I. Harvard University
The Trump administration announced on March 20 that it is suing Harvard University for failing to curb its rampant antisemitism. In a 44-page complaint, the DOJ's Civil Rights Division lays out in painstaking detail how, after October 7, "Harvard fostered and continues to foster a campus climate where hostile antisemitism and anti-Israeli conduct thrives." Unfortunately, Harvard's "deliberate indifference" to its antisemitism problem began long before October 7, 2023 and it will take more than a lawsuit to correct the problem.
Trump's First Warning
On April 11, 2025 the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the General Services Administration sent a letter to Harvard President Alan Garber outlining a series of reforms the new administration was demanding in order to "maintain Harvard's financial relationship with the federal government."
Among those demands, the letter calls for Harvard to "audit those programs and departments that most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture." This list includes the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and the Divinity School - Harvard's unholy Trinity of Jew Hatred.
In a section on "Student Discipline Reform and Accountability," the letter calls for Harvard to "end support and recognition of those student groups or clubs that engaged in anti-Semitic activity since October 7, 2023, including the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee, Harvard Graduate Students 4 Palestine, Law Students 4 Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine" and others.
It also charges Harvard to adopt "a new policy on student groups or clubs that forbids the recognition and funding of, or provision of accommodations to, any student group or club that endorses or promotes criminal activity, illegal violence, or illegal harassment."
Wisely recognizing that student clubs often invite incendiary speakers to campus and provide cover for banned and suspended student clubs, the letter stipulates that the new policy must prohibit clubs from "invit[ing] non-students onto campus who regularly violate campus rules or acts as a front for a student club that has been banned from campus."
The Criminal Complaint
While the April 2025 letter singles out Harvard's most egregious curators of antisemitism on campus, the new lawsuit accusing it of violating Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act focuses on the administration's failure "to enforce its rules or meaningfully discipline the mobs that occupy its buildings and terrorize its Jewish and Israeli students."
It paints a picture of a university that sides with protesters, overlooks violations of policy, rewards bad behavior, and seeks to cover up its misdeeds.
A Police Chief Who Sided With the Protesters
Since October 7, Harvard has repeatedly overlooked violations of policies by both students and faculty, including unauthorized protests and encampments. Some of these tactics were aimed at prohibiting students - especially Jewish students - from accessing buildings. Organizers described these events as "teach-ins," "sit-ins," "study-ins," and "die-ins." Harvard did nothing about them. In fact, Harvard University Police Chief Victor A. Clay actually sided with the protesters, "breaking the rules he was responsible for enforcing," according to the complaint.
In an interview conducted on Friday April 27, 2023, (two days after Harvard students started their "Gaza encampment") Clay said, "we are keeping our students safe and they are protesting peacefully and it's their right and we are going to support that." As the Harvard Crimson staff writers correctly observed, "Clay's comments were the clearest indication yet that Harvard students face no imminent threat of being arrested."
The complaint argues that Harvard did nothing to stop protests that "featured outward hostility, harassment, and intimidation directed at Jewish and Israeli students." This includes chants of "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," "globalize the intifada," and the infamous Nazi-adjacent cry of "there is only one solution, intifada revolution." As the complaint puts it, the "only solution" rhetoric is "a call to expand violence towards Jews that reminds the listener of Nazi's 'final solution to the Jewish question,' which was the gas chambers."
Rewarding Antisemitic Conduct
Worse yet, it shows how the administration not only failed to discipline its protesters, but in some cases actually "rewarded students who assaulted, harassed, or intimidated their Jewish and Israeli peers."
For instance, when a group of students broke into and occupied University Hall on November 16, 2023, one Harvard dean "brought them burritos for dinner," while another dean brought them candy.
When a Jewish student named Yoav Segev attempted to video a "die-in" protest on October 18, 2023, two graduate students assaulted him and were criminally charged. Harvard later honored one of them, a law student named Ibrahim I. Bharmal, by naming him Class Marshal, gave him free housing, and awarded him a $65,000 fellowship to work at the Council on American-Islamic Relations as an "Immigrants' Rights Legal Fellow." Harvard president Alan Garber blamed Segev for his own assault, claiming that "the way he was taking videos appears provocative."
The Roots of Harvard's Problems
The criminal complaint does an impressive job of highlighting Harvard's antisemitic culture and the administration that abets it. However, it does not show how that culture was planted and nurtured, over the last two decades.
The Middle East Forum has documented decades of terrorist apologetics and antisemitism at the nation's most prestigious university. What the DoJ's complaint calls Harvard's "ideological capture" did not begin on October 7.
The First Warning Signs
One of the earliest critics to warn about Harvard's anti-Israel agenda was Hillel Stavis, owner of the famous WordsWorth book store in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Stavis began attending public lectures at Harvard in the 1990s and found that anti-Israel propaganda and groupthink had become commonplace at Harvard. He showed up at conferences and lectures and asked challenging questions that stood out from the usual obsequious audience participation at academic events. And he wrote about the events he attended.
