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Can Donald Trump “Fix” Higher Education in the United States?
By HENRY SREBRNIK When protests disrupted campuses nationwide in the United States last year celebrating the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, signs and chants demanded “Divest!” and “Cease-fire now!” This fall, much of the protest language has grown darker, echoing language used by Hamas, and declaring “Glory to the resistance!”
Some protesters now refer to them as the “al-Aqsa flood,” the name Hamas uses. “Oct. 7 IS FOREVER” has been spray-painted on walls at colleges. The shift is very apparent at Columbia University in New York, one of the main centres of the protests.
This new messaging has been noticed by Hillel chapters across the country, observed Adam Lehman, president and CEO of Hillel International. “The overall picture on campus,” he said, “has moved from a mass protest movement that embodied a diverse set of goals and rhetoric to this more concentrated and therefore more extreme and radical set of goals, tactics and rhetoric.”
President-elect Donald Trump has promised to crack down on these campus protests, and his allies expect the Department of Education to more aggressively investigate university responses to pro-Palestinian movements.
“If you get me re-elected, we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years,” he told donors last May. Trump called the demonstrators part of a “radical revolution” that he vowed to defeat. He praised the New York Police Department for clearing the campus at Columbia University and said other cities needed to follow suit, saying “it has to be stopped now.”
In an Agenda47 policy video released last July, he asserted that “the time has come to reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical Left, and we will do that.” Trump promised to axe federal support and accreditation for universities that fail to put an end to “antisemitic propaganda” and deport international students that are involved in violent anti-Israel campus protests. “As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.”
At a recent antisemitism event in Washington DC, he pledged to protect Jewish students on American campuses. “Here is what I will do to defeat antisemitism and defend our Jewish citizens in America,” he declared. “My first week back in the Oval Office my Administration will inform every College president that if you do not end antisemitic propaganda they will lose their accreditation and federal support.”
He announced that he “will inform every educational institution in our land that if they permit violence, harassment or threats against Jewish students the schools will be held accountable for violations of the civil rights law.
“It’s very important Jewish Americans must have equal protection under the law and they’re going to get it. At the same time, my Administration will move swiftly to restore safety for Jewish students and Jewish people on American streets.”
When back in the White House, Trump announced that he would direct the Department of Justice to pursue federal civil rights cases against schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination “under the guise of equity” and will advance a measure to have schools that continue these illegal and unjust policies fined up to the entire amount of their endowment.
Citing Trump’s campaign pledge to push for significant reforms, the Stand Columbia Society, which is dedicated to restoring the university’s “excellence,” has identified a handful of ways in which the federal government could pull financial support from Columbia, or any other university. They estimate Columbia could lose out on $3.5 billion in federal funding should they face government retaliation.
The most likely action, according to the group, would be for the government to slow down on issuing new research grants to the university, a move that would require no justification at all. The government could also squeeze the enrollment of international students by curbing issuance of student visas.
Columbia boasts upwards of 13,800 international students. Losing out on the cohort could cost them up to $800 million in tuition money. Neither one of these scenarios requires the administration to take legal action.
Moreover, the government could, additionally, push to withhold all federal funding should it determine that a university had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. That statute bars recipients of federal funding from discriminating based on race, colour, or national origin. It was later clarified in 2004 by the then-assistant secretary for the Department of Education, Kenneth Marcus, that Title VI also protected the rights of ethnic groups that shared a religious faith, such as Jews.
Given the explosion of antisemitism that erupted on college campuses in the wake of Hamas’s attack, it doesn’t appear it would take much to make the case that Columbia, and a whole host of other universities, violated Title VI.
Columbia, for its part, already faces at least three Title VI lawsuits over campus antisemitism. (Among other major universities, Harvard faces two, and the University of California Los Angeles, University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are also on the list.)
“These problems have existed for some time,” a contributing member of Stand Columbia, Alexandra Zubko, who is a Columbia graduate, contends. “This might be the moment that administrators look in the mirror and decide that they can’t let them continue.”
