US Justice Department launches task force aimed at combating campus antisemitism

Initiative is the latest step by Trump administration to crack down on hardline anti-Israel protesters and harassment of Jewish students

Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.

Anti-Israel activists protest outside Columbia University, January 21, 2025. (Luke Tress/Times of Israel)
Anti-Israel activists protest outside Columbia University, January 21, 2025. (Luke Tress/Times of Israel)

The US Justice Department on Monday announced a task force to combat antisemitism at schools and colleges, the latest move by the Trump administration to crack down on anti-Jewish discrimination on campuses.

The task force will include officials from the Department of Justice, Department of Education, and Department of Health and Human Services, the Justice Department said in a statement.

“The task force’s first priority will be to root out antisemitic harassment in schools and on college campuses,” the statement said.

The group will be led by Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights.

“Antisemitism in any environment is repugnant to this nation’s ideals,” Terrell said in a statement. “The department takes seriously our responsibility to eradicate this hatred wherever it is found.”

The statement did not include specifics on the task force’s plans.

The task force is the first step in US President Donald Trump’s push to combat antisemitism in schools announced in an executive order last week.

A fact sheet accompanying that order included a pledge to deport non-citizen college students and others who “joined in the pro-jihadist protests” on campuses.

“I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before,” the statement said.

The fact sheet also pledged immediate action to prosecute “terroristic threats, arson, vandalism and violence against American Jews” and marshal federal resources to “combat the explosion of antisemitism on our campuses and in our streets since October 7, 2023.”

The deportation order drew pushback from rights groups and legal scholars, and some Jewish groups.

The order, called “Additional measures to combat antisemitism,” reaffirmed an executive order Trump signed during his first term in 2019, and advanced the previous measure in light of the campus turmoil sparked by the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.

“Jewish students have faced an unrelenting barrage of discrimination,” the order said, citing students’ denied access to campus areas, intimidation, harassment, threats and assaults.

“This failure is unacceptable and ends today,” the order said, vowing to use “all available and appropriate legal tools” to combat anti-Jewish discrimination. The fact sheet took aim specifically at “leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.”

The order will require agency and department leaders to provide the White House with recommendations within 60 days on all criminal and civil actions that could be used to fight antisemitism, according to the fact sheet.

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