“We know there are more students at Columbia and other universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, antisemitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it.” Recent official and institutional claims about combatting antisemitism in higher education routinely efface a key group implicated and harmed by this discourse: Palestinians.

While pernicious antisemitism surely does exist in US society, the Trump administration has weaponized the charge of antisemitism to crush dissent and to crack down on independent higher education in an unprecedented manner. Its principal target is not the anti-Jewish hatred promulgated by right-wing, racist, xenophobic individuals and forces, but the students, staff, teachers, faculty, and individuals from all walks of life who advocate for Palestinian liberation. Hence the US government unjustly imprisoning Mahmoud Khalil for 104 days in the name of combatting antisemitism.

But the Trump administration does not work alone in this campaign of intimidation. It has been preceded, aided, and abetted by a host of organizations from the anti-Palestinian Canary Mission, to the Anti-Defamation League (which hailed Khalil’s arrest), and to outfits such as the Brandeis Center (led by former Trump administration official Kenneth Marcus) that constantly engage in complaints and lawfare against public school districts and universities. Senior Democratic politicians like Chuck Schumer, who might oppose Trump’s extraordinary weaponization of charges of antisemitism to cripple universities, have nevertheless conceded the premise that pro-Palestinian activism is tantamount to antisemitism, and thus that there is an escalating problem in schools and universities across this country. One prominent Democratic politician even compared students protesting the Gaza genocide to Ku Klux Klan members.