“All we need to do is listen to what President Trump has said during his campaign to understand that this administration will be serious about enforcing anti discrimination laws in ways that could be problematic to those institutions that have been getting a free pass for too long,” Marcus has said.
With Trump promising to make higher education “great again” once he returns to office this coming January, American universities will face increasing pressure to comply with his administration, if they don’t want to lose billions in federal support.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
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Their art was whimsical, elegant, ‘scandalous,’ and colorful. It was also revolutionary.
Even under glass, designer Fritzi Löw’s intricately beaded “Adam and Eve” bag manages to sparkle.
One of 200 objects and artifacts on display in “Modernity and Opulence: Women of the Wiener Werkstätte,” a major new exhibition at the Jewish Museum, presented in cooperation with the MAK — Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, the piece captures the show’s theme of casting off old ways and old fashions.
Founded in 1903 and active through 1932, the Wiener Werkstätte, or Vienna Workshops, gave women, who were entering public life and the workforce in greater numbers, a way to turn specialized artistic skills into lifelong professions, including architecture, decorative arts, ceramics and textiles. In so doing they changed the way they and women outside the workshop saw themselves.
“For some, their first opportunities for paid artistic work were through the Wiener Werkstätte, which became a vital professional pipeline for women artists while also bringing an influx of virtuosic experimentation to the workshop,” Kristina Parsons, the museum’s assistant curator, said.
At least one-quarter of the nearly 200 women who worked for the multidisciplinary collective were of Jewish faith, Jewish descent, or came from Jewish families.
While the exhibition features many Jewish artists, it spotlights Vally Wieselthier and Felice Rix-Ueno. Their prolific work in ceramics and textile design has had a lasting influence on both disciplines.
The exhibit “brings together art, design, fashion and Jewish history to illuminate the central role Jewish women played in shaping modernity, both as visionary makers and as influential patrons,” said James S. Snyder, director of the Jewish Museum.
For example, Rix’s fanciful, colorful designs appeared on toys, tableware, wallpaper and dresses. The exhibit showcases her elegant tasseled cigarette case, a chiffon cinched waist dress as well as whimsical designs for a papier-mâche bird and another for a toy carriage pulled by a dog.
The early 1900s ushered in the era of the “New Woman,” a time when women were shedding the boned and corseted fashions of the past in favor of more fluid, and even fanciful, garments. It was also a time when women increasingly pursued higher education, fought for suffrage, and challenged restrictive gender roles and clothing.
That sensibility is captured in the dozens of fashion postcards on display, which served as both advertisements and collectibles. In one, a woman wearing a sky-blue turban and a form-fitting white-and-black dress trimmed with fur glances casually over her right shoulder as she walks a small black dog. In another, a woman peers assuredly from beneath a plumed hat, her curly hair cut in a bob, scarlet red lipstick her only hint of makeup.
As Parsons explained, the Wiener Werkstätte’s fashion department allowed women to directly address public perceptions of modern femininity by designing clothes and accessories that they, and other like-minded women, could incorporate into daily life.
“Women’s dress was an important point of convergence between larger impulses toward reform and feminist politics — fashion was then, as now, understood for its capacity to be a revolutionary statement,” she said.
It’s an idea captured in Wilhelm List’s 1910 “Young Woman in Undergarments.” The oil painting depicts a woman believed to be Wally Neuzil, who later trained as a nurse. She wears ruffled “umbrella drawers,” which fall loosely around her knees, and a sleeveless chemise. The garments allow for ease of movement and comfort in one’s own skin.
The exhibition also shows how Jewish women such as the noted socialite and arts patron Adele Bloch-Bauer and the journalist and salon hostess Berta Zuckerkandl helped ensure the workshop’s success.
In turn, upper-class clientele, including progressive Jewish intellectuals, commissioned furniture and interiors, wore Werkstätte fashions, sent Rosh Hashanah greetings on Werkstätte-designed stationery, and celebrated the workshop’s creations.
