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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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The Forverts is on vacation. Here’s how to access our content while we’re away.
From Thursday, Aug. 13, till Friday, Aug. 21, the Forverts will be on vacation.
During this time, you can continue to read our English-language articles here; our Yiddish articles here and our Tidbits column of easy-to-read Yiddish news briefs accompanied by audio here. You can also play Vertl (Yiddish Wordle) or view one of our many videos by clicking on one of the following:
- YIDDISH WORD OF THE DAY: Check out our playlist of Yiddish Word of the Day here.
- OUR COOKING SHOWS: Watch a variety of cooks make all sorts of recipes in Yiddish with English subtitles, including Rukhl Schaechter, Eve Jochnowitz, Sender Glasser, Gitl Schaechter Viswanath and Roza Jaffe here.
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Israel’s enemies say it is anti-Christian. Jewish extremists are helping them make the case
One of the more damaging charges against Israel now circulating in the United States portrays the Jewish state as increasingly hostile to Christianity and Christians. The accusation has acquired considerable prominence in American media, where stories about attacks on clergy, harassment of worshippers, restrictions around Christian holy sites and violence against Christian communities have accumulated into a broader portrait of a country becoming inhospitable to one of the faiths born in the Holy Land.
The Washington Post recently devoted a major article to attacks on Christians in Israel and the government’s lackluster response, while other reporting has focused on Jews spitting at Christian clergy and pilgrims in Jerusalem, vandalism of Christian property and the April assault on a Roman Catholic nun near the Old City.
The nun’s case was particularly appalling: according to the subsequent indictment, a Jewish Israeli man chased the 48-year-old French Catholic sister, pushed her to the ground and kicked her after identifying her as a Christian nun. Israeli police arrested the suspect and prosecutors charged him with an assault motivated by religious hostility.
The Armenian Christians of Jerusalem have become another symbol of the phenomenon. Their community predates almost every modern political dispute over the city, with a continuous presence stretching back some 1,700 years. Yet Armenian clergy and residents have described repeated episodes of spitting, intimidation and abuse.
Israeli media in recent weeks described Israeli teenagers arriving at the headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church in the Old City and asking whether Christians were inside because they wanted to spit at them.
Scenes like these travel instantly around the world and provide ready-made material for anyone seeking to portray Israel as a place where Christians are despised. In fact, Israel’s Jewish extremists have no particular beef with Christians – but rather a conflict with, and often a hatred for, Arabs in general, of any religion.
Overall, the incidents are not representative of Christian life inside Israel. About 200,000 Christian citizens lived in the country at the end of 2025, most of them Arab Christians, and the community has continued to grow. Arab Christians have exceptionally high educational attainment and are disproportionately represented in Israeli higher education. Christians serve as judges, diplomats, doctors, academics and public officials, and their churches and institutions form a recognized part of Israeli public life. Moreover, the assault on the Catholic nun produced an arrest and indictment rather than tacit approval, and Israeli authorities regularly proclaim their commitment to Christian worship and the protection of Christian holy places.
Yet a radical Jewish fringe appears determined to furnish Israel’s enemies with the pictures, anecdotes and headlines required to transform an inflammatory accusation into a plausible story. The latest damaging example comes from Taybeh, the last predominantly Christian Palestinian village in the West Bank (and home to its only beer brewery).
Taybeh has endured months of tension and violence. In June, Israeli settlers obstructed Palestinians attempting to extinguish a large fire near the village, according to Palestinian firefighters and a local priest. Residents have complained of arson, vandalism, incursions onto private property and intimidation.
“The settlers can do whatever enters their heads,” said the Rev. Jack Abed of Taybeh’s Greek Orthodox community. “And every now and then we have rioting from settler youth who come into the village. They bring sheep with them to graze in our fields.”
This week the Israeli military responded by closing the village to Israelis, saying the measure followed violent attacks by Israelis in the area and was intended to protect local residents and maintain order.
The order illustrates two realities at once. The Israeli army is using military power to protect a Palestinian Christian community from Israeli Jewish extremists. This tells a very different story from the sweeping claim that the Israeli state has embarked upon a campaign against Christians. At the same time, the necessity of such a measure shows the extent of the problem Israel has permitted to develop.
Indeed, Israel Radio this week reported that there have been 660 cases of “nationalistic crime” by Jews in the West Bank in the first six months of 2026 – a 50 percent increase over the same period last year. The report, citing military sources, said six Palestinians were killed and 140 injured in these attacks. There are rarely long-term arrests and no settlers have been convicted in the deaths.
