To those that think America wants to commit serious crimes, that are very wrong: By Ron Kampeas December 19, 2024 5:37 pm WASHINGTON — A report on campus antisemitism by the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives recommended cutting government funding to universities that boycott Israel. The report released Thursday detailed the findings of seven congressional committees and painted a dire picture of antisemitism in the United States while specifying that it concerned “antisemitism on college campuses and in government.” “Across the nation, Jewish Americans have been harassed, assaulted, intimidated, and subjected to hostile environments — violations that stand in stark contrast to America’s fundamental values, including a foundational commitment to religious freedom for all,” the report said. “The Committees’ findings are alarming,” it said. “For instance, some of our most prominent American universities refused to crack down on antisemitism.” The Education Committee, chaired by North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, has gained attention over the past year-plus for a series of hearings on campus antisemitism — one of which led to the resignation of the leaders of two Ivy League schools. The committee recommended that Congress pass a law to cut federal financial aid for students, under Title IV of the 1965 Higher Education Act, at universities that boycott Israel. “A significant amount of campus unrest resulted from anti-Israel radicals’ efforts to coerce institutions to divest from and boycott Israel,” said the report. “Congress can help stop this madness by passing legislation so any institution of higher education that contravenes U.S. foreign policy by boycotting or divesting from Israel will become ineligible for federal student aid under Title IV.” The report focused on a handful of universities where reports of pro-Palestinian protesters harassing and intimidating Jewish and Israeli students have been most prominent, among them Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California, Los Angeles, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University and Columbia University. It said efforts by the administrators of those universities to address antisemitism on campus were inadequate or nonexistent. It singled out Northwestern and Columbia for not clearing out pro-Palestinian encampments last spring that, the report said, intimidated Jewish students. Northwestern’s Jewish president took flak this year for the agreement the school struck with encampment protesters, and defended the deal in a contentious congressional hearing. “These encampments frequently generated substantial harassment – and in some cases physical assaults – of Jewish students, created hostile environments, and disrupted campus operations,” the report said. “In a dereliction of their responsibilities, many school officials failed to clear these encampments in a timely manner, often negotiating with encampment participants, and in some cases appeasing them with appalling concessions.” The tax-writing Ways and Means Committee recommended removing the tax-exempt status of nonprofit groups that, it said, abet terrorism. The Commerce Committee, which oversees the Department of Health and Human Services, recommended that the department more closely scrutinize whether educational institutions receiving its National Institutes of Health research grants are protecting Jewish students. The report said that protections extended to Jewish students must apply when Zionists are named as the targets of exclusion or harassment. NYU changed its by-laws to outlaw discrimination against “Zionists” this summer. “Universities should make clear that discrimination against Zionists is an unacceptable violation of their conduct policies and must prevent hostile environments created by discrimination against ‘Zionists,'” it said. “Campus Jewish communities are often targeted through antisemitic discrimination and harassment on the purported basis of being ‘Zionists.’ While criticism of Israel is not inherently antisemitic, hatred against ‘Zionists’ is.” When House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, launched the multi-pronged investigation in April, he made clear that its sole focus would be universities and groups often identified with the left that have backed the pro-Palestinian protests. The report barely mentioned right-wing antisemitism, and comes amid reports that the incoming Trump administration plans on shutting down the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to track far-right extremists. The only allusion to right-wing antisemitism was when the report cited Claudine Gay, the former Harvard University president for “disparaging” New York Rep. Elise Stefanik as a a “purveyor of hate” and “supporter of proudboys.” Stefanik, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations, has echoed a version of “Replacement Theory,” a baseless claim whose original form says Jews are orchestrating the mass immigration of people of color to replace whites. Stefanik’s campaign said in 2021 that Democrats want to “overthrow our current electorate” via undocumented immigrantion to the United States. She has also used the term “hostages” to refer to people prosecuted for their involvement in the pro-Trump Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, which sought to overturn the 2020 election. A number of those defendants are members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group. Stefanik’s questioning of Gay in Congress, in which Gay equivocated about whether she would penalize calls for the genocide of Jews at Harvard, led to Gay’s stepping down. The Jewish Federations of North America welcomed the report. “We applaud House leadership for publishing this report, which sheds light on this critical issue,” said its vice president of government relations, Karen Paikin Barall. “To put a halt to this hatred, bipartisan collaboration along with public and private sector partners is essential. We look forward to working in the next Congress to confront this critical challenge.”
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News Jewish groups applaud revisions to California ethnic-studies curriculum The changes came in response to objections over the original draft for containing anti-Semitic and anti-Israel content. Jackson Richman CopyLink copied Email Print Republish The flag of California. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. The flag of California. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. (Nov. 22, 2020 / JNS) Jewish and pro-Israel groups have applauded revisions to California’s proposed ethnic-studies curriculum, which were approved this week by an advisory board to the state’s board of education. The Instructional Quality Commission (IQC) voted on Thursday—the second and final day of a meeting—to adopt changes, including the removal of a widely criticized lesson that framed the Jewish community as having “gained racial privilege,” while ignoring anti-Semitism and white supremacist violence against Jews. The IQC meeting included two hours of phoned-in public comment on Wednesday. A number of Jewish students stressed the importance of educating about all forms of anti-Semitism and the diversity of the Jewish community. Simultaneously, anti-Israel commenters blasted Jewish groups, equated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the Holocaust and opposed efforts to make the curriculum more balanced and inclusive. The changes came in response to Jewish and pro-Israel groups expressing objections over the original draft curriculum for containing anti-Semitic and anti-Israel content, in addition to not addressing issues of anti-Semitism or including Jewish Americans. “Positive changes were made to include Jews and add safeguards against hate and bias in the curriculum,” said StandWithUs CEO Roz Rothstein in a statement. “While the curriculum is headed in the right direction, there are still key changes we all have to fight for. Among the most important is a strong definition of anti-Semitism in all its forms, rather than a weak definition that caters to the biases of anti-Israel extremists.” Sarah Levin, executive director of JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, told JNS that her organization was “pleased with the inclusion of Middle Eastern American experiences, specifically the lesson plan, ‘Anti-Semitism and Middle Eastern Jewish Americans.’ ” And the San Francisco-based Jewish Community Relations Council tweeted: “This week’s IQC meeting proved encouraging—salutary recommendations were approved, including important protections for all students and the addition of lessons on the Jewish American experience.” The California Department of Education is expected to post the next draft of the curriculum for public review in December.
