letter, the ADL noted that between Hamas’ Oct. 7 onslaught in Israel and Dec. 7, the Jewish civil rights organization “recorded the highest number of antisemitic incidents ever recorded during any two-month period” in over 40 years of tracking such data.

On college campuses alone, the ADL recorded 470 antisemitic incidents between Oct. 7 and Dec. 18. During that same period, antisemitic incidents across the US skyrocketed by 323 percent compared to the prior year.

The Algemeiner has reported on numerous incidents that occurred in that span of time. At Harvard University, anti-Zionism escalated to antisemitic harassment when a mob of anti-Israel activists — including Ibrahim Bharmal, editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review whose alumni includes former US President Barack Obama — followed, surrounded, and intimidated a Jewish student on campus, according to videos that went viral across social media. “Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!” the crush of people screamed in a call-and-response chant into the ears of the student who —as seen in the footage — was forced to duck and dash the crowd to free himself from the cluster of bodies that encircled him.

At Cornell University, someone posted on a social media forum that is popular with students messages calling for the murder and rape of Jews. In addition to threatening the lives of Cornell’s 3,500 Jewish students, who comprise about 22 percent of the school’s student population, the posts called for an attack on a campus kosher dining hall — named 104West  — affiliated with the Steven K. And Winifred A. Grinspoon Hillel Center, which forced campus officials to shutter the property.

The ADL further explained that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters led the way in promoting a campus environment hostile to Jewish and pro-Israel voices, even suggesting that Israeli civilians deserved to be murdered for being “settlers.” Additionally, as scenes of Hamas terrorists abducting children and desecrating dead bodies circulated worldwide and invoked global outrage, SJP chapters at schools such as Brown University, the University of Maryland, Tufts University, and the University of California-Los Angeles described the attacks as a form of “resistance” and demanded that others accept “our right to liberate our homeland by any means necessary.”

Experts have told The Algemeiner that the situation on college campuses would improve if the Biden administration issued long promised regulations that apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism to civil rights investigations — a measure, they argue, would help protect Jewish students from antisemitic discrimination and harassment rooted in anti-Zionism.

The regulations, based on a directive given in Dec. 2019 by then-US President Donald Trump in response to rising anti-Zionist hatred on college campuses, were scheduled to be issued this month. However, they have been delayed and will not be instituted until at least Dec. 2024, after the next US presidential election, according to a copy of the proposed rule on the website of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

The IHRA definition of antisemitism — which has been adopted by dozens of governments and hundreds of civic institutions around the world — includes examples of anti-Israel bias, such as “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” “denying the Jewish people their right to self determination,” and “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

Kenneth Marcus, a former assistant secretary for civil rights at the US Education Department, told The Algemeiner earlier this month that the new rules “should be the top priority for the Office for Civil Rights.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post ‘Too Few Consequences’: ADL Tells US Colleges to Protect Jewish Students’ Civil Rights, Crack Down on Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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French Far-Left Party Calls for Ban on Israeli Pop Star Eyal Golan’s Paris Concert

Eyal Golan. Photo: Screenshot

France’s leading far-left party has called for the cancellation of Israeli pop star Eyal Golan’s upcoming concert in Paris, describing him as “a true mouthpiece for supporters of genocide” in Gaza.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the La France Insoumise party (LFI — “France Unbowed”), led by leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, urged the National Assembly — the lower house of the French Parliament — to ban Golan’s upcoming concert, claiming that he “should not come to sing the praises of genocide in Paris.”

“We call for a broad mobilization to prevent this event from taking place,” LFI lawmakers wrote in the statement, referring to Golan’s concert scheduled for May 20. “We ask the prefect to ban it immediately.”

“No one should come to Paris to sing hymns to the genocide of the Palestinian people,” the statement continued.

According to the party, the 54-year-old singer called for “the extermination of the Palestinian people” in a social media post the day after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which he wrote, “Leave no soul alive.”

LFI also said that Golan “repeated the statement a week later, before receiving support from far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir,” who serves as Israel’s national security minister.

