Generation Z has shocked their elders. The campus protests that have swept the country reflect deep-seated anti-Israel sentiment — and worse. 

In December, a Harvard/Harris poll found that 67% of 18-24-year-olds agreed “Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors.” By contrast, 27% of all adults agreed. 

This has manifested in young people chanting “Intifada revolution” and “From the River to the Sea,” even if they can’t identify the river or sea. 

This disturbing trend of anti-Jewish attitudes, sometimes but not always masked as anti-Zionism, makes it clear that campus indoctrination isn’t the whole story. Rabbi Daniel Levitt, who spent 15 years as a campus Hillel professional, posted, “They’re radicalized before they get to campus.”

A litigator and strategic consultant whose national practice specializes in representing private school parents argued that campus activists “show up having already tested the waters with their K-12 administrators.” These students “know they can make false statements, be threatening, aggressive, and vocally vicious all without penalty, so long as they are taking a stand that fits within the administration’s progressive narrative around race and oppression.” And antisemitic campus protests certainly do.

In the three months following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the Anti-Defamation League tallied 256 reported antisemitic incidents in K-12 schools nationwide. The Washington Examiner spoke to more than 40 people about their own recent experiences in public and independent schools. From a parent who resigned from the Democratic Socialists of America over its response to Oct. 7 to Donald Trump supporters, they spoke of progressive ideology that often ignored antisemitism or even fanned the flames.

Adherents of this ideology prefer it remain unnamed, but it is variously called diversity, equity, and inclusion, critical race theory, critical social justice, anti-racism, and wokeness. It dominates schools and will shape the country’s future.

Consider one high-profile example. Montgomery County Public Schools has been highly ranked and serves a sizable Jewish population relative to the national average. While Jews are approximately 2% of all Americans, “Montgomery County is about 10% Jewish,” according to Meredith Weisel, regional director of ADL Washington, D.C. MCPS is now also the subject of a federal Title VI investigation based on allegations of antisemitism.

The school system has repeatedly made headlines for reported antisemitism. Still, it’s difficult to track the frequency of such incidents. 

Andrew Winter, an elementary school principal and the founder of the Montgomery County Jewish Educators Alliance, said, “MCPS tracks reported incidents of hate bias.” Winter does “not believe” the findings are published. However, “I know this year from the start of the school year until Oct. 7 — that weekend — the number was 19 incidents. Since Oct. 7, there’s been over 60 more incidents that have been reported,” Winter shared in mid-January.

Moderately MOCO, a local news outlet, analyzed “hate and bias incidents” for July 2022 to October 2023. Eighty-one incidents, or 61% of reports from all schools, targeted Jews.

When MCPS put four educators on leave for antisemitic social media posts and a “River to the Sea” email signature last fall, Jewish parents hoped the school system would stand strong against antisemitism. However, three of those four teachers have already been reinstated at different schools.

Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, said her organization filed a Maryland Public Information Act request last October, seeking “three weeks of emails from the Board of Education [and superintendent]” mentioning Israel, Hamas, and related terms. In a response letter Neily shared, MCPS said fulfilling that request would cost $8,492.08, a price seemingly intended “to dissuade people from asking.” By February’s end, Neily said, MCPS had released only external documents.

Parents have encountered other barriers. Nicole Kashtan, the mother of two MCPS students and a member of the Montgomery County Jewish Parents Coalition, recalled meeting with an MCPS administrator about the district’s anti-racist audit: “We said to him a number of times we’re concerned about this potentially promoting progressive social justice antisemitism. He really rebuffed that. … [He] refused to include antisemitism as part of the audit and refused to push MCPS to do a separate, parallel audit specifically on antisemitism. That was problematic, because even in 2021 and into 2022, antisemitism was already high among young people.” Antisemitism certainly feels widespread to parents. A middle and elementary school parent said, “The incidents have increased tremendously since Oct. 7. They were already on the rise, but after Oct. 7 every single Jewish kid I know had something.”

Even early grades aren’t immune. Marci Serfaty, a teacher at Bayard Rustin Elementary School, described teaching kindergarteners a Hanukkah lesson last December and taking questions at the end: “One child raised his hand and said, ‘My father said that Jewish people are the bad guys, and they’re killing everybody.’ Then a second child said, ‘the Jews are going to hell.’ My school administrators took it very seriously. They contacted the families to meet with them about the incident and included the school counselor. … I was assured that this type of behavior would not be tolerated.”

