Jesse Scheckner
Higher education institutions that fail to effectively tamp down on antisemitism will face continued defunding until they correct course, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon says.
“Discrimination in any form is not to be tolerated on any campus,” she said. “It’s totally unacceptable.”
McMahon is doubling down on actions President Donald Trump’s administration took to address violence and discrimination against Jewish students at schools across the country, including canceling $400 million from Columbia University early this month.
McMahon said Columbia Interim President Katrina Armstrong has since asked for a list of actions the school must take to regain the funding. She described Armstrong’s request as “incredibly sincere.”
Columbia has become the first target in Trump’s campaign to cut federal money to colleges accused of tolerating antisemitism amid the Israel-Hamas war that began on Oct. 7, 2023.
The university was at the forefront of U.S. campus protests over the war last Spring. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up an encampment in April and inspired a wave of similar protests. Protesters at Columbia went on to seize a campus building, resulting in dozens of arrests when police cleared the building.
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans grilled Columbia then-President Minouche Shafik about the university’s response to antisemitism. Shafik said she was “personally committed to doing everything I can to confront it directly.” She resigned four months later.
A few weeks after that, a university task force said that Jews and Israelis at the school were ostracized from student groups, humiliated in classrooms and subjected to verbal abuse amid the spring demonstrations.
In recent days, a much smaller contingent of demonstrators have staged brief occupations of buildings at Columbia-affiliated Barnard College to protest the expulsion of two students accused of disrupting an Israeli history class. Several students were arrested following an hours-long takeover of a building Wednesday.
Many people involved in the protests have said there’s nothing antisemitic about criticizing Israel over its actions in Gaza or expressing solidarity with Palestinians.
Some students, and an attorney advising them, see the university’s new disciplinary crackdown as an effort to mollify the government by suppressing pro-Palestinian speech.
Federal immigration authorities this month arrested multiple people who participated in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia. One had their student visa revoked. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration is expecting to revoke more student visas in the coming days.
Columbia is among a handful of colleges that have come under new federal antisemitism investigations. Others include the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota; Northwestern University; and Portland State University.
“(To) our higher ed institutions, one of the things I wanted to make clear was this is not about free speech. This is about civil rights,” McMahon said. “Have debates, voice differences of opinion, but … let’s do it in a way that’s nonviolent.”
McMahon’s comments came Tuesday afternoon during a roundtable discussion on education at the Kendall campus of True North Classical Academy, a charter network in Miami-Dade.
Other roundtable participants included, among others, Florida International University Interim President Jeanette Nuñez, Miami Dade College President Madeline Pumariega, Miami-Dade School Board member Monical Colucci, education entrepreneur and former Collier County School Board member Erika Donalds, and former state Rep. Michael Bileca, True North’s CEO.
Nuñez, Florida’s immediate past Lieutenant Governor, said the state is “leading the charge” on combating on-campus antisemitism. After the Oct. 7 attack, she said, state lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis worked to “eliminate any opportunity to do any sort of camping” and ensure that protestors “could not cover their faces with masks” to shield themselves from consequence.
Laws the Legislature passed include measures defining antisemitism in Florida statute, allowing for recurring funding for private security at Jewish schools and hiking penalties for religious and ethnic harassment, among others.
Colucci noted that in August, the Miami-Dade School Board approved an initiative to review whether district-approved curriculum includes examples of antisemitism. Other school boards in Florida have taken similar steps.
Pumariega said Miami Dade College made its policies against antisemitism known early and that most on-campus agitators aren’t students and have no connection to the institution. But while Florida’s educational institutions have indeed led the fight against anti-Jewish speech and actions, she said, some other states have not passed laws strong enough for their schools to enforce rules against on-campus discrimination.
McMahon said she’d look into it.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights sent letters to 60 colleges and universities last week advising them that they are under investigation for violations “relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination.” The letters, McMahon said, warned the schools to take corrective steps or lose “enormous public investments funded by U.S. taxpayers.”
“That support is a privilege and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal antidiscrimination laws,” she said.
Two Florida schools, the University of South Florida and University of Tampa, were on the list.
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Material from The Associated Press was used in this report. Republished with permission.
2 comments
Michael K
March 18, 2025 at 10:32 pm
Yes, so says the national expert in the world of… wrestling.
SuzyQ
March 19, 2025 at 1:20 am
Let’s defund the U.S. Department of Education altogether. Its elimination has been a part of the official platform of the Republican Party since 1979. In fact, President Ronald Reagan ran for re-election on the promise to abolish the federal department of indoctrination. He won re-election by one of the greatest landslides in U.S. history, but a Democrat-controlled Congress made his campaign promises futile.
1982
In his State of the Union speech, President Ronald Reagan calls for the end of the Department of Education. “Reagan says he believes that decisions about education should be made at the local level and that the federal government should play only a minor role in the nation’s schools. The speech stirs a debate in Congress. In the end, the department is funded, although at lower levels than in the past.”