Education Department to investigate five universities accused of continuing to allow antisemitism

The Education Department says it will investigate allegations of five U.S. universities that allowed antisemitic protests and harassment on their campuses.

The agency, in making the announcement Monday, said the probe follows President Donald Trump's Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism executive orders. 

The issue of antisemitism on U.S. campuses reached a flashpoint following Palestinian-backed Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel, which resulted in Israel declaring war on Hamas. 

Some of the biggest and longest anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian protests occurred at Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles. 

Protesters at Columbia made headlines with their encampments and taking over one of the buildings on campus. The demonstrations started in mid-April 2024 when pro-Palestinian students established an encampment of about 50 tents on the university campus that they called the Gaza Solidarity Encampment while demanding the university divest from Israel.

New York City finally dismantled the encampment and arrested 100 protesters on April 30. 

On Sept. 5, 2024, Columbia University wrote that students have the right to protest Israel but that such demonstrations cannot "come at the expense of the rights of others to live, work and learn here."

UCLA also had some big protests and encampments, including a "Jew Exclusion Zone." In August 2024, a federal judge admonished the school for its handling of the pro-Palestinian encampments. The judge also sided in his ruling with the students who had filed a suit and argued the university helped to enforce the exclusion zone. 

The Education Department said this week's announcement that it opened the investigation under its Office for Civil Rights, under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which protects students from discrimination and harassment based on national origin, including shared ancestry."

However, the investigation could be canceled should Trump succeed in his reported Tuesday plan to abolish the department.

"I want Linda to put herself out of a job," Trump said, referring to his Secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahon, who is still awaiting her U.S. Senate confirmation hearing.

The department said it will investigate Columbia University, Northwestern University, Portland State University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. 

The universities didn't respond to Just the News' request to comment on whether they know about the recently opened investigation and their response to it. 

Craig Trainor, the department's acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, criticized the universities, claiming that the toleration of the antisemitic words and actions "paralyzed campus life last year, driving Jewish life and religious expression underground."

"Today, the Department is putting universities, colleges and K-12 schools on notice: this administration will not tolerate continued institutional indifference to the wellbeing of Jewish students on American campuses, nor will it stand by idly if universities fail to combat Jew-hatred and the unlawful harassment and violence it animates," he wrote.