Universities graded on addressing antisemitism
Harvard, Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were among the top universities to receive an “F” on a Campus Antisemitism Report Card issued Thursday by the AntiDefamation League.
In a first-of-its-kind report, the ADL graded 85 colleges across the nation on their policies and administrative actions taken to protect Jewish students and combat antisemitism. Of them, two received an “A,” 17 received a “B,” 29 received a “C,” 24 received a “D” and 13 received an “F.” The report card comes at a time when the line between free speech and hate speech is debated across the country and a slew of college administrative scandals have followed the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
“Every campus should get an A – that’s not grade inflation, that’s the minimum that every group on every campus expects,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Like all students, Jewish students deserve to feel safe and supported on campus.”
Harvard was one of the first universities to make national headlines about how those on campus were responding to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Days after war broke out, a coalition of student groups co-signed a letter blaming Israel for the attack. Many of them were then publicly identified.
After an influx of reports of antisemitic actions and concerns about students’ safety, Harvard President Claudine Gay and University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill testified in December before Congress about antisemitism on college campuses. Their comments sparked intense national criticism.
Gay testified that hate speech and calls for the genocide of Jews are antisemitic, but said whether they violated Harvard’s code of ethics depended on context. Within a matter of weeks, Gay and Magill had both resigned from their positions.
After several Jewish students filed a lawsuit against Harvard claiming it fosters antisemitism, the school’s interim president, Alan M. Garber, announced two new task forces: the Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and the Presidential Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim and Anti-Arab Bias. Both began their work on campus in February.
Other top schools have faced similar lawsuits and administrative scandals over reports of rising antisemitism on their campuses since Oct. 7.
In March, two students from MIT filed a lawsuit against the university. With help from the StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice, the students allege MIT allowed antisemitism that resulted in intimidation, harassment and assault.
Stanford – which, along with Harvard and MIT, received a failing grade from the ADL – is now facing a lawsuit from a former lecturer whom it suspended after he was accused of calling Jewish students “colonizers.” The ADL said it created the report card to give parents, students and others a mechanism to evaluate how administrators are responding to antisemitism on campus.
The two schools that received an “A” in the ADL report are Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and Elon University in Elon, North Carolina.
Brandeis was the first private university to revoke official recognition of its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter after the Oct. 7 attack, and Elon was praised for its transparent process for reporting antisemitic incidents, an advisory council to address antisemitism, and active Jewish student organizations.
Ken Tran
“Like all students, Jewish students deserve to feel safe and supported on campus.”
WASHINGTON – The fourth time was the charm for House Republicans when the chamber voted Friday to renew a controversial spying law on a bipartisan basis – but not without plenty of hiccups along the way.
The House approved reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, by a 273-147 vote.
Most dissenters came from the body’s civil liberties-minded ultraconservative and progressive factions. The law’s strongest advocates are in the intelligence committee, who say FISA’s warrantless surveillance provisions are essential to national security.
The renewal fight once again highlighted the divides within the GOP conference. House Speaker Mike Johnson was forced to pull consideration of FISA from the House two times a few months prior. Congress temporarily extended the program until April 19.
It certainly didn’t help that Trump gave the hard right his blessing, with a post on Truth Social telling Republicans to “KILL FISA.”
In retaliation against leadership, 19 of the conservative hard-liners who have been a thorn in Johnson’s side shot down a procedural vote for the bill Wednesday, bringing the House to a standstill.
Among the major sticking points: a portion of the law called Section 702, which allows U.S. authorities to surveil communications of foreigners outside the United States. That surveillance is later collected into a database for authorities to search without a warrant. But because those foreigners often contact Americans, domestic data is also swept up in collection as well.
Section 702’s opponents pushed heavily for a warrant requirement, claiming it was necessary for Americans’ privacy rights.
“The constitutional liberties of Americans have to come first. We don’t suspend the constitution for anything,” Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., chair of the House Freedom Caucus, said on the
Capitol steps Wednesday, flanked by like-minded colleagues. “That has to be the premium, protecting Americans’ constitutional liberties.”
The law’s supporters pointed to other reforms made to FISA to prevent abuses and argued a warrant requirement would defang the program.
Johnson defended Section 702 at a weekly news conference, saying “it’s a critically important piece of our intelligence and law enforcement.” Before becoming speaker in October, Johnson was also a critic of the law but he said that classified briefings have given him a “different perspective.”
The new bill Republicans presented isn’t far off from what conservatives tanked earlier in the week. The only major change is in the expiration date, which was shortened to two years from five. But that satisfied enough hard-liners to allow the legislation to pass in hopes of Republicans taking full control of Washington in November to drastically change the law later on.
The House isn’t necessarily done yet, though. In a bid to stop the bill from going to the Senate, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., filed a motion to reconsider just before lawmakers left Washington for the weekend.
Without the warrant requirement, the bill is expected to easily clear the Democratic-controlled Senate, and the White House has expressed support for the renewal as well.