He criticized Harvard's Project on Negotiation, documented its anti-Israel conferences, and called out the people who spoke at them, including peace-processor Dennis Ross. He wrote about a pro-Sharia speaker invited to lecture at Harvard's Divinity School, and a Harvard law professor who praised sharia. In 2011, he lambasted Harvard for commemorating the 10th anniversary of September 11 with an event devoted to the dangers of "Islamophobia."
And Harvard noticed.
Hillel Stavis via Obituary
Stavis once described to me how CMES event moderators, especially Sara Roy and Herbert C. Kelman, began to ignore him during the post-lecture Q&A sessions, growing increasingly hostile to his questions and presence. But Stavis pressed on, began filming the lectures and his questions.
Eventually, Roy implemented what critics of Middle East studies call "The Stavis Prohibition" by preventing audience members from recording CMES events and declaring that its events were "off the record."
Stavis died on October 20, 2023, but his legacy lives on at Harvard's CMES website where, to this very day, attendees of its events are warned that, "Unless otherwise noted in the event description, CMES events are open to the public (no registration required), and off the record." That this warning is still on the website a full year after the April 2025 letter to Alan Garber calling for Harvard "to ensure full transparency and cooperation with all federal regulators ... [n]o later than June 20, 2025," shows Harvard is not serious about transparency.
Conclusion
Harvard also seems unserious about changing its moribund, antisemitic culture. Change will take time and continued effort, like turning a battleship 180 degrees, and Garber hasn't even begun turning the wheel. He may not even know where the wheelhouse is. He told the Wall Street Journal that Harvard's problem was "the perceived lack of ideological diversity."
Harvard will almost certainly try to stall, pretend it's looking into the problem while waiting out the Trump administration and hoping for a president who will return to the status quo. Until then, Trump can inflict some pain over the next two and a half years, but a temporary loss of funding will not turn this battleship around.
Real change at Harvard will require two highly unlikely events. First, it would have to fire every Middle East studies specialist and every faculty member who has signed anti-Israel statements or made antisemitic social media posts. Second, it would require the impossible: their replacement with Middle East studies specialists and other academics who are not hostile to Israel. Unfortunately, they have been banished from academia.
Harvard's problem is not unique; in fact, Harvard's problem is academia's problem. The same thing is happening on nearly every college campus in the nation and in many other nations. Until that changes, "anti-Zionism" will remain the only acceptable form of discrimination and bias. Columbia is a case in point.
From the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
II. Columbia University
Has Columbia University Learned Anything From Its Middle East Studies Fiasco?
(L to R: Khaled Fahmy, Max Weiss, Rosie Bsheer, and Sherene Seikaly, candidates for Columbia's Edward Said Professorship)
In spite of its agreement with the Trump administration and its promise to combat antisemitism on campus, Columbia University is preparing to hire yet another credentialed, Israel-hating, BDS activist for a very high-profile job. Doing so should be enough for the Trump administration to consider all past agreements null and void, having been negotiated in bad faith, and follow through with its threat to withhold all federal funding until a new administration appears that is serious about addressing Columbia's antisemitism problem.
The Edward Said Professorship
On February 9, Jessica Schwalb at The Washington Free Beaconbroke the story that Columbia had narrowed down its list of candidates for the Edward Said Professorship in Modern Arab Studies and Literature to three very bad choices. Two days later, Maya Sulkin at The Free Pressidentified a fourth bad candidate.
Each of the four finalists for the position - Khaled Fahmy, Max Weiss, Rosie Bsheer, and Sherene Seikaly - are history professors known for their anti-Israel activism, including encouraging student protests and encampments, exactly the problem Columbia claims it is trying to redress.
Historian Khaled Fahmy, identified on his Tufts University page as "Professor, Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora," believes that Israel is guilty of "war crimes, occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide." He supported the anti-Israel protests and encampments, according to a letter he signed in 2024.
Max Weiss, professor of history at Princeton University, is fond of referring to the "genocidal Israeli war machine" and accusing Israel of inventing "false narratives" about "Hamas using civilian institutions and infrastructure as bases for armaments and training facilities." He was also an active member of the Princeton University Spring 2024 "Gaza encampment" and was placed on probation by the university for "unprofessional" and "coercive" behavior. In 2014, he was one of five Princeton professors who circulated a petition demanding Princeton divest from Israel and was photographed at a protest holding a sign that read "Another Jew Ashamed of Israel's Insatiable War Machine."
Rosie Bsheer was let go from Harvard where she was assistant professor of history and associate director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. She was a vocal advocate of the Harvard students who were first to blame Israel for October 7. She supported their "Gaza encampment" in the Spring 2024 semester and urged the administration to negotiate with its anti-Israel students. According to Jonas Du at The Free Press, "a March 9 message that has not previously been reported" has her in the lead after having been "unanimously and enthusiastically" recommended by the hiring committee. Assuming that's accurate, as Du reports, she now must undergo a "rigorous vetting process" that includes "multiple additional levels of review."