In their statement, LFI lawmakers claimed that Golan’s concert, expected to gather more than 4,500 people, “constitutes a real voice for genocide supporters.”

“France cannot tolerate such an unnecessary insult to the thousands of Gaza victims and their loved ones,” the statement read.

In response to these accusations, Liam Productions, the event organizer, denounced the push to cancel Golan’s concert as antisemitic and expressed their eagerness to meet the Jewish community in France, promising a “unifying and special evening.”

“On Holocaust Remembrance Day, as we remember the consequences of staying silent in the face of hate, far-left parties in France seek to boycott an Israeli artist simply because he is Israeli,” the statement read.

“This is not freedom of expression — it is antisemitism disguised as morality. The people of Israel will not be silent, will not apologize, and will not stop singing.”

Mélenchon and his party have a long history of pushing anti-Israel policies and, according to Jewish leaders, of making antisemitic comments — such as suggesting that Jews killed Jesus, echoing a false claim that was used to justify antisemitic violence and discrimination throughout the Middle Ages in Europe.

The French diplomat has been criticized by French Jews as a threat to their community, as well as to those who support Israel.

Mélenchon has previously described the French Jewish community as “an arrogant minority that lectures to the rest.” He has also urged the French government to recognize a “Palestinian state.”

In the wake of the Hamas onslaught on Israel, Mélenchon and his party issued a statement calling the attacks “an armed offensive by Palestinian forces” in response to the ongoing Israeli “occupation.”

Last year, Mélenchon openly expressed support for Hezbollah on social media, as the Iran-backed terrorist organization based in Lebanon continued to clash with Israel.

“Mass killing in Lebanon by Netanyahu’s invading army,” Melenchon wrote in a post on X, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The toll is getting worse by the hour. Full support for the national resistance of the Lebanese.”

France has experienced a disturbing surge in antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7 atrocities, with 1,570 anti-Jewish hate crimes recorded last year.

The total number of antisemitic outrages last year was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022, according to a report by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) — the main representative body of French Jews.

“LFI has given antisemitism a political endorsement,” CRIF president Yonathan Arfi told the French publication Le Point last year. “We observe this toxic porosity between criticism of Israel and the ostracization of French Jews. The Palestinian cause becomes a license to hate.”

In late May and early June, antisemitic acts rose by more than 140 percent in France, far surpassing the weekly average of slightly more than 30 incidents.

The report also found that 65.2 percent of antisemitic acts last year targeted individuals, with more than 10 percent of these offenses involving physical violence.

The post French Far-Left Party Calls for Ban on Israeli Pop Star Eyal Golan’s Paris Concert first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Trump Signs Seismic Executive Order on Foreign Funding in Higher Education

US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon shakes hands with Annette Albright next to US President Donald Trump during an event to sign executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 23, 2025. Photo: Leah Millis via Reuters Connect.

US President Donald Trump has signed a seismic executive order to strengthen federal law which colleges and universities have long circumvented to avoid reporting donations they receive from illiberal foreign governments and individuals.

“Protecting American educational, cultural, and national security interests requires transparency regarding foreign funds flowing to American higher education and research institutions,” Trump said in the order, which was signed in the Oval Office in the presence of the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon on Wednesday. “It is the policy of my administration to end the secrecy surrounding foreign funds in American educational institutions, protect the marketplace of ideas from propaganda sponsored by foreign governments, and safeguard America’s students and research from foreign exploitation.”

The executive order noted that during Trump’s first term in office, the Education Department launched investigations of 19 higher education institutions suspected of concealing foreign donations and any undue influence the immense sums may have gained the country from which they originated — inquiries that led to the disclosure of $6.5 billion worth of unreported gifts. The Biden administration, he said, “undid” that work, “hindering public access to information on foreign gifts and contracts.”

The remainder of the order enumerates enforcement duties delegated to McMahon, which include reversing Biden-era policies which countenanced lax observance of the law — Section 117 of the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965 — updating the public on the department’s findings, and impounding federal funds appropriated to institutions that continue to shroud their foreign donations behind a veil of secrecy and corporate spin.

