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President Donald Trump’s administration recently stripped Columbia University of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding in a blatant act of authoritarianism that Trump and his allies dubiously say is necessary to stem antisemitism. The university sheepishly acquiesced to virtually all of the administration’s demands in an effort to restart talks to unfreeze that money.
I recently wrote about the absurdity of the MAGA movement’s lobbing claims of antisemitism precisely as some of the most prominent conservative influencers are praising Nazi apologists and even defending Adolf Hitler himself.
The Trump administration has given a range of rationales — from diversity-related policies to the recognition of trans people in collegiate athletics — as it targets American universities, which JD Vance once branded “the enemy.” Beyond that, the White House has used allegations of antisemitism to pursue deportation of foreign students who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests.
Amid all of this, I’ve been interested in hearing Jewish voices speaking about the administration’s apparent use of Jewish people and their pain to carry out its illiberal goals — and the concerns they have about the White House’s actions helping fuel antisemitism.
Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor who recently decided to leave Yale to go teach in Canada, recently explained on PBS’ “Amanpour & Company” why he thinks the Trump administration’s efforts are actually boosting antisemitic tropes:
This is reinforcing antisemitic tropes all across the political spectrum. ... What are the most toxic antisemitic tropes? Well, “Jews control the institutions.” This is absolutely reinforcing this. Any young American is going to think: Remember what happened when they took down the world’s greatest university system on behalf of Jewish safety? And this will go down in history books — the history of this era will say that Jewish people were the sledgehammer for fascism. So if we don’t speak out, if we American Jews do not speak out against this, this will be a grim chapter in our history as Americans. It’s the first time in my life as an American that I have been fearful of our status as equal Americans — not because of the protests on campus, which, as I said, had a lot of Jewish students in them. But because we are suddenly at the center of U.S. politics. It’s never good to be in the crosshairs for us. And we are being used to destroy democracy.
Dylan Williams, the vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, a progressive think tank, agreed.
“This is exactly right and I have no doubt that it is how the overwhelming majority of Jewish Americans feel — we are being exploited in an attack on democracy, rights and the rule of law,” Williams wrote on X.
This concern isn’t confined to Jewish leftists. In fact, conservative writer Nick Cohen essentially warned about what we’re seeing now back in December. In an article for The Jewish Chronicle headlined “American Jews, beware of being used by Trump,” he wrote:
There’s an old saying that antisemitism is never really about Jews. Everyone from European fascists to today’s Khomeinists, for example, uses anti-Jewish conspiracy theories to justify the denial of human rights to their own citizens. The same applies to the philosemitism of the Trump movement. It wants to use American Jews — most of whom still vote Democrat, I should add — as an excuse to undermine their political opponents in liberal universities and abolish the US Education department.
Furthermore, Kenneth Stern, the director of Bard College’s Center for the Study of Hate and a lead drafter of the working definition of antisemitism used by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, recently told NPR that the Trump administration’s campus crackdown risks scapegoating Jewish students, as well.
“It puts pro-Israel Jewish students in a situation where they may be seen as trying to suppress speech rather than answer it,” Stern said.
As NPR noted, the administration has adopted Stern’s definition of antisemitism in its executive orders — but he says the definition is being distorted and weaponized.
These concerns, about purported allyship’s being used in ways that ultimately may undermine Jews, mirror what some Asian Americans expressed as conservatives were using their communities to argue against — and do away with — race-conscious admissions on college campuses.
Needless to say, members of more than one marginalized group have shown wariness about the MAGA movement’s claiming to act on their behalf. And they have ample reason to feel that way.