Perhaps the most dangerous of the four finalists for the position is Sherene Seikaly, another professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Seikaly heads the steering committee of the Faculty for Justice in Palestine, which is even worse than the Students for Justice in Palestine. Not only is she a Hamas supporter and an Israel hater who will exacerbate, not alleviate, the antisemitism among Columbia's students, but she will also do everything in her power to encourage the faculty to join her at the forefront of "the resistance."
Columbia took one step forward by permanently banning Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). If it hires Seikaly, the driving force behind the Faculty for Justice in Palestine, it will take several steps backwards. Given Columbia's record, I expect Seikaly will get the job, in spite of the search committee's apparent endorsement of Bsheer.
None of these four candidates will do anything to alleviate Columbia's antisemitism problem.
Post-October 7 Scrutiny
From the moment Joseph Massad, Columbia's repugnant professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history, celebrated October 7 as a "striking," "awesome," and "innovative" act of "resistance," the Ivy League school's reputation has been in a tail spin. Failure to control its Hamas-friendly faculty and student body led to a mountain of bad publicity, unprecedented public scrutiny, and a series of toppled administrations, beginning with president Minouche Shafiq's resignation in 2024.
After the Trump administration threatened to withhold federal funding and place the school in receivership, Columbia's new president Katrina Armstrong acknowledged the school's problems in March 2025, and promised to conduct a "thorough review of the portfolio of programs in regional areas across the university, starting immediately with the Middle East." She appointed Miguel Urquiola, senior vice provost for academic initiatives, to supervise the review and resigned shortly after the announcement.
In July 2025, yet another new president, ABC's former Good Morning America journalist Claire Shipman, announced that Columbia had reached an agreement with the Trump administration that would address "the very serious and painful challenges our institution has faced with antisemitism." She also acknowledged that "there is still more to do" at Columbia to "combat antisemitism."
Last month, Urquiola released his Initial Recommendations from the "thorough review" Armstrong initiated. His report refers to the ongoing search to fill the Said Professorship as part of Columbia's effort to "add variety and expertise to the curriculum." The candidates it is considering will do neither.
Social Sciences to the Rescue?
Urquiola's recommendations suggest that social scientists will counter the antisemitism evident among Middle East studies faculty. The history department is conducting the search for the new Said Professor, and the economics, political science, and history departments figure prominently in Urquiola's recommendations. This approach views Columbia's antisemitism problem as solely a Middle East studies problem when, in fact, it is much more widespread.
Still, some may find comfort in Urquiola's promise to "expand coursework on the Middle East broadly, particularly within the social sciences." Others may be reassured by the promises to hire "a professor to teach about the history of modern Israel," "a professor to teach courses on the Jewish world and on Middle East policy," and "a visitor to teach about economic and other policy issues in Israel."
But if political scientists, economists, and historians are the answer to Columbia's antisemitism problem, it will depend on which political scientists, economists, and historians it hires. Here, Columbia's history is not a good one.
Political scientist Mohamed Abdou, who taught at Columbia in 2024, participated in the "Gaza encampment" on campus and celebrated October 7 with a Facebook post proclaiming "I'm with the muqawamah (the resistance) be it Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad."
Economist Jeffrey Sachs, who writes for Al-Jazeera, makes videos for The Middle East Eye, and spreads the calumny that Israel is committing genocide, is not only a full professor at Columbia but also the director of its Center for Sustainable Development. Urquiola is a member of the economics department, so he is surely aware of his colleague's views.
As for the history department, it was home to former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi who retired last year, vacating the very Edward Said Professorship Columbia is poised to fill with another historian like him. Also, since the history department is conducting the search for the new Edward Said Professor, it is presumably responsible for choosing the terrible candidates Columbia is considering to replace Khalidi.
The Rationale
So why has Columbia chosen to hire another known Israel-hater after signing an agreement committing the university to address its antisemitism problem?
One possibility is that the newest president, senior provost, and the rest of the decision makers are earnest in their motives but completely unaware that their top candidates will only make matters worse. If so, if Columbia's leaders really don't know what they are doing, the Ivy League school is a lost cause, doomed to repeat its mistakes and drag its reputation through the gutter.
Another possibility, however, is that Columbia's leaders know exactly what they are doing and want to spite the Trump administration, the Department of Education, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and every other critic of Columbia's Hamas-friendly, antisemitic culture. If so, if they are deliberately sticking their thumb in the eyes of Columbia's many critics, then Urquiola's report is window-dressing, designed to appear as a solution to the university's antisemitism while preserving the status quo.
Conclusion
For the entire 21st century, Columbia University has been ground zero of academia's anti-Israel problem. Martin Kramer first exposed "malpractice" in the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures in 2002. In 2005, after the documentary Columbia Unbecoming showed just how bad the situation had become, Kramer called it "Columbia University's Darkest Hour." Since October 7, it has gotten darker.
Perhaps in July, when Jennifer L. Mnookin becomes Columbia's fourth president since October 7, her administration will bring light back to the once-great university. Until then, Columbia's motto, In Lumine Tuo Videbimus Lumen ("In your light we see the light") is a farce.
Reposted from the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
Chief IPT Political Correspondent A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is also a Milstein fellow.