“Unfortunately, in the last four years, the Biden administration undermined the structures the president built to do this critical work, allowing nations like China and Qatar to funnel billions of dollars to US universities with little to no oversight,” McMahon said in a statement. “This financial infiltration enabled foreign governments to steal taxpayer-funded intellectual property and reshape how our elite campuses teach about Israel and the Middle East.”

Foreign money in higher education is an issue to which scholars and nonprofit groups have called attention for years, arguing that it is an instrument of hostile powers that aim to distort US foreign policy by exposing students to propaganda or other ideas which undermine faith in liberal values such as free markets, limited government, and freedom of the press. Some of it is used to rehabilitate the reputations of authoritarian governments, a tactic which, experts argue, effectively converts the openness of American society into a force of its own self-subversion.

For example, according to the 2017 National Association of Scholars (NAS) report “Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education,” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for years planted “Confucius Institutes” at universities across the US, teaching students that Taiwan is Chinese territory while censoring darker moments in the regime’s history, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre that killed thousands of Chinese citizens. The institutes, the report added, came with substantial financial benefits, such as extra funds for the University at Buffalo’s Asian studies department and “opera costumes and materials in the lobby of Binghamton University.”

At other times, the Confucius Institutes were allegedly used as bases from which to conduct espionage and theft of American research and intellectual property.

NAS president Peter Wood told The Algemeiner on Thursday that Trump’s executive order is the right move, but that higher education will “resist” complying with it.

“What is at stake here is not just compliance with a good accounting principle. What is really at stake is the contempt with which many college and university presidents regard America’s national interest,” Wood said. “Allowing our universities to become beholden to the Chinese Community Party endangers Americans. The National Association of Scholars has helped to track the theft of intellectual property, the duplicity of American researchers, and the diversion research programs all under the influence of Chinese funding. China is far from the only source of such subversive funding, but it is by far the largest source.”

He added, “President Trump’s forceful executive order will go a long way towards curing this problem. We can be under no illusion, however, that America’s colleges and universities will cheerfully comply. They have a long record of ignoring lawful requirements for such disclosure and they are now more eager than ever to demonstrate their defiance of America’s laws. In light of other executive orders against [diversity, equity, and inclusion] and other forms of academic malfeasance, dozens of prominent research universities are openly declaring that they intend to resist.”

NAS has recorded copious data on foreign funding of higher education, notably in the Foreign Donor Database it created in 2024 that led to the uncovering of vast sums the Qatari government had pumped into American universities — Cornell University received over $322 million, for example, from the Qatar National Research Fund between 2015 and 2018 — to promote pro-Hamas propaganda.

Alex Joffe, anthropologist and editor of BDS Monitor for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), told The Algemeiner that Qatar has “given billions to universities, including to share their Middle East studies program which then in turn develop and disseminate K-12 curriculums which are dramatically anti-Israel, antisemitic, and pro-Islamist.”

The donation of billions of unreported dollars to US institutions of higher education is strongly correlated with an erosion of liberal democratic norms and increased antisemitism on college campuses, according to a 2023 report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) titled, “The Corruption of the American Mind.”

From 2015-2020, the report noted, schools that accepted money from Middle Eastern donors had, on average, 300 percent more antisemitic incidents than schools that did not accept such donations. The largest donor it named is Qatar, which former US President Joe Biden described in 2022 as a “major non-NATO ally.” From 2014-2019, Qatar gave American universities a striking $2.7 billion in undocumented funds.

Additionally, students attending universities that received foreign funding witnessed antisemitism “significantly more often” than those attending schools that did not.

