University near White House blamed Jewish students for pro-Palestine harassment: DOJ

A private university near the White House was once so alarmed by a reported swastika in a predominantly Jewish fraternity that it banned from campus the Jewish member who posted what turned out to be an ancient Hindu symbol.

George Washington University has swung hard the other way a decade later, according to a Justice Department findings letter that alleges an assistant dean of students and campus police blamed Jewish students for the harassment they endured from "antisemitic protesters" who shouted "racial slurs" at them, "forced them to flee" and blocked their movement.

"The Department finds that despite actual notice of the abuses occurring on its campus, GWU was deliberately indifferent to the complaints it received, the misconduct that occurred, and the harms that were suffered by its students and faculty," Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon told President Ellen Granberg on Tuesday.

If GWU does not accept a "voluntary resolution agreement" in the "near future," the DOJ  will enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act against the university for facilitating a "hostile educational environment for Jewish, American-Israeli, and Israeli students," Dhillon wrote.

Just one example of this environment is a series of "antisemitic, disruptive protests" from about April 25, 2024 through final exams and graduation the next month, including a University Yard encampment "at the center of the GWU educational environment."

DOJ found "numerous incidents of Jewish students being harassed, abused, intimidated and assaulted by protesters" and thus "afraid to attend class, to be observed, or, worse, to be 'caught' and perhaps physically beaten on GWU's campus," Dhillon alleged.

GWU said it's "currently reviewing" Dhillon's letter "to respond in a timely manner" but that it has already "taken appropriate action under university policy and the law to hold individuals or organizations accountable, including during the encampment, and we do not tolerate behavior that threatens our community or undermines meaningful dialogue."

It did not answer Just the News requests to confirm or contest Dhillon's allegations about the assistant dean of students and two campus police officers. The letter does not specify which assistant dean of students – the incident Dhillon mentioned happened outside the law school, which has its own.

Paying $1 billion to resolve antisemitism findings would kill people?

While Dhillon didn't specify what enforcement might look like, the Trump administration recently proposed $1 billion from UCLA to resolve deliberate-indifference antisemitism findings and reinstate more than $500 million in research funding, though a federal court Tuesday ordered the National Science Foundation to reinstate its portion of those suspended grants.

It's just one part of President "Trump’s Fight Against Top Universities," whose "animating force" is two-term White House lawyer May Mailman, according to a New York Times profile this week. Mailman, who foreshadowed the second term's domestic agenda as leader of the Independent Women's Law Center, simply calls herself "the catcher of floating ideas."

University of California President James Milliken said accepting the offer would not only "completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians," but also could kill people because UCLA and the university system create "technologies and medical therapies that save lives."

"This isn't about protecting Jewish students - it's a billion-dollar political shakedown from the pay-to-play president," Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom responded in a joint statement with the co-chairs of the Legislative Jewish Caucus. "UCLA has taken aggressive, concrete steps to crack down on the vile scourge of antisemitism on campus."

Like GWU, UCLA hosted an illegal encampment by pro-Palestine protesters that litigants called a "Jew Exclusion Zone," requiring Jews to denounce Israel to freely pass through campus. 

The university sought liability immunity for its officials, arguing they were trying to de-escalate even as they enforced the encampment's boundaries. It paid $6.13 million to resolve the lawsuit last month, more than a third of it to Jewish charities.

"The Trump administration has not announced equivalent probes into Islamophobia," wire service Reuters said, echoing Al Jazeera by describing a "violent mob attack" on the UCLA illegal encampment that prompted a March lawsuit by those pro-Palestine protesters.

Mainstream media largely portrayed the May 1, 2024 overnight clashes between pro-Israel and pro-Palestine groups as one-sided unprovoked attacks by pro-Israel "instigators," as UCLA Chancellor Gene Block called them. UCLA only declared the encampment "unlawful" on the eve of the clashes, five days after the lawsuit says it began "in peace."

Tell a woman to leave because she 'might antagonize' incels'?

Dhillon's letter portrays GWU as feckless in the face of unambiguous harassment of Jewish students for being Jewish.

"One Jewish GWU student described being surrounded, harassed, threatened, and then ordered to leave the area immediately by antisemitic protesters after exiting the Law School" next to University Yard. The assistant dean of students told him his presence was "antagonizing and provoking the crowd" and he should leave, the letter says.

Protesters "confronted and surrounded" another Jewish student who "quietly held up an Israeli flag" in the yard, shouting racial slurs and linking arms to restrict his movements, yet a campus police officer did nothing but tell the student to leave "for his own safety."

Another officer gave the same directive to a Jewish student "standing across the street from the encampment holding an Israeli flag" when protesters screamed obscenities, praised Hamas and used violent language including "Zionist go die" and "Zionists go to hell." 

Between April 25 and May 1, 2024, "GWU received no less than eight complaints alleging that demonstrators were discriminating against students because they were Jewish or Israeli," among broader complaints from students, parents and alumni, Dhillon said.

GWU has a complicated history with speech on Israel and Palestine, alternately disciplining and silencing students on both sides of the issue, and one of its most frequent internal critics has been on its case about it for more than a decade.

Public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who made his name on suing tobacco companies, has publicized many of the incidents in his newsletter, including GWU resurrecting an "anonymous snitch program" after an antisemitism complaint, removing a Palestinian flag from a dorm room window.

But he has also often criticized GWU for tolerating vandalism and disruptive protests and this year called on Indiana University Bloomington to sue students for a pro-Palestine encampment, arguing that failure to do so would make trustees liable for breach of fiduciary duty.

Dhillon's letter to GWU is "scathing and frightening," Banzhaf said. "If true, it is shocking, and presumably would never have occurred if the incident involved groups and causes other than pro-Hamas demonstrators" in an illegal encampment harassing "Jewish students solely because of their religion."

He asked rhetorically whether administrators would have ordered black and female students, respectively, to leave encampments by Ku Klux Klan demonstrators and "angry organizations of incels" because their skin color and sex "might antagonize and provoke the crowd" — paraphrasing the assistant dean of students' alleged comment.