Pro-Palestine student protests in Washington, on October 14, 2023. Photo: AP.
The administration of US President Donald Trump is investigating scores of universities for what it claims to be anti-Semitic acts following months-long academic demonstrations in support of Palestinians suffering Israel’s brutal aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip.
The US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) said it is investigating 60 universities for anti-Semitism, and that they are receiving warnings due to allegedly not protecting Jewish students during mass anti-Israel rallies in American universities and colleges.
“The Department is deeply disappointed that Jewish students studying on elite US campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless anti-Semitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year. University leaders must do better,” said Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
“US colleges and universities benefit from enormous public investments funded by US taxpayers. That support is a privilege and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal anti-discrimination laws,” she added.
The list includes Ivy League schools such as Harvard University and smaller schools such as Middlebury College.
The investigations come days after the US federal government cut off $400 million in funding to Columbia University over alleged inaction in handling anti-Semitism complaints, with OCR announcing prioritization in addressing the backlog of anti-Semitism allegations at schools with its office.
The case of Columbia University represented the federal government’s first round of university grant cancellations pursuant to Trump’s Executive Order on Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism.
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Columbia University has been forced to set up a new disciplinary committee and initiated its investigations into the pro-Palestinian students critical of the Israeli regime and its genocidal war against Gaza.
Columbia was central to campus protests that broke out last spring across the United States and beyond over Gaza.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up an encampment there in April and inspired a wave of similar protests in many other educational institutions across the globe.
Meanwhile, the Virginia-based news website Axios reported last week that the US State Department plans to use AI to revoke visas of foreign students who it perceives as supporters of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, which has been designated by Washington as a “terrorist” organization since October 1997.
Trump signed an executive order in January to combat what was claimed to be anti-Semitism and pledged to deport non-citizen college students and others who took part in pro-Palestinian protests that have been ongoing for months amid Israel’s barbaric aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip after Hamas’s October 2023 retaliatory attack on the occupied territories.
(PressTV)