During its 30 years of operation, the workshop produced hundreds of patterns. Between 1910 and 1917 alone, it created more than 500 designs. One wall of the gallery is given over to textiles. Bold reds and purples evoke coral formations, while zigzag patterns combine purple and orange with chocolate and persimmon.
Aside from textiles and illustrations, there are also dozens of ceramics, such as Susi Singer’s design for a green and gold oven that, with its cake-like tiers, looks as if it belongs in a Disney animated film.
Artist Vally Wieselthier’s mirror, fashioned from glazed earthenware and adorned with a trio of busts, hangs near a collection of her outsized ceramic heads. The heads, some of which stand nearly two-feet tall, were modeled after mythological and classical figures, but also shopkeepers and everyday people. The works drew both praise and ridicule, dismissed by one newspaper as “scandalous bimbo business.”
While the Werkstätte sputtered out in 1932 for a host of reasons, including poor management, financial troubles, a resistance to mass production, and a decline in wealthy patrons, its influence remains.
According to Parsons, “In bringing together highlights from the remarkable body of work made by Jewish women for the Werkstätte, this exhibition spotlights their creativity, ambition, and influence, while inviting visitors to explore a group of artists who embraced decoration as a central expression of modernity.”
Modernity and Opulence: Women of the Wiener Werkstätte continues through Nov. 15, 2026 at the Jewish Museum.
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‘Politically homeless’: As Maine’s Collins-Jackson Senate race kicks off, some Jewish voters find themselves adrift
(JTA) — BANGOR, Maine — With Maine’s marquee U.S. Senate race now set, many Jewish Democratic voters are confronting a difficult choice: whether concerns over newly nominated Democrat Troy Jackson’s rhetoric on Israel outweighs their longstanding opposition to incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
“I, and many Jews in Maine, certainly feel politically homeless at this point,” said Chris Myers Asch, a history teacher at Colby College and Jewish resident of Hallowell, Maine. “We don’t feel like there are candidates who actually represent us and that we trust to defend our interests, and I think that’s sad, particularly for people like myself who have been active and involved and supportive of many different candidates over the years.”
Jackson, 58, a former logger and state Senate president, secured the Democratic nomination Saturday following the party’s nominating convention to replace Graham Platner, who withdrew earlier this month following a sexual assault allegation, which he denies.
But as Jackson shored up his bid for the nomination, he began to echo the rhetoric of Platner, a staunch Israel critic whose Nazi-linked tattoo sparked concern across Maine’s Jewish community. Since joining the race, Jackson has, for the first time, embraced the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza and called for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel.
Those positions contrasted with the union advocacy and affordability agenda on which Jackson had built his two-decade political career in the state. They also alarmed some Maine Jewish voters, who overwhelmingly lean Democratic.
“I thought Platner was a disaster from the beginning, so pretty much anyone would be an improvement, and I think Jackson is an improvement,” said Myers Asch, who identifies as an independent. “But I can’t say I am wholeheartedly enthusiastic about him. I think he has bowed to the pressure of far-left activists on foreign policy issues, particularly on Israel, and I think that’s unfortunate.”
But while Jackson’s newfound stances on Israel have alienated some Jewish Democrats, it has not necessarily made their choice in November’s general election any easier. Many remain critical of Collins, 73, who has paired strong support for Israel with votes backing much of President Donald Trump’s agenda.
The latest polling in the race, conducted by the University of New Hampshire, finds the contest is a toss up, with Jackson receiving 49% of the vote compared with Collins’ 46%. The poll, which surveyed 1,236 likely voters from July 15 to 20, has a margin of error of +/-2.8%.
With Election Day just 99 days away, the choice facing Jewish voters carries stakes beyond Maine. Democrats see the Maine contest as one of their best pickup opportunities in the battle for control of the Senate. Independent analysts, including the Cook Political Report, rate Maine as one of the few GOP-held Senate seats that Democrats have a decent shot at this year.
