True Allies Don’t Politicize Threats to the Jewish Community
The Jewish Community and State Deserve Action, Not Exploitation
In its recent editorial, the Jerusalem Post endorsed Donald Trump’s proposal to defund American universities in response to campus antisemitism. While the rise in antisemitic incidents on college campuses is real and deeply concerning, the Post‘s arguments misrepresent Trump’s motives, distort historical comparisons, and endorse a dangerously authoritarian approach to a complex challenge. Their editorial doesn’t just miss the mark—it advances a position that could ultimately harm Jewish students and American democracy alike. Below, we respond point by point to debunk the Post’s central claims.
1. Claim: Trump’s plan is a necessary moral correction because universities are failing to protect Jewish students. Yes, antisemitism has surged, and the situation is frightening and demands a response. But Trump’s proposed response, defunding universities wholesale, is not a moral correction; it is a political purge. He has long sought to dismantle academic institutions he perceives as ideological threats. His interest lies not in protecting Jewish students but in weakening spaces of intellectual independence. Nothing in his agenda proposes increased protection, education, or funding for Jewish student life. Instead, it reflects the goals of far-right, Christian Nationalist, Fundamentalist, and Evangelical groups, and organizations like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025: abolish liberal arts, quash anything that comes remotely close to teaching critical thinking, eliminate DEI, cut research funding, and install religious and political loyalists to reshape academia.
2. Claim: Universities have abdicated moral responsibility and must be punished. The editorial misinterprets administrative failure as institutional ideology. Universities should be held accountable when they fail to protect Jewish students, but that accountability must come through dialogue, reform, and engagement, not through sweeping defunding and censorship. The ADL, AJC, and Combat Antisemitism Movement have each laid out clear, practical, and educationally grounded best practices for how universities can combat antisemitism, without censorship, partisanship, or punitive ideological enforcement.
The ADL, AJC, and CAM converge on several core principles: universities should adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism, improve incident reporting systems, educate faculty and staff, and ensure transparency and accountability in addressing antisemitic incidents. All three emphasize the importance of empowering Jewish students and collaborating with Jewish organizations to build more inclusive campuses.
Each organization also contributes distinct strategies:
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) stresses consistent public responses to antisemitic events, protection for Jewish student groups, and integrating antisemitism awareness into broader DEI frameworks.
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) calls for proactive leadership from university presidents, the creation of Jewish advisory groups, and the inclusion of antisemitism education in student orientation and campus programming.
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) offers the FACE (Fostering Antisemitism-Free Campuses) initiative, urging universities to embrace a holistic model built on recognition, empowerment, cooperation, and transparency, while holding university leaders publicly accountable for combating antisemitism.
Together, these models demonstrate that it is possible to combat antisemitism while affirming academic freedom and pluralistic values, without resorting to top-down, punitive mandates like those proposed in Trump’s Project 2025.
3. Claim: Trump’s education agenda mirrors the Civil Rights Act. This comparison is profoundly dishonest. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was designed to dismantle systemic discrimination and expand access to education, voting rights, employment, and public accommodations for historically marginalized communities, especially African Americans. It was rooted in a vision of inclusion, fairness, and equal opportunity.
In contrast, Trump’s education agenda, as outlined in Project 2025, is focused on restricting intellectual diversity and punishing institutions that permit ideological pluralism. His proposals would silence dissenting thought, gut programs that support historically underrepresented groups (including Jews), and condition federal funding on political loyalty. This is not a civil rights movement; it is a political purge.
Authoritarian regimes have long used the language of national protection to justify repressive education policies. In Nazi Germany, Jewish and socialist professors were purged from universities under the pretense of moral and ideological cleansing. In the Soviet Union, entire fields of scientific inquiry were banned or distorted to fit Marxist-Leninist dogma. Trump’s proposals to replace accreditation systems with political appointees and cut funding to top research universities follow this authoritarian logic. They seek to intimidate, reshape, and ultimately control the intellectual infrastructure of the country.
Where the Civil Rights Act expanded freedom, Trump’s policies are designed to constrict it. The Civil Rights Act was born from a grassroots movement led by those directly affected by injustice and aimed to open doors that had long been closed to marginalized communities. By contrast, Trump’s education agenda seeks to shut doors to intellectual independence, to academic dissent, and to critical discourse, under the guise of moral clarity. Comparing the two not only dishonors the legacy of civil rights heroes like John Lewis, Rosa Parks, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who fought to expand the American promise of liberty and inclusion, but also provides a veneer of legitimacy to an authoritarian strategy. That strategy, like those used by regimes in 20th-century Europe, manipulates moral language to justify institutional purges, ideological loyalty tests, and the reshaping of national identity through education. It is history repeating itself, but now in American form, in the name of protecting Jews, even as Jewish values and intellectual institutions are undermined.