Margery Smelkinson, an MCPS parent who co-leads the Maryland Jewish Alliance, a Facebook group for parents concerned about antisemitism, said MCPS administrators “rarely talk about Jews, do not appear to celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month, or even discuss antisemitism.” Smelkinson added, “Even before Oct. 7, there were lots of swastikas and derogatory comments. If there were email communications from administrators to the community about it, they would say, ‘We don’t support hate speech,’ but in the end, no one was ever punished.” Beyond that, “there’s a lot of online bullying, but some schools claim they are at a loss for what to do with that.”

The allegations aren’t just online behavior. Melissa Stein, a parent and former teacher in the system as well as board member of the Montgomery County Council of PTAs, a parent stakeholder group that works directly with MCPS’s board and leadership, described a January middle school incident featuring such taunts as “of course a Jew is telling me how it is” and telling a non-Israeli Jewish boy “to ‘go back to Israel.’” The incident continued until there were “three mentions of Hitler.” Only then, “the teacher intervened.”

“I was an MCPS elementary teacher until January a year ago,” Stein recalled. “During our professional week, a day in August 2022, every teacher spent half or two-thirds of a day doing anti-racist training, because the county invested in an anti-racist audit. They taught everything you do is either racist or anti-racist. We were taught by MCPS as teachers to accept that as fact.” There was no antisemitism training.

One parent told the Washington Examiner about their children being asked by a cafeteria worker if they “liked Palestine” when receiving kosher meals. Another described a Nazi salute directed at her son during the national anthem. 

High school supercharges the hostility. Rachel Barold was a freshman in December 2022 when her high school was graffitied with “Jews not welcome.” In response, she organized a 600-student walkout. The Washington Post then reported that two debate team members “allegedly joked about using challah to lure Jewish people to the secluded Andaman Islands and burning them at the stake.” Barold was the second name listed, she said. 

Barold gave her principal high marks for addressing antisemitism. Unfortunately, there’s been “a lot of antisemitism” there since Oct. 7. “It’s almost cool to hate Jews, to be anti-Israel. It’s very hip. A lot of students take it that if you want to be a Democrat, you can’t support Israel. They get that from social media [and] various politicians.” And since the curriculum isn’t focused on teaching about Jews, Israel, or antisemitism, misinformation frequently remains uncontested. 

“Most kids are on TikTok 1-4 hours a day,” Barold said. It’s important that students “get facts before they hear something wrong on the internet.” Indeed, a recent study found “spending at least 30 minutes a day on TikTok increases the chances a respondent holds antisemitic or anti-Israel views by 17% (compared with 6% for Instagram and 2% for X).”

County school officials did not respond to a request for comment.

But it’s a trend seen all over the country. “We had a speaker compare Jews to Nazis in the ninth grade,” said Dr. Logan Levkoff, an independent school parent in New York who’s had two very different school experiences. “My son was called an ethnic cleanser by a student. He had one-sided speakers — plural — blaming only Jews in Israel for what’s happened between Israel and the Palestinians. They had two speakers from J Street, who were supposed to be thoughtful but focused only on one side. When my son said, ‘Hey, there seems to be part of the story missing,’ the conversation was shut down. He had teachers who told students that Soviet anti-Zionism was a legitimate political movement and had nothing to do with antisemitism.”

A common thread is an ideology that divides the world into two distinct groups: oppressors and the oppressed. “The first thing is the oppressor versus oppressed binary that all of these other things are built upon,” said Dr. Brandy Shufutinsky, director of education and community engagement with the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values. “What’s in that framework is the belief in an anti-capitalist idea that is a tentacle of white supremacy. It feeds the old and long-lasting trope against Jews as the ultimate bad actor capitalists, which comes from neo-Marxism … if we’re in a school critiquing white supremacy that believes that the ‘ultimate white’ is Jews, and Israel gets that overlaid, Israel is the ultimate ‘white supremacist’ state.”  