While Jews make up a small share of Maine’s electorate, the community leans heavily Democratic. The state has roughly 19,000 Jews across 10,600 households, nearly 70% of which identify as liberal or very liberal, according to the 2024 Maine Jewish Community Study, conducted by Brandeis University in partnership with the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine.
Maine State Rep. Laurie Osher, who is Jewish and said she intends to vote for Jackson, said that despite the anxiety many Jews have felt since Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack, the stakes of defeating Collins outweighed broader political concerns.
“Long before that, we have had a problem with having Susan Collins give strength and support to crazies that are Republican,” Osher said. “We need to get rid of her, and most of the Jews I know agree with that.”
Despite the Maine Jewish community’s overwhelmingly liberal bent, Myers Asch said he had heard more Jews than ever before discussing voting for Collins.
“I have heard more people talking about voting for Susan Collins than I ever have before, because I think a lot of Jews in Maine feel abandoned by the Democratic Party and feel politically homeless,” said Myers Asch.
Brian Kresge, the president of Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor, Maine, said that while he had seen peers in the Jewish community “get behind (Jackson) and trying to overlook the word genocide,” he had also observed many throwing their support behind Collins.
“It’s that hard choice a lot of Jews are weighing. What does the rhetoric against genocide really mean when he’s so good in all these other ways?” Kresge said, referring to Jackson’s strong union ties. “We like him for all of this, and so that’s the hard part. I don’t envy any Jew that hasn’t already made up their mind about the election.”
While Collins has received an endorsement from Trump, she has also broken with the president on several key votes, including in April when she backed a resolution to end U.S. military action against Iran.
Still, during his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination Saturday, Jackson used much of his remarks to hammer Collins’ record of supporting Trump’s policies.
“Thirty years later, Susan Collins is still in Washington, so I do have one question. Who has she served? She has served Donald Trump. She voted with him 96% of the time,” Jackson said. “She helped deliver enormous tax breaks to the corporations and the wealthy on our backs, and she voted to confirm Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, the Supreme Court justice who overturned Roe versus Wade.”
Collins, who has worked to distance herself from Trump and voted with the president’s opinion 95% of the time in 2025, took her own stab at her new opponent Saturday, calling him “hyper-partisan” in an interview with News Center Maine.
“I have known him for more than 20 years, he has been an Augusta insider, and he’s very much a person who takes a hyper-partisan approach to the issues,” Collins said. “I think that’s one of the big contrasts between us. I have always prided myself in working in a bipartisan way.”
For some Jews in the state, the choice between Collins and Jackson has been much more clear-cut.
Lila Kohrman, a 33-year-old Jewish Portland resident, voted for Jackson during the nominating convention Saturday. “Susan Collins has been a senator for almost my entire life, and during that time, things have pretty clearly just gotten worse and worse for Americans,” she said.
“Jewish voters are not a monolith,” Kohrman added. “But I hope that people will be able to support a candidate who has clearly demonstrated that — and I mean Troy Jackson — that has clearly demonstrated that he cares for the lives of marginalized and oppressed people in the United States and around the world, and right now that means opposing sending money to Israel because they are using that money to commit a genocide against the Palestinian people.”
Jackson, who has raised over $1 million since announcing his bid for the nomination, is also facing a significant funding gap against Collins, who has $11 million in her campaign account, according to the latest Federal Election Commission findings.
While Jackson vowed he would not accept any “dark money,” and specifically said he won’t be taking any funding from AIPAC, Collins has received over $1.5 million in donations from at least 750 donors whose contributions were earmarked through AIPAC, according to the latest FEC findings.
The race has also already seen a massive influx of outside ad spending. Collins’ campaign, her allies and other groups aligned with Senate Republican leadership have reserved roughly $60 million in airtime through the fall, while the Senate Democrats’ main super PAC and its affiliates have purchased roughly $24 million.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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After New York stabbing, Netanyahu says Mamdani is making Jews less safe
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani of “fomenting” hate and making Jews less safe through his fierce criticism of Israel. Netanyahu suggested the mayor’s rhetoric on the Gaza war contributed to the climate that led to Thursday’s stabbing of an Orthodox man outside a Manhattan synagogue.