4. Claim: Ending DEI and banning student groups will reduce antisemitism. The term “DEI”, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, has increasingly become a flashpoint in political and cultural debates, and not without reason. Critics point to instances where DEI trainings or initiatives have ignored or even perpetuated antisemitism by framing Jews as privileged or omitting antisemitism from broader conversations about hate. These legitimate concerns have led some to conclude that the entire DEI framework is inherently flawed or hostile to Jews.
But that conclusion is a mistake. While some DEI programs have indeed fallen short, dismantling the entire concept of DEI throws out the opportunity to reform and strengthen these frameworks in ways that explicitly include Jews and antisemitism. When designed and implemented responsibly, DEI initiatives can foster environments of genuine inclusion, bridge-building, and protection for all marginalized groups, including Jewish students.
Many Jewish organizations, including the ADL and AJC, have called for reforms that improve DEI rather than eliminate it. These include explicitly naming antisemitism as a recognized form of hate, training DEI officers on the complexities of Jewish identity, and ensuring that Jewish students are not excluded from campus diversity efforts. Reforming DEI to be more inclusive of Jews is a far more constructive and lasting approach than abandoning the concept altogether.
Moreover, banning student groups, whether pro-Israel, anti-Israel, or otherwise, based on political discomfort violates free speech and freedom of association and does not address the root causes of antisemitism. Worse still, such censorship is likely to embolden antisemites rather than silence them. Suppressing offensive or inflammatory speech does not eliminate the ideology behind it; it often reinforces the sense of persecution and martyrdom that fuels extremist belief. When controversial ideas are driven underground instead of being debated and refuted in open forums, they gain traction in more radical, less accountable spaces. Universities, by contrast, are uniquely equipped to challenge hate through dialogue, critical thinking, and exposure to diverse perspectives. Turning campuses into zones of suppression only deepens polarization and delegitimizes the very institutions best suited to foster education, empathy, and resistance to bigotry. The editorial offers no credible evidence, only ideological conjecture, to support its endorsement of these counterproductive and authoritarian measures.
5. Claim: Trump is a moral champion for Jewish safety. Trump is no moral champion. The very suggestion would be laughable if it were not so dangerous. Elevating Trump as a moral voice not only whitewashes his deep record of bigotry and corruption, but it also legitimizes a political culture that thrives on fear, division, and the erosion of democratic norms. History shows us the danger of such moral miscalculations. In 1930s Germany, many conservative and religious leaders supported Hitler in his early rise to power, believing he would restore national order and protect traditional values. Instead, they enabled one of the greatest atrocities in human history. Similarly, fascist movements in Italy and authoritarian regimes in Latin America and Eastern Europe were often welcomed by elites who naively believed they could control or benefit from the strongman’s ascent.
Trump has dined with white supremacists, praised Holocaust deniers, and invoked antisemitic tropes about Jews and money. He routinely insults American Jews as disloyal or ungrateful. His record on immigration, civil rights, truthfulness, and basic human decency is one of deep moral failure. To treat him as a protector of Jews is not just incorrect—it dangerously repeats a historic mistake: empowering authoritarians who exploit fear while dismantling the very freedoms upon which Jewish survival depends.
6. Claim: Trump’s boldness is evidence of leadership. Authoritarian boldness is not moral courage. It is recklessness masquerading as strength. Throughout history, authoritarians have claimed to protect vulnerable groups while dismantling the very freedoms that allow those groups to thrive. Jews, with our long memory of Pharaohs, Czars, and dictators, should be the first to recognize the signs. Trump’s “boldness” is aimed not at protecting Jews but at consolidating power and silencing opposition.
The fight against antisemitism is urgent. But allowing our cause to be weaponized by those with no genuine concern for Jewish life or democratic values is both shortsighted and dangerous. We must not confuse performative posturing with principled action. The Jerusalem Post should reconsider its endorsement of a man whose track record undermines the very institutions and freedoms that have long protected Jewish communities in America.
We need leadership grounded in truth, justice, and the values of our tradition, not political opportunists who exploit our suffering to advance their power. Trump offers none of what is required. And endorsing his agenda risks repeating the very history we are charged to remember—and never repeat.
To call such a figure a champion of the Jewish people is not just absurd, it is a calculated insult to Jewish history, memory, and survival.
In the face of these distortions, our response must be clear: Jewish safety is not a partisan issue. It should never be weaponized to undermine education, suppress inquiry, or enforce ideological loyalty. The path forward lies not in authoritarianism cloaked in moral outrage, but in courageous, principled, and unapologetic engagement with the difficult questions facing higher education and Jewish life in America today. We must demand integrity from our leaders, resist the seduction of simplistic scapegoating, and strengthen the institutions that nourish free thought and moral clarity.
Now is the time for scholars, students, civic leaders, and Jewish communities to reject the hijacking of our struggles and to build a future rooted not in fear and repression, but in justice, truth, and a renewed commitment to democratic values. Anything less risks repeating history in ways we have vowed never to allow again.