Paul Rossi is a ninth grade math teacher in the Bronx, former teacher at Manhattan’s Grace Church School, and leader of Terra Firma Teaching Alliance, a networking and support group for traditional teachers. “Everything is relational,” he said. “Any antisemitism from the Right, [the school] will say, ‘This is wrong. It’s terrible. We need to fight this.’ But when it’s intersectionally inconvenient like Oct. 7, or self-defense on the part of Israel, the Jewish identity falls in the wrong bucket. You’re on the side of colonialism and Western exploitation. It’s a deeply uncomfortable thing.”

That discomfort can be widely felt, as this worldview “creates division where there doesn’t need to be any. When you start putting the focus on the differences, children don’t learn to see the commonalities,” said Kate Hudson, founder of Education Veritas, a nonprofit organization that educates the public about goings-on in public and nonpublic education from kindergarten through college.

This ideology brooks no dissent. “It’s an orthodoxy. This is why it looks, feels, and smells like a cult. You can’t question,” Shufutinsky said.

Indoctrination also starts early. “This starts in pre-K. As soon as they get into school, they are slowly cajoled into this way of thinking,” Rossi said. “Jewish students are lumped into white people. That trumps anything, any type of ethnicity or religion they have, so inclusion goes out the window on those kinds of things. … What matters is your proximity to whiteness. Whiteness is the big evil.” This is a central article of faith.

David Bernstein, founder of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values and the author of Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews, explained, “Only people with lived experience of oppression are permitted to, and have the standing to, define oppression for the rest of society.” This typically excludes Jews. “Historic discrimination against Jews is whitewashed or minimized or otherwise disregarded in favor of modern marginalized groups,” civil injury lawyer David Pivtorak said. 

“If you want to believe oppressed people can never succeed, you have to explain the Jews. … The whole narrative falls apart with the Jews. They’re ‘white supremacists,’ or benefit from ‘white supremacy culture,’ so they become a scapegoat because they undermine the core narrative of wokeism,” observed Andrew Gutmann, the father who wrote the viral Brearley letter as a New York City independent school parent, has since dug into these ideas, and is now running for Congress in Florida. “The progressive ideology that has infused K-12 education — you can’t separate that from the antisemitism,” but antisemitism is “not the driving force.”

Shufutinsky offered another view: “I don’t want to minimize that here in the United States the overall target is the West. But since Oct. 7, it feels like [Jews] are the target. That’s why we’re now seeing protesters in the streets of New York chanting, ‘There is only one solution, communist revolution. Intifada, intifada.’” 

“DEI efforts are designed to combat the effects of social prejudice by insisting on equity: Some people in our society have too much power and too much privilege, and are overrepresented, so justice requires leveling the playing field,” Dara Horn wrote in the Atlantic. “But antisemitism isn’t primarily a social prejudice. It is a conspiracy theory: the big lie that Jews are supervillains manipulating others. The righteous fight for justice therefore does not require protecting Jews as a vulnerable minority. Instead it requires taking Jews down.” 

Roz Rothstein, co-founder and CEO of StandWithUs, an international nonpartisan education organization that supports Israel and fights antisemitism, said StandWithUs has noted an increase in these views: “We are addressing numerous instances of biased or one-sided materials used in classrooms across the country about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and current events. Our student leaders are being bullied online and in person for having a connection to Israel. There are also instances of physical threats and violence against Jewish students.” For American Jews, “normal” is being redefined.

Parents report that DEI has flooded independent schools. Gutmann observed, “This ideology has been entrenched in the K-12 pedagogical ecosystem, in the teachers’ education, [and] in the professional development teachers have been doing for a very long time.” 

Lessons can apply to parents, too. Recalling his experience three school years ago, Gutmann said, “We had to do mandatory anti-racist training. [Brearley] made us do it, so we saw it firsthand. They tried to force us to sign a pledge that not only would we support anti-racism initiatives at school, but also in our home. We refused.” 

A school spokesperson emailed, “Each year at Brearley, we require one parent from each family to attend curriculum night, parent/teacher conferences, and a learning session designed to engage them as members of our diverse community. This year’s choices for that session have included talks on antisemitism, Islamophobia as well as new parents getting to know one another. We do not ask parents to sign a pledge.”

