The Trump administration has opened a federal civil rights probe into reports of antisemitism at Columbia University and several other colleges in the wake of last year’s Gaza protests, the Education Department said.
The investigation announced late Monday cited an executive order by President Trump to combat antisemitism — which included, among other measures, steps to revoke the visas of international students involved in pro-Palestine protests that could have a disproportionate impact on the Morningside Heights university.
“Too many universities have tolerated widespread antisemitic harassment and the illegal encampments that paralyzed campus life last year, driving Jewish life and religious expression underground,” said Craig Trainor, the department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights.
Columbia last spring became a hotspot of pro-Palestine protest activity when an encampment supporting Gaza launched a national wave of demonstrations, which college administrators struggled to contain. The protests sparked tensions between protesters and some of their Jewish classmates.
By the end of the school year, Columbia had called the police on the protesters twice, including students who teamed up with activists to occupy an academic building. Administrators shifted the rest of the semester online and canceled the university-wide graduation ceremony.
Trainor — who called former President Biden’s response to the protests “toothless” — said the inquiry should put the K-12 and higher education sectors “on notice” the Trump administration would get involved if it believes universities are failing to combat antisemitism.
Columbia’s Office of Public Affairs released a statement that the university is reviewing the allegations and pointed to steps taken to combat antisemitism — from cracking down on discipline to strengthening public safety — under Interim President Katrina Armstrong, who took over from Minouche Shafik after her dramatic departure ahead of this school year.
“We look forward to ongoing work with the new federal administration to combat antisemitism and ensure the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff,” read the statement.
That work appears to have begun.
Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, Columbia hired lobbyists at BGR Government Affairs — a Washington, D.C.-based group, co-founded by a former chair of the Republican National Committee, according to disclosures to Congress. Tapped to do Columbia’s bidding was Daniel Murphy, who worked on Trump’s first transition team.
And while the response on the Morningside Heights campus to a ceasefire deal in Gaza was muted over the winter break, that changed on the first day of the spring semester, when a handful of students disrupted a class — the History of Modern Israel — with flyers of a storm trooper boot crushing a Star of David and calls to “Burn Zionism to the Ground,” photos and videos on social media show.
Within a week, university administrators announced a Columbia student was suspended, pending an investigation, and two additional participants from “an affiliated institution” — which could include Barnard College or the Union Theological Seminary — were barred from campus.
Yet, the protest activity continued. Over the last week, vandals sprayed the main entrance of the business school with red paint and used a cement-like substance and graffiti to deface the bathrooms of the public affairs school.
“Unfortunately, recent events have shown that our community continues to face a significant risk of disruption on the Morningside campus … creating the potential need to bring the NYPD on campus,” Armstrong wrote in an email to Columbia students and faculty.
The other colleges wrapped up in the new civil rights probe are Northwestern University, The University of California, Berkeley, Portland State University and The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. The Education Department initiated the investigations on its own, rather than opening cases based on complaints received by the civil rights office, which make up the majority of reviews.
The Jan. 29 executive order cited by federal education officials for the probes has faced criticism by some civil liberties groups as an attack on free speech.
In the week since it was signed by Trump, right-wing activists claiming to use artificial intelligence to identify pro-Palestinian international students are showing up at Columbia student-led protests and sending names to the Trump administration for potential deportation, the Zionist group Betar USA confirmed to conservative news outlets and on social media.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech watchdog, said the order “should worry all Americans, regardless of their position on the Israel-Hamas war.”
“The order implies that universities should be monitoring and reporting students for scrutiny by immigration officials, including for speech that is protected by the First Amendment,” said Sarah McLaughlin, an expert in global expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, condemned the threat to deport any foreign student who participated in protests as an “overbroad and unenforceable attack” on free speech.
“Free speech is a cornerstone of our Constitution that no president can wipe away with an executive order,” the statement read. “Like the college students who once protested segregation, the Vietnam war, and apartheid South Africa, the diverse collection of college students who protested against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza deserve our country’s thanks.”