President and 1968 Wharton graduate Donald Trump recently passed an executive order aimed at combatting antisemitism on college campuses.
Credit: Chenyao LiuThe United States Department of Justice announced the formation of a task force to combat antisemitism on college campuses on Monday.
The task force’s first priority, according to a DOJ press release, “will be to root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses.” The formation of the task force comes after 1968 Wharton graduate and President Donald Trump’s executive order directing federal agencies to deport non-citizen students involved in pro-Palestinian protests.
The task force is the latest development in Trump’s efforts to crack down on antisemitism — particularly on college campuses, which were the sites of months of protests following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel. Throughout the past year, Penn was a hotspot for numerous pro-Palestinian protests, which were often cited as evidence in allegations of antisemitism.
The DOJ’s statement echoes Trump’s Jan. 29 executive order that described an “unprecedented wave of vile anti-Semitic discrimination, vandalism, and violence against our citizens, especially in our schools and on our campuses.”
“Anti-Semitism in any environment is repugnant to this Nation’s ideals,” Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Leo Terrell, who was tapped to serve as the head of the task force, said in the press release.
“The Department takes seriously our responsibility to eradicate this hatred wherever it is found,” Terrell added. “The Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism is the first step in giving life to President Trump’s renewed commitment to ending anti-Semitism in our schools.”
A White House fact sheet for Trump’s executive order promised “immediate action” and prosecution by the DOJ against all threats against American Jews, calling for the full force of “all federal resources” to combat antisemitism on “campuses and streets,” specifically “anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.”
The order instructed the DOJ to report all “criminal and civil authorities or actions” available to combat antisemitism, within the next 60 days, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump said in the fact sheet.
The creation of the DOJ task force is the latest in a string of executive actions by the Trump administration, many of which have been challenged in federal court. According to Edward Mitchell, the deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the task force may also be subject to possible legal challenges.
If the task force “weaponizes the power of the federal government to suppress the speech of college kids who have advocated for Palestinian rights, then that is going to run into a wall called the U.S. Constitution,” Mitchell said in an interview with Reuters.
According to the DOJ, the task force will be conducted in collaboration with representatives from the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and coordinated through the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
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