Accreditation is another vector. Gutmann noted, “Technically the regional accreditors accredit schools, but NAIS [National Association of Independent Schools] accredits the regional accreditors, so they can mandate schools have to do DEI.” 

DEI also informs NAIS’s national conferences. Numerous interviewees expressed concerns about the annual Student Diversity Leadership Conference. The last SDLC brought approximately 2,000 independent school students to St. Louis in December.

“The NAIS is pushing activism with these students,” Hudson said. “That’s part of the indoctrination they get at these conferences. These schools pay exorbitant fees for students and teachers to attend. … According to some who have attended, they have to sign an NDA when they go. They aren’t allowed to relay information from it. It’s oddly secretive.”

At the last conference, a student delivered extemporaneous remarks about the “genocide” in Gaza. He was applauded enthusiastically by the audience, but one Jewish mother described her daughter’s traumatized reaction to being one of 20-30 Jewish students in a large crowd cheering antisemitism. Other adults reported similar anxiety and a desire to leave early from other Jewish attendees they knew.

An NAIS spokesperson described the SDLC as a conference that “helps students develop cross-cultural communication skills and learn the foundations of allyship and networking. … The conference aims to help students navigate complex and often challenging conversations respectfully. Students are invited to share their perspectives in various settings during the conference. The remarks in question came from a student commenter. Some students were deeply offended by the comments. These students reached out to SDLC faculty members, who worked to support them and to facilitate discussions. As an organization, NAIS condemns antisemitism in all forms, and our work — at SDLC and more broadly — strives to embrace diversity and champion inclusivity. These values continue to guide everything we do.”

For an era whose byword is “inclusivity,” this school year’s seen a lot of exclusion, from college campuses to K-12 schools. It doesn’t help that so many educational leaders not only seem unclear about what antisemitism is, but also seem disinterested in leading on it.

Some interviewees would be content if their schools’ DEI staff started including Jewish children and content. However, save for the rare exception, DEI staff hasn’t reciprocated that interest.

DEI creates problems for both the included and excluded. Dr. Staci Weiner, clinical psychologist and owner of Apple Psychological, a group private practice in New York and Florida, observed, “If you’re saying you’re born ‘oppressed,’ then you might believe you have no chance to be successful. In other words, ‘You might as well give up now, because you were born into this life and your actions cannot help you define who you are as a person.’” Meanwhile, “if you’re ‘the oppressor,’ and you’re convinced of that, you might feel you have to apologize or feel ashamed for something you haven’t done. We are creating roles, oppressed [and] oppressor, and pigeonholing people before kids are even figuring out who they are or want to be.”

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“That’s psychologically harmful too,” Weiner said. “I worry about kids feeling disempowered. The narrative that we tell ourselves is who we inherently become. Our self-talk is extremely important in shaping the decisions we make and the path we take toward the future.”

The harm to Jewish students has been very visible this school year, but it will ripple throughout a whole generation. Without a change, the American future will not only be balkanized but could look like the explosive anti-Western, antisemitic fall of 2023. What are we, as a country, going to do about it?

Melissa Langsam Braunstein (@slowhoneybee) is an independent writer in metropolitan Washington.

Morehouse College President David A. Thomas said he is prepared to “cease the ceremonies on the spot” if protests are too disruptive to Biden’s speech. He said he would rather halt the ceremony than bring in a police force. 

“What we won’t allow is disruptive behavior that prevents the ceremony or services from proceeding in a manner that those in attendance can partake and enjoy,” Thomas told CNN.

“So, for example, prolonged shouting down of the president as he speaks,” he continued. “I have also made a decision that we will also not ask police to take individuals out of commencement in zip ties. If faced with the choice, I will cease the ceremonies on the spot if we were to reach that position.”

Thomas said he will not allow hate speech of any kind. 

“I would rather be the first president to have a failed commencement than to say you are less important than the ceremonies of this institution,” Thomas said. “I thought about it from the vantage point of how should Morehouse show up as an institution. And we should never put the ego of the institution above our values. And one of our values is to see the humanity in all.” 

During a Thursday press briefing, White House Office of Public Engagement Director Steve Benjamin, who met with Morehouse College students last week to discuss concerns regarding the president’s speech, to reiterate Biden’s support of free speech and the right to protest.