“I don’t think it’s accidental that after he made this hate speech against Israel and against me, the next day a Jew is stabbed coming out of a synagogue,” Netanyahu said Sunday morning on Fox News.
Authorities said the suspect, Jose Morales, 51, allegedly yelled “Allahu Akbar” as he stabbed an Asian man in the back with a knife and an Orthodox man in the torso with a screwdriver before being subdued and arrested. Morales was arraigned Friday on several hate crime charges and was held without bail. Both victims were hospitalized and are expected to recover.
Investigators have not publicly linked the suspect’s motives to the mayor’s comments in a video address last week conceding he did not have the authority to arrest Netanyahu when he visits the city for the United Nations General Assembly in September, while also calling Netanyahu a war criminal and accusing him of orchestrating a genocide. Mamdani encouraged New Yorkers to protest instead.
The controversy has also been fueled by reports that members of Mamdani’s inner circle believed long before the legal review was completed that the city lacked the authority to arrest Netanyahu. Despite that, Mamdani proceeded with the review and used a mayoral address to announce the legal conclusion while renewing his criticism of the war in Gaza. Critics say the episode was a calculated political move aimed at energizing the pro-Palestinian and progressive base that helped elect him. The speech drew more than 200 million views across social media.
Speaking outside the Manhattan synagogue on Friday, Jewish leaders and some prominent rabbis expressed concern that the comments risked endangering Jewish New Yorkers, the largest concentration of Jews in the United States.
Netanyahu escalated his feud with Mamdani by directly linking the mayor’s embrace of the International Criminal Court’s case against him to the rise in antisemitism. “I speak to Jewish Americans in New York, and they’re afraid right now,” Netanyahu said. “I speak to quite a lot of my friends, and they say, ‘Look, it’s like a different world. We’re afraid to go into the streets. We certainly do not want to wear yarmulkes or any clothing that would give away that we’re Jews.’”
The Israeli leader further accused Mamdani of “basically supporting” Hamas, despite the mayor describing the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel as a “horrific war crime” that should be opposed “with every single fiber of our being.” Asked on Thursday whether he considers the Hamas massacre a genocide, Mamdani stopped short of using that term.
“The genocide charge belongs to our enemies,” Netanyahu said in the Sunday interview. “What we are doing is try to fight this genocidal terrorist organization that embeds itself among civilians.”
Netanyahu (6 minutes ⬇️) accuses Mamdani of fueling antisemitism by embracing ICC case:
“He’s fomenting hate… I speak to Jewish Americans in New York, and they’re afraid right now. And I don’t think it’s accidental that after he made this hate speech against Israel and against… pic.twitter.com/qjb5uj4xNM
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) July 26, 2026
The latest clash shows how the war in Gaza has become one of the biggest political issues of Mamdani’s administration. His outspoken criticism of Israel has won support from progressives but has also deepened tensions with many Jewish leaders, who say his rhetoric has made an already difficult climate even worse. In an interview on Thursday, Mamdani suggested that New Yorkers “have been aghast at this genocide over the last few years, and not only the continued denial of that genocide but also the fact that it continues itself.”
A recent Associated Press survey conducted before Mamdani’s recent comments found that Mamdani, who won just 26% of the Jewish vote in last year’s mayoral election, is viewed more favorably by American Jews than Netanyahu, who is facing a tough reelection in October.
Netanyahu is expected to visit Washington, D.C., on Monday for a meeting with President Donald Trump and attend the funeral of Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close political ally.
Despite acknowledging he cannot arrest Netanyahu, Mamdani has vowed to continue speaking out against the Israeli leader ahead of his expected appearance at the United Nations this fall. Netanyahu said Sunday that he still intends to travel to New York “to speak the truth” and defend Israel before the international body.
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