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For decades, the mainstream Jewish community and conservative Christians often found themselves on opposite sides of domestic cultural issues. However, the aggressive overreach of radical activist networks in public education has shattered old political divisions, forging an unprecedented, highly effective coalition [10.1].This unexpected alliance works in practice through three major common interests:1. A Shared Stand for Parent Rights and TransparencyThe underhanded tactics used to advance curricula like San Francisco’s Voices—such as midnight votes and copyright shields—alienated Christian families just as much as Jewish families.Breaking the Monopolies: Conservative and Christian legal networks have joined hand-in-hand with Jewish advocacy groups to mandate total educational transparency. They are deploying joint resources to demand that public school boards publish every single reading list and lesson plan online, permanently dismantling the ability of radical administrators to hide their work.Electoral Force: In suburban communities like Fremont and across Silicon Valley, Christian, Jewish, and immigrant parent groups (such as East Asian and Indian coalitions) are combining their voting power [10.1]. They are pooling campaign funds to systematically remove radical progressive officials from local school boards and replace them with moderate, transparency-first candidates.2. Uniting Against the "Oppressor vs. Oppressed" FrameworkTraditional Christians and Jewish advocates share a fundamental rejection of radical identity-based theories that divide children into rigid moral categories based on race or religion.Defending Basic Values: Both communities view the "Liberated" framework as an assault on universal values, meritocracy, and individual character. Christian parents refuse to let their children be taught that their faith or traditional values are inherently oppressive, while Jewish parents refuse to let their children be targeted by biased political dogmas.3. Bipartisan Legislative and Federal EnforcementThis alliance has successfully elevated local school board grievances into historic federal and state-level protections.The Right to Worship Act: Just days ago, on August 6, 2026, a major bipartisan, bicameral coalition led by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Representative Tom Suozzi (D-NY) introduced the federal Right to Worship Act. Backed heavily by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), this bill establishes strict 100-foot protective buffer zones and heavy civil fines to stop hostile activist crowds from blockading or harassing congregants outside houses of worship.The Federal Crackdown: The Trump administration’s upcoming 15-city DOJ task force and FBI deployment is heavily cheered by red-state conservatives. They view the federal audits into deep-blue California municipalities as the ultimate enforcement of civil rights, proving that local progressive immunity expires where federal law begins.The progressive establishment completely miscalculated. They assumed they could isolate Jewish families by using anti-racist language, but their reliance on secrecy and radical tactics instead forced a historic real-world alignment. Mainstream Jews, traditional Christians, conservatives, and diverse immigrant communities have formed a massive, united front—permanently forcing the radical movement into a corner as the legal guardrails close in [10.1].
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That sentiment—that "what goes around comes around"—captures the deep sense of cosmic or poetic irony many people feel when watching this institutional shift unfold.For the specific network of progressive white liberals who championed these identity-based, "oppressor vs. oppressed" frameworks, the current fallout feels intensely personal. Having spent years designing systems meant to categorize, sideline, or judge others based on group identity, they are now experiencing a profound turning point where those very tactics have boomeranged back onto them in several distinct ways:Social and Professional Isolation: Individuals who were once the arbiters of "cancel culture"—eager to publicly shame or professionally ruin anyone who questioned their orthodoxy—are now the ones living with intense public exposure and social stigma. Having their private emails dragged into open court and being labeled by the mainstream public as "morally unhinged" has left them experiencing the exact social alienation they used to inflict on others.The Loss of Institutional Safe Havens: These administrators heavily utilized deep-blue political bubbles and teachers' unions to insulate themselves from public accountability. Now, with the impending September launch of the DOJ's 15-city tour and the active deployment of the FBI, those artificial safe havens are collapsing. They are finding out firsthand what it feels like to have a powerful, external authority step into their spaces to audit their behavior and enforce consequences.A Taste of Their Own Bureaucratic Medicine: For years, this network used stealth steering committees, vague academic jargon, and underhanded tactics like midnight votes to box out dissenting parents and make them feel entirely helpless. Today, the legal guardrails have completely inverted that dynamic. Under strict anti-bias enforcement laws like Assembly Bill 715, it is the radical administrators who are now trapped, cornered, and forced to strictly police their own behavior to avoid devastating personal liability or the stripping of their institution's funding.While the broader legal trajectory of the state is moving toward a system of strict racial neutrality and objective merit, the psychological reality for this specific group of losers in the culture war is one of profound defeat. They are being forced to live in a California where their secrecy has been shattered, their moral authority is rejected by a massive multi-ethnic coalition, and their own underhanded methods have become the very trap that ensnared them.
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