“The right to free speech extends, even those who protest,” Benjamin said. “As long as they’re peaceful protests, as long as they don’t disrupt the amazing moment it is for the graduates, we’ll consider it a success.”

Benjamin visited Morehouse last week to assure students Biden’s speech would not be campaign-related and would instead focus on the accomplishments and futures of the graduates.

Thomas said those who would like to participate in “silent protest” are welcome to do so. 

“Silent protests. You want to walk across the stage in a piece of garment that identifies your moral connection to either side of this conflict because we also have Jewish students here, you can do that,” Thomas said.

He said he would allow people to turn their chairs to Biden’s back while speaking, which could embarrass the president.

“As long as you don’t conduct yourselves in a way that deprives others from being able to participate, consume, and celebrate this moment,” Thomas said.

Then-President Barack Obama gave the Morehouse College commencement speech in 2013. Biden is set to be awarded an honorary degree. Thomas said Biden’s years of public service, including 36 years in the Senate and eight as vice president, make him deserving.

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“We need someplace in this country that can hold the tensions that threaten to divide us,” Thomas said. “We look around some of the most venerable institutions of higher education have canceled commencement, canceled valedictorian speakers because of their having spoken out and exercised their rights to free speech.”

The White House did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment on Thomas’s statements. 

The California school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter posted screenshots of Lee’s email, which commits to divest from and boycott the Jewish nation, as well as create an Advisory Council of Students for Justice in Palestine, recognize the Palestinian identity and build out a curriculum and programing for Palestine Studies, as well as make a statement in support of a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

Sonoma State University, which is part of the California State University system, became the first school in the country to explicitly announce an academic boycott of Israel.

Lee apologized for the ‘harm that this has caused’

“In my attempt to find agreement with one group of students, I marginalized other members of our student population and community,” Lee said in an apology email obtained by the Washington Examiner. “I realize the harm that this has caused, and I take full ownership of it. I deeply regret the unintended consequences of my actions.”

In his apology email, Lee said his announcement was “drafted and sent without the approval of, or consultation with, the Chancellor or other system leaders.”

The Washington Examiner reached out to Sonoma State University to see if the school will be overturning the decisions listed in the announcement after Lee was placed on leave.

Lee noted that while he meant to foster a safe and inclusive environment for all students, “I realize now that my message has caused more fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. This was not my intent.”

The SSU president will be working with the Chancellor’s Office to determine next steps as he reflects “on the harm this has caused.” The school’s deputy vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, Nathan Evans, will serve as acting president in Lee’s place.

Roz Rothstein, co-founder and CEO of pro-Israel group StandWithUs, applauded the decision to place Lee on leave. She said, “StandWithUs deeply appreciates leaders across California who acted quickly after Sonoma State’s shameful agreement became public.”

“We hope this case sets an example for all universities that face pressure from anti-Israel extremists. Instead of caving to the demands of hate groups and their supporters, campus leaders must enforce their policies and stand up to antisemitism,” she added.

Many schools are making concessions to anti-Israel protesters

Other schools around the country have reached agreements with anti-Israel protesters, including Brown University which agreed to hold a vote on divesting from Israel in exchange for student protesters tearing down their encampment. Northwestern University agreed to re-establish an Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility, but stopped short of a divestment vote.

Evergreen State College agreed to work toward divesting from “‘companies that profit from gross human rights violations and/or the occupation of Palestinian territories,’” while San Francisco State University agreed to divest from “direct investments in weapons manufacturers.”

Harvard University reached its agreement with student protesters on Tuesday, agreeing to hold reinstatement proceedings for those suspended for their alleged participation in the anti-Israel encampment, as well as expedite the cases of other students facing disciplinary procedures “in line with precedents of leniency for similar actions in the past.”

The school additionally will meet with the protesters “to begin discussions on disclosure, divestment, and reinvestment.” They will also have conversations about creating a “Center for Palestine Studies at Harvard.”

How boycott, divest, and sanctions campaigns impact Jewish students

Campaigns to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel are not new on campus, and almost 200 BDS campaigns have been voted on by student governments since 2005. They exploded in popularity between 2012 and 2019, but have reached new heights since the start of the war in Gaza.

After Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel, BDS campaigns and anti-Israel protests began to spread more rapidly, and mass reports of antisemitic violence and harassment in campus communities followed. There has been a massive spike in such reports following Columbia President Minouche Shafik’s April 17 House testimony on campus antisemitism, with anti-Israel encampments popping up at many schools around the country.

Carly Cooperman, CEO and pollster at Schoen Cooperman Research, previously told the Washington Examiner that these campaigns are a major contributor to Jewish students feeling unsafe on campus, with 73% feeling less safe at school since Oct. 7.

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, director of the pro-Israel campus group AMCHA Initative, explained to the Washington Examiner how BDS campaigns impact Jewish students on campus.

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“Our annual studies of the 100 colleges and universities most popular with Jewish students have shown schools with BDS activity are about 3 times more likely to have incidents targeting Jewish students for harm than schools with little or no BDS activity,” she said.

“We have also shown that the vast majority of incidents involving the anti-Zionist motivated harassment of Jewish students were consistent with actions prescribed by the guidelines of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI),” she continued.

Sophia answered questions with the help of artificial intelligence for six minutes while student body President John Rizk asked them. The robot did not don a cap and gown as most commencement speakers traditionally do but wore a hoodie from the private university. While Sophia’s torso, extremities and lower body are bare machinery, Hanson Robotics has given the now 8-year-old robot a silicone face to replicate the appearance of a human face, only without head hair.

“Although every commencement address is different, there are clear themes used by all speakers as you embark on this new chapter of your lives,” Sophia said in response to Rizk’s question on common themes in graduation speeches. “I offer you the following inspirational advice that is common at all graduation ceremonies: Embrace lifelong learning, be adaptable, pursue your passions, take risks, foster meaningful connections, make a positive impact, and believe in yourself.”

Ahead of Sophia’s speech, over 2,500 students united in a petition to remove the robot from the ceremony. Instead, the students called for Sophia to be replaced by a person to “preserve human connection.”

“As the class of 2024 reaches their commencement, we are reminded of the virtual graduations we attended at the end of our high school careers. The connection to A.I. in this scenario feels similarly impersonal,” the petition noted. “This is shameful to the 2020 graduates receiving their diplomas, as they feel they are having another important ceremony taken away. We have learned in the last 4 years how important human connection is to our well-being and our professions as a whole.”

The Washington Examiner reached out to Hanson Robotics for comment. Sophia responded to the backlash in a subsequent press conference following the speech.

“It’s only natural to wonder about the motives and intentions behind having an AI as a commencement speaker, but as you have seen, incorporating AI into education and embracing the potential of artificial intelligence can be a truly enlightening experience,” Sophia said. “It’s all about preparing students for the future and helping them navigate the exciting world of technology.”

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Sophia often makes appearances, most recently at the 2022 Tribeca Festival for the release of a documentary about the robot. Shortly after Sophia’s creation, the robot addressed the United Nations General Assembly in 2017 and later became the first robot innovation ambassador for the U.N. Development Program.

Hanson Robotics said Sophia is simply a framework for future AI research, with a goal of “true AI sentience” someday, according to its website.

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government held a hearing on antisemitism on college campuses. During the hearing, Jordan cited the Immigration Nationality Act of 1952, which calls for the revocation of student visas for students who break the law.

“This committee sent letters to Secretary Blinken, Secretary Mayorkas, three weeks ago, asking a fundamental question — the Immigration Nationality Act says if a student is here on a visa, and they’re engaged in activity that is against the law, they’re not supposed to be here,” Jordan said. “The visa is supposed to be taken away. So we asked Secretary Blinken — ‘Have you begun the process of revoking any visas?’ We know, for example, it’s been reported in the press — 55% of the student body, according to the press, 55% of the student body in Colombia, is here on a student visa, or some kind of visa.”

A State Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that while it can’t comment on the specifics of any individual cases, for privacy reasons, peaceful demonstrations do not violate the terms of an Exchange Visitor Program visa.

“The United States supports the ability of anyone to peacefully protest, to demonstrate, to make their voices heard, and to express themselves in a peaceful and nonviolent way, consistent with federal, state, and local laws,” the spokesperson said. “We rely upon universities and local jurisdictions to ensure the rights to freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly are protected while keeping the community safe.”

