Opinion: Trump's antisemitism executive order mistakes dissent for bigotry

Sign on barricades: Free Gaza! Being Anti-Genocide does not equal ... [Anti-]Semitic

By David N. Myers and Salam Al-Marayati

Feb. 10, 2025 3 AM PT

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A Jan. 29 White House executive order on antisemitism is intended to combat one of the longest, most lethal and societally entrenched forms of group-based hatred in the world. It calls for the mobilization of “all available and appropriate legal tools” to confront “an unprecedented wave of vile anti-Semitic discrimination, vandalism, and violence against our citizens, especially in our schools and on our campuses.”

It also calls on universities to monitor, report on and investigate “alien students and staff,” presumably as antisemitic agitators, which could lead to “actions to remove” them.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s punitive and narrow focus on campus protesters misidentifies real threats faced by Jews in American society. And in the process, the government will stigmatize a large group of people for exercising their right to protest. This, in turn, will cause serious damage to the functioning of the American university, turning it from an engine of knowledge into a web of informants intent on stifling dissent.

This script has been tried before, as we remember from California history. The Red Scare that swept the country in the late 1940s prompted the UC Board of Regents to craft a loyalty oath in 1949 that required all university employees to forswear any allegiance to communism.

The effects on the university were profound: Renowned faculty members who did not sign were dismissed or resigned in protest. By one count 55 courses had to be dropped from the curriculum and 47 scholars UC wanted to hire “pointedly refused appointment.” Morale plummeted, and the principle of freedom of speech was shaken to the core.

Seventy-five years later, we face what may be an even greater challenge. The Trump administration’s “fact sheet” that accompanies the antisemitism executive order indicates that all government agencies will be deployed to root out those deemed “Hamas Sympathizers” — which could be interpreted so widely as to include anyone who participated in or supported the Palestinian freedom movement on college campuses last year.

Sadly, there were some members of the university community who expressed support for Hamas’ brutal attacks of October 2023. And there were ample reports of Jewish students and faculty across the country who felt unsafe or threatened by some pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Neither coarse anti-Jewish imagery nor physical harassment against Jews — or any other university members, including pro-Palestine protesters — is acceptable on our campuses. At the same time, we should not assume that every self-reported account of feeling unsafe amounts to discrimination itself, antisemitic or otherwise.

Many who joined the protest movement — and who were vilified for doing so — did so not because of antisemitic motivation but because of what they saw unfolding in Gaza after Oct. 7: an unrelenting Israeli military campaign that failed to discriminate between combatant and civilian, killed thousands of children, displaced millions and destroyed billions of dollars of property. It is natural and legitimate that people in the United States would protest at the conduct of this campaign, all the more so because Israel is the recipient of massive military assistance and political support from the United States.

Casting all those who protested as rank antisemites fails a basic test of discernment. It is possible to regard Israel’s actions as gross violations of international law, even genocidal, without expressing or feeling any animus toward Jews. And it is possible to promote the goal of Palestinian self-determination — and indeed to believe that the preferred political form should be a single state “between the river and the sea” with equality for all — without harboring any hatred of Jews.

The coarse brush of the new executive order sweeps all who care about the fate of Palestinians, including many Jews, into the category of unreconstructed antisemites. It takes particular aim at international students who sympathize with the Palestinian cause, threatening to deport them for “pro-jihadist” sentiments. Will the next step be to sanction anyone who dares to use terms such as “Nakba,” “occupation” or “apartheid” in relation to Palestinian life in Gaza and the West Bank? It is hard to see how this would do much to combat antisemitism, though such a step would likely encourage Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab discrimination.

It is disconcerting that some mainstream Jewish organizations embrace the plan to constrict the rights of those who speak up, overwhelmingly peacefully, for the rights of Palestinians, while ignoring other disturbing signs of bias or distortion of history. The Anti-Defamation League, once the country’s leading defender of the rights of Jews, enthusiastically praised the administration’s order but gave a free pass to Elon Musk after his controversial hand salute and endorsement of the far-right Alternative for Germany party. Moreover, the ADL’s leadership constantly blurs the line between sharp criticism of Israeli policy, which it calls anti-Zionism, and antisemitism.

If unpopular political protest becomes the criterion by which the administration monitors universities, then we will begin a rapid descent down a slippery slope. The spirit of free and open debate, rooted in a long-standing American tradition of protest on college campuses, will be killed off. Holding a serious conversation about what should be the optimal political solution for Jews and Palestinians in Israel-Palestine — one state, two states or something in between — will be taboo. Violators of the new limits to free speech may be sanctioned or, if enrolled on a student visa, expelled. And ominously, a new cadre of Trumpian loyalists will be empowered to report on anyone who deviates from the new orthodoxy.

This kind of crackdown on what is political rather than discriminatory speech will lead to a very different kind of university campus — one in which novel, divergent or controversial ideas are actively suppressed. In such a world, Jews will be no safer. And Arab and Muslims supporters of Palestine will automatically be cast as enemies of the state. The cause of Palestinian freedom — and, by extension, Israeli security — will be deferred. And the dangerous erosion of democratic values in this country will continue.

The stakes are very high. We can and must find a better way to fight antisemitism while fortifying the university as an engine of ideas and innovation.

David N. Myers teaches Jewish history at UCLA. Salam Al-Marayati is the president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.