We are Jewish students from universities Trump is targeting. He’s not protecting us
Democracy, not deportations, protect Jewish students from antisemitism
California police officers detain a protestor, who said they are a Jewish USC student, while clearing a pro-Palestinian encampment at USC, May 2, 2024. Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
By Nikki Appel, Yarin Hagay-Nevel, Gabriel Freedman-Naditch, Celia Little, Elianna Perlman, Tova Kaplan, Alexander Fooy, Joseph Hillyard, Talia Winiarsky and Jennifer NehrerMay 21, 2025
The Trump Administration’s Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced earlier this year visits to 10 universities whom it alleges to have “failed to protect Jewish students and faculty members from unlawful discrimination.” In the following weeks, President Donald Trump has revoked student visas over peaceful speech, arrested and threatened to deport student protesters and slashed funding to higher education, all in the name of fighting antisemitism.
Each of us is a Jewish student at one of the universities the administration named in its announcement, including Ivy League schools like Harvard University and Columbia University, and flagship public institutions like University of California, Berkeley and the University of Minnesota. While it is true that each school has been rocked by antisemitic incidents, Trump’s plans offer us no comfort.
If his goal was to undermine academic freedom and defund lifesaving research, Trump’s plan is a smashing success. But when it comes to protecting Jewish students like us, it’s an abject failure.
We know intimately that antisemitism exists on college campuses. In the aftermath of Oct. 7 and the Israeli government’s response in Gaza, anti-Jewish hatred has erupted on college campuses and nationwide. Too often, protests in opposition to the war have crossed the line into hateful stereotyping and demonization of Jewish people.
At Columbia, a protest leader stated, “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” At UCLA, a hateful display depicted a bloody pig adorned with a bag of cash and a Star of David. At UC Berkeley, campus groups endorsed the violence of Oct. 7. These cases of antisemitic hatred clearly threaten to disrupt the education of Jewish students. Antisemitism, on the left and the right, on campus and off, is a resurgent and pressing issue.
But the Trump Administration is exploiting genuine fears of antisemitism to press its own ideological agenda. The president and his allies are using our pain as a pretext for an assault on higher education we didn’t ask for. It is only making the situation on campus worse.
Trump has placed student protesters in his crosshairs, seeking to deport international students and green card holders, not for violent acts, but for constitutionally protected speech activities like organizing anti-war protests and writing op-eds — activities in which many Jewish students have also participated.
That we do not agree with everything our classmates might say is beside the point; they deserve the same First Amendment rights we do. Free expression, including unpopular speech, is a cornerstone not just of our universities, but of our democracy.
Trump’s targeting of immigrants in the name of protecting Jews is particularly odious. Countless Jewish American stories begin with ancestors fleeing persecution from countries where Jews were vilified as a subversive or alien presence. From these dark examples, we know that the Jewish people are safest in liberal democracies where minority groups enjoy robust protections and pluralism prevails.
Democracy, not deportations, protects Jewish students.
And central to that democracy, at the core of the Jewish American dream, is education. Many of our parents and grandparents enjoyed the unprecedented chance to learn and thrive at institutions that had previously barred their doors to Jews. Our ancestors could scarcely dream of the opportunities education has unlocked for their descendants.
In dismantling the Department of Education and halting thousands of investigations by the Department’s Office of Civil Rights, the administration is depriving students of their primary outlet to have antisemitic incidents investigated. Should universities attempt to pick up the slack, a slew of executive orders intends to starve them of the staff, programming and policy that fall under the umbrella of diversity, equity and inclusion. Even Holocaust education is on the Republican’s chopping block. Trump’s demonization of DEI not only flies in the face of our values but also removes services and support that our own community has relied upon.
The administration has also threatened billions of dollars in federal grants, grotesquely extorting universities into allowing ICE agents to operate with impunity on campuses in order to retain their funding for cancer research.
Will deporting student activists, curbing free speech and slashing funding across the board protect us from antisemitism? Of course not. In fact, by placing Jewish students at the center of his campaign against universities, Trump risks spurring resentment against us.
If Trump cared about protecting Jews, he wouldn’t have surrounded himself with top officials with troubling histories of antisemitic rhetoric, handed unprecedented power to Elon Musk after he gave a Nazi salute, pardoned Jan. 6 rioters clad in Nazi regalia, or attempted to preemptively blame us for his electoral defeat. Trump, in his attempts to dismantle American democratic institutions, sees universities as hubs of independent power and thought. Under the pretense of protecting Jewish students, he seeks to bring them under his control. In that despicable effort, we won’t be his accomplices or passive bystanders. He will not destroy our communities in our name.
We urge our Jewish institutions on campus and nationally to vocally oppose this administration’s bad-faith efforts to use Jewish students as political tools to dismantle the campus communities we call home.
We implore our universities to reject Trump’s cynical threats and fight antisemitism with the best tools at your disposal: empathy, academic freedom and open dialogue. Refuse to capitulate to Trump’s authoritarian assault on higher education. Giving in won’t protect you, and it certainly won’t protect us.
Please listen to Jewish students when we say that complying with his demands only weakens the values and protections that keep us all free and safe. Our community has a long history of standing up to pharaohs.
– Nikki Appel
University of California, Berkeley
– Yarin Hagay-Nevel
University of California, Los Angeles
– Gabriel Freedman-Naditch
Columbia University
– Celia Little
George Washington University
– Elianna Perlman
Johns Hopkins University
– Tova Kaplan
Harvard University
– Alexander Fooy
University of Minnesota
– Joseph Hillyard
New York University
– Talia Winiarsky
Northwestern University
– Jennifer Nehrer
University of Southern California
