While pledging to fight campus antisemitism, Trump cuts office investigating it
A record number of Jewish students complained about campus antisemitism after Oct. 7. The office investigating them has been cut in half
Demonstrators gather outside of the offices of the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C. on March 13, 2025 to protest against mass layoffs and budget cuts at the agency, initiated by the Trump administration and DOGE. Photo by Getty Images
By Arno Rosenfeld March 21, 2025
President Donald Trump has pledged to make fighting antisemitism — especially on college campuses — a top priority, and has couched aggressive moves targeting Columbia University and other schools as a means of protecting Jewish students.
At the same time, Trump has pledged to close the Department of Education, the federal agency with the most responsibility for investigating antisemitism, including signing two executive orders. The latest came on Thursday.
Right-leaning Jewish supporters of the president have expressed hope that the work of conducting those investigations, and sanctioning schools that tolerate antisemitism, would simply move to the Department of Justice.
“I care that the work is getting done as efficiently and thoroughly as possible,” said Zachary Marschall, editor of Campus Reform, a conservative news outlet. “If we get better results through the Department of Justice, so be it.”
But Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, appeared to rule that out Thursday after a reporter asked what Trump’s latest executive order to “facilitate the closure” of the Education Department would mean for civil rights investigations.
“Any critical functions of the department, such as that, will remain, but again we’re greatly reducing the scale and size,” Leavitt said.
The Office for Civil Rights has fielded a record number of complaints from Jewish students and organizations since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023 but agency leadership announced last week that it was closing 7 of the 12 regional offices tasked with carrying out investigations, and laying off 250 of the office’s 550 employees.
The White House and Department of Education did not respond to questions about how these cuts would impact antisemitism investigations.
Katy Joseph, a senior civil rights official in the department during the Biden administration, said the cuts would likely push caseloads from around 50 per investigator to more than 120. “The reality is that no one — no matter how great and zealous and committed they are — can manage a caseload that size and get justice for students,” she said in an interview.
There is some evidence that the department is prioritizing investigations into antisemitism, which generally represent dozens of the more than 20,000 complaints the agency receives each year, as it significantly scales back its work.
The department froze all open cases in February but continued to launch investigations into antisemitism. The agency opened an investigation into a complaint filed by StandWithUs, a pro-Israel advocacy organization, alleging discrimination in a school district outside Seattle on Wednesday. “We are hopeful that the federal government will make it a priority to enforce the laws that protect students’ civil rights,” said Roz Rothstein, the group’s CEO, “whether through the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, or another executive agency.”
Who will enforce measures to fight antisemitism?
Unlike other federal agencies tasked with enforcing civil rights laws, including the Department of Justice, the Education Department is required to investigate almost every complaint it receives alleging discrimination at an educational institution.
It cannot levy criminal penalties, but schools generally agree to settle with the agency because it has the ability to halt federal funding to any school or university that it determines is not complying with the law. But that sanction is incredibly rare, and some Republicans criticized agreements that the Biden administration reached with schools accused of antisemitism as too weak.
The Trump administration has moved quickly to punish some schools accused of tolerating antisemitism, including Columbia University, which the government cut off roughly $400 million in grants to last week. That move was carried out by other federal agencies, including the Office of Budget and Management, which handles government contracts.
Marschall, who has filed a series of Education Department complaints alleging antisemitism on various college campuses, praised the administration’s faster pace but said the Office for Civil Rights remains a crucial tool for ensuring schools evenly enforce their policies. “Even though the resolutions that come out of these things can seem very bureaucratic and technical and maybe somewhat boring, they are very important,” he said.
Trump created an antisemitism task force based in the Justice Department that has announced plans to visit 10 schools that have been accused of antisemitism, while the Department of Education sent letters to 60 universities under investigation for antisemitism warning them that they could face enforcement actions.
But Joseph, the former Biden official, said that cuts to the department would make it difficult to make sure that any agreements the federal government reaches with these schools is actually enforced. She pointed to the closure of more than half the regional offices that were charged with ensuring that schools accused of discrimination complied with settlements.
“Many of the schools on that list were in the regions covered by offices that have now been dissolved,” Joseph said. “What is the status of those investigations? Who will complete the monitoring? Who will take up the mantle of making sure their policies around antisemitism are stronger?”
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