Biden administration highlights efforts to address antisemitism on college campuses

The Biden administration is announcing new actions Monday aimed at combating a dangerous scourge of antisemitic incidents on college campuses across the country in the wake of the Hamas terror attacks on Israel.

The White House highlighted a series of steps taken by the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the Department of Education, including engagement with campus law enforcement officials, which comes amid rising tension on college campuses.

Over the weekend, a series of antisemitic threats were made against Cornell University’s Jewish community in online posts. CNN has reported that at many universities, students are engaging in fervent protests as some administrators grapple with how to acknowledge students’ wide-ranging concerns while also fielding backlash from influential donors demanding the colleges take a clearer stance on the conflict.

DHS and DOJ, a White House official said, “have disseminated public safety information to and hosted multiple calls with campus law enforcement, as well as state, local, tribal and territorial officials to address the threat environment and share information about available resources.”

The Justice Department’s Community Relations Service is providing support to Jewish, Muslim, Arab and other impacted communities, the official added.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of DHS, is working to “proactively engage with schools to assess and address need,” the official said.

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is also “(expediting) its update of the intake process for discrimination complaints under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to specifically state that certain forms of Antisemitism and Islamophobia are prohibited by this law.”

That means, for the first time, the complaint form will make clear that “discrimination on the basis of national origin in federally funded programs or activities – including ethnic or ancestral slurs or stereotypes against students who are for example Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, or Hindu — are forms of prohibited discrimination under this law,” the White House official said. That is expected to formally be updated later this week.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff, who has made fighting antisemitism a top priority in his role, will be joining Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona Monday afternoon for a discussion with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Cardona will join White House domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden later this week for a roundtable with Jewish students at an unnamed university, the White House said.

President Joe Biden acknowledged the pain and fear in both Jewish and Muslim-American communities in Oval Office remarks earlier this month.

“Today, Jewish families worried about being targeted in school, wearing symbols of their faith walking down the street, or going out about their daily lives,” Biden said.

He continued: “We can’t stand by and stand silent when this happens. We must, without equivocation, denounce antisemitism. We must also, without equivocation, denounce Islamophobia.”