“A lack of transparency in funding reporting occurred in tandem with antidemocratic norms and antisemitism across American institutions of higher education,” the report said. “A massive influx of foreign, concealed donations to American institutions of higher learning, much of it from authoritarian regimes with notable support from Middle Eastern sources, reflects or supports heightened levels of intolerance towards Jews, open inquiry, and free expression.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Trump Signs Seismic Executive Order on Foreign Funding in Higher Education first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Antisemitic Incidents in the Netherlands Surge to Record Levels, New Report Finds

March 29, 2025, Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands: A pro-Palestinian demonstrator burns a hand-fashioned Israeli flag. Photo: James Petermeier/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect

Antisemitism in the Netherlands surged to alarming levels last year, according to a new report, which found that anti-Jewish incidents across the country reached a “worrying record” last year even after a historic spike following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.

The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI) — a Dutch Jewish human rights organization that monitors antisemitism — on Thursday released its annual report on antisemitic incidents for 2024, showing an 11 percent increase over the previous all-time high recorded in 2023.

Last year, CIDI recorded 421 antisemitic incidents, a sharp increase from the average of 138 incidents per year the country had experienced from 2012 to 2022, prior to the Hamas-led onslaught on Israel and the ensuing Gaza war.

“This is the highest number since CIDI started keeping track of reports 40 years ago,” Naomi Mestrum, the organization’s director, said in a statement, adding that preliminary data from the first quarter of 2025 “suggests that the trend is continuing.”

In the last two years, the number of antisemitic incidents in the Netherlands has surged by 305 percent compared to its average from 2012 to 2022, prompting local Jewish community leaders to call on authorities to take stronger action against the rising wave of antisemitic harassment following the Hamas atrocities in Israel.

According to the study, the Hamas-Israel war is often used as a justification for antisemitism. The report also observed a rise in antisemitic hate crimes in public settings, where visibly identifiable Jews were more frequently subjected to insults, threats, and intimidation.

“The most dramatic increases were seen in public spaces, where antisemitic incidents surged by 45 percent,” CIDI said in a statement. “Visibly Jewish individuals were increasingly subjected to verbal abuse, threats and harassment.”

Last year, Israeli soccer fans were violently attacked in Amsterdam after watching the Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team compete against the Dutch club Ajax in a European League match. At the time, Femke Halsema, the city’s mayor, called the attackers “antisemitic hit-and-run squads” who went “Jew hunting.”

The 117-page document by CIDI also recorded a 44 percent increase in vandalism targeting Jewish property.

In several universities across the Netherlands, there has been a rise in anti-Israel protests where antisemitic slogans are frequently chanted. As a result of ongoing threats and intimidation, the report said Jewish students are increasingly avoiding classes.

According to the study, antisemitism has also spread across social media and other online platforms, with hateful messages and antisemitic stereotypes becoming more widespread and normalized.

“Social media algorithms play a major role in strengthening and spreading antisemitic ideas more quickly,” Mestrum said.

However, CIDI noted that its figures did not include social media activity, which it is investigating separately.

Regarding the 421 incidents recorded last year, the Dutch group said it received about 1,700 reports in total but only counted those it assessed as being “indisputably antisemitic.”

In light of its findings, CIDI urged for a “strong and consistent government response” to combat rising antisemitism and ensure the safety of the Jewish community.

“That means investing in education, but also a firm and visible approach to antisemitism in schools and social media, stopping subsidies to cultural institutions that exclude Jewish artists, banning terrorist and extremist groups that spread hatred, and implementing a zero-tolerance policy in the criminal prosecution of anti-Semitic crimes,” the statement read.

The Dutch government’s National Coordinator for Combating Antisemitism, Eddo Verdoner, called CIDI’s findings “shameful,” stating that antisemitic expressions are becoming increasingly common.

“I hear heartbreaking stories from children, students, and adults who are harassed and mocked because of their Jewish identity,” Verdoner wrote in a post on X. “They hide a Star of David necklace, don’t dare to wear a kippah, or conceal their Jewish background out of fear.”

The Netherlands, which saw the highest percentage of Jewish victims in Western Europe during World War II, with at least 75 percent of its Jewish population being murdered, is now home to approximately 40,000 Jews.

The post Antisemitic Incidents in the Netherlands Surge to Record Levels, New Report Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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