President Trump has been cited throughout his terms as striving to combat antisemitism, but the realities of his claims are yet to be seen. Photo Courtesy of The New York Times
Like many Jewish students, I have watched antisemitism, led by the “Pro-Palestine Movement” surge on college campuses — from hateful chants to vandalism and intimidation. When Donald Trump promised to “crack down” on this hatred by punishing universities and deporting foreign students, I initially thought he might finally be addressing a real problem. I was wrong.
Before the 2024 election, Donald Trump pledged to do more to combat this antisemitism. This led many Jews, even formerly left-leaning Jews around me, to throw their support behind the current president. He promised to deport international students who participated in anti-Israel protests and to withhold funding from universities who were not doing enough to curb antisemitism. Despite all of my deep disagreements with President Trump, I admittedly agreed with said policies at first, as I have witnessed anti-Israel sentiment explode into violent antisemitism nationwide.
My own past agreement with that specific policy and the support he garnered from the Jewish community in his “fight against antisemitism” have been extremely misguided. Donald Trump and the Republican Party have long been taking stabs at higher education, whether over LGBTQIA education or DEI, but now Jews are at the center of these attacks. Universities have been given a list of demands by the current administration which they must meet to prevent being sued. Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding have been cut from institutions that were conducting groundbreaking medical research and that host countless students from around the world. A large part of this policy, though, involves deportations of students in the name of “fighting antisemitism”.
I, alongside millions of Americans, have been watching in horror as masked men kidnap people around the country for no apparent reason, including students, people going to their immigration appointments, educators and other hard-working people. Having immigrated to the United States myself, I know how difficult it is to become a U.S. Citizen. I understand how hurtful it is to see that process be seemingly interrupted by the weaponizing of ICE on an unprecedented scale, attacking Latino communities and deporting innocent, hardworking migrants. Trump’s attacks on higher education have an extremely concerning trajectory, and freedom of education is at risk. This dehumanization of immigrants and attacks against communities have been somehow tied into ideas about protecting Jewish safety. Trump’s campus antisemitism policy and repeated rhetoric of how these deportations are targeting “extremists,” should be appalling to any Jewish American. It is both cynical and dehumanizing. It betrays our community’s values and our history.
Let me be clear: universities have a responsibility to fight antisemitism, and students participating in illegal and pro-Hamas rallies must be properly disciplined both by colleges and the law where applicable. But Trump’s policies—which conflate antisemitism with diversity programs and use deportation as a weapon—do not make Jews safer. They make us scapegoats for his attacks on education and immigrants. They risk conflating attacks on higher education, from medicine to exchange programs, with Jewish safety. Worst of all, they risk conflating the dehumanization of immigrants, a pressing issue in this country, with a component of the fight against antisemitism.
By positioning all of Trump’s attacks on universities (for his own sake) as somehow protecting Jews, this only fuels antisemitism. The last thing the Jewish community needs right now is to be associated with totalitarian attacks on free speech and education, especially when it has nothing to do with antisemitism.
We must unequivocally reject Trump’s attacks on immigration and education, but most of all, we must ensure that his policies, most of which do nothing to make Jews safer, are not conflated with Jews and combatting antisemitism. They only add fuel to the flames of antisemitism, and truly have the potential to place more blame and hatred towards the Jewish community.
We must not be the face behind Trump’s attacks on education and immigrants, and we must acknowledge that while parts of it may seem justifiable and even correct in the short term, the long term consequences are far too great for us to sit by and allow these policies to continue forward in our name.
Historically, Jewish communities have been at the forefront of the fight for freedom, equality and dignity for all. We must not let ourselves be dragged to the other side of this fight by one man who claims to have our best interests in mind while infringing on educational freedom and dehumanizing and attacking communities around us.