I recently wrote in these pages about Jewish terrorists in the West Bank after extremists torched two mosques, burned cars and fields and attacked Palestinian motorists. One mosque in Qusra was burned and covered with revenge graffiti; another in Kur was set ablaze.
The violence belongs to a larger pattern of attacks on civilians, destruction of property and vigilante incursions into Palestinian communities. I described this as both a moral failure and a national-security disaster because every such episode creates another security problem for the Israeli soldiers and police who must contain the consequences, while simultaneously providing Hamas, Iran and Israel’s other enemies with propaganda more effective than much of what they could manufacture themselves.
The Christian dimension makes the strategic stupidity even more breathtaking. Israel depends upon deep reservoirs of sympathy among Christians around the world, especially in the United States, where tens of millions of evangelical Christians have provided some of the most consistent political support for the Jewish state. Christian attachment to Israel also extends far beyond evangelical politics to people who regard the survival of ancient Christian communities and access to the holy places of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Galilee as matters of profound spiritual importance.
Every video of an extremist spitting at a priest, every report of an Armenian Christian being harassed and every attack on a Christian Palestinian village chips away at that reservoir of goodwill. These extremists are weakening Israel’s security, staining Judaism and turning potential friends of Israel into skeptics and existing skeptics into enemies.
The military’s action in Taybeh is therefore welcome, and it is also woefully insufficient. Israel’s Oct. 27 election offers the possibility of a different approach. Should Netanyahu be defenestrated and a new government take office, a comprehensive crackdown on Jewish terrorism in the West Bank should rank among its first priorities. The task requires arrests, prosecutions and enforcement rather than declarations of concern after each fresh outrage.
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A Democratic upset in Connecticut — but Israel was not a factor
(JTA) — Luke Bronin scored a decisive victory over longtime Rep. John Larson in Connecticut’s Democratic primary Tuesday, marking another defeat for AIPAC which had backed the 14-term congressman.
The pro-Israel lobby group is increasingly viewed as politically toxic in Democratic primaries across the country, with several progressive candidates notching victories after making opposition to the group a centerpiece of their campaigns.
Israel and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, however, were not at the forefront of the contest in Connecticut’s 1st Congressional District, reflecting a more nuanced picture regarding Democratic voters’ shifting sentiments toward Israel.
Bronin and Larson, the race’s two candidates with more traditionally pro-Israel positions, together won nearly 90% of the vote, with Bronin receiving 53% while Larson received 34%. The two progressive candidates in the race, Jillian Gilchrest and Ruth Fortune, who both accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, finished a distant third and fourth.
Bronin, 46, who has Jewish ancestry on his father’s side, is the former mayor of Hartford and also served in the Obama Administration as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes. His campaign largely centered on affordability and emphasizing the need for new leadership in the Democratic party.
“If we are going to fix this mess that we are in, we need to build a Democratic Party that is bringing a whole new energy to this fight,” Bronin told supporters following his victory.
Israel was not entirely absent from the campaign. Larson, who first took office in 1999, split with Bronin during a primary debate last month when Larson defended his recent vote in support of U.S. military aid to Israel.
“Yes, I voted in favor of making sure that Israel, our ally, is going to get the aid from the United States that it needs. But the Palestinians need humanitarian aid, and Donald Trump has got to enforce the law,” Larson said.
Bronin pushed back at Larson, replying, “Trusting Donald Trump to do the right thing is a mind-blowing example of putting hope over all of the evidence in front of us.”
While Larson had long supported Israel during his tenure in Congress, he has been critical of Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza and treatment of Palestinians and vocally opposed the United States’ war in Iran.
Bronin, meanwhile, has said he is against taxpayer money going toward funding offensive military aid to Israel, though he supports “defenses for civilians that protect civilian life against rockets and missiles and drones.”
“I think it’s hugely important that Israel exists as a safe, secure homeland for the Jewish people,” Bronin said when asked about his views on Israel on The Lisa Wexler Show in May. He also spoke out against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, explaining that the premier had “done enormous damage to Israel’s security, Israel’s standing in the world,” adding that “we have an obligation as a country to say what’s happening is not okay.”
Bronin slightly outraised Larson on the campaign trail, receiving roughly $3.1 million largely from individual donations from billionaires and large firms, while Larson received $2.7 million and relied more on donations from PACs, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Larson received roughly $120,000 in AIPAC-linked donations during the campaign cycle, according to the campaign finance database Open Secrets.
Bronin will now face Republican Amy Chai, a physician and mental health advocate, in the general election for the state’s first congressional district. The district, which spans Bristol, Hartford and Torrington, is home to 27,800 Jews, representing 3.9% of the total population, according to the Berman Jewish Data Bank.
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