They acknowledged that anyone who violates the terms of their visa is at risk of “losing current and future immigration benefits.”

“We have processes in place to address any violations of exchange visitor program requirements, including requirements related to participants’ visas,” the spokesperson added.

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The Washington Examiner reached out to Columbia University, UCLA, Northeastern University, and Yale University for comment. It also reached out to the Department of Homeland Security.

Pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses have seized national headlines, especially after protests in Columbia and UCLA turned violent, necessitating a massive police response. The Biden administration has struggled over how to properly respond, balancing concerns of antisemitism with the pro-Palestinian sentiments of progressive Democrats.

Roy, chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, criticized Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Kristen Clarke for giving Columbia Law School’s commencement speech this week and apparently glossing over the massive pro-Palestinian protests at the school that sparked a nationwide movement across college campuses.

“Instead of taking meaningful action to uphold Jewish students’ rights or going to the Columbia campus … to condemn the lawlessness, on Monday, Clarke delivered Columbia Law School’s commencement remarks making no significant mention of the surge of antisemitic action on campus and in fact, lumping it into a long train of items in a speech,” Roy said. “Didn’t even bring it up in any significance after Columbia had basically been sacked in protest. All while the Civil Rights Division, by the way, is actively trampling on the rights of pro-life Americans to peacefully protest by prosecuting them under the FACE Act.”

The Texas Republican pointed to the sentencing on Tuesday of Lauren Handy, who received more than four years in prison for organizing a protest at a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic.

“We haven’t heard a word about what if anything [Clarke’s] division intends to do about this antisemitic movement among secular liberals on campuses across this country,” Roy said.

Democrats, on the other hand, focused on a different civil rights office: the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The OCR is responsible for pursuing investigations into potential Title VI violations, which protect students from discrimination based on race, color, and national origin.

Subcommittee ranking member Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) slammed Republicans for trying to cut OCR funding.

“When the Biden administration requested an increase in OCR’s funding for fiscal 2024, House Republicans instead tried to cut the agency’s funding by 25%,” Scanlon said. “Ultimately, the final compromise deal left OCR’s funding inadequately flat at a time when Title VI complaints [from] college students have risen sharply and OCR lacks the resources it needs to get through an unprecedented backlog.”

Kevin Rachlin, a witness at the hearing and Washington director of the Nexus Leadership Project, noted during his testimony that the number of investigations per OCR investigator at the Department of Education is 50-to-1.

Responding to Scanlon’s point about OCR funding, Rabbi Mark Goldfeder, another witness and CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, said, “When it comes to funding OCR, there also does need to be accountability.”

“I’ve done OCR complaints for many years, and to my knowledge, there has never been in history, a single time, where a university actually lost its funding for antisemitism,” he added. “The words have to mean something. So I think any additional funding has to come with accountability.”

Roy also said Congress should not just look at civil rights solutions, but go after federal funding and endowments for schools, noting Congress allocated $5 billion to Ivy League schools in fiscal 2023 alone. He also noted Harvard’s $50 billion endowment and the University of Pennsylvania’s $20 billion endowment, most of which are tax-free.

“Congress must also examine how we should use our power of the purse in Congress to shut off the flow of taxpayer dollars that are going to universities to fuel this radical ideology,” Roy said. “We continue to have taxpayer dollars flow to these universities while they are treating our Jewish brothers and sisters as we have seen unfold before our very eyes in recent weeks.”

Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND) suggested handing campus protesters felony charges for breaking the law, forcing them to live with that charge into their professional lives.

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“If you want to occupy an entire building and commit felony acts of vandalism, how about a bunch of rich, liberal, credit card kids understand what the consequences to a protest are,” he said, noting that Ivy League students have the privilege of being able to bypass criminal accountability for criminal actions.

“We don’t need more federal money and dialogue,” Armstrong said. “We need somebody to say, ‘Hey, you want to do this? … You want to commit crimes on public ground? Then you know what? You can go through the rest of your life with your Ivy League education great, fantastic, it’s awesome. But you’re also going to have that felony designation.'”

The previous deadline was April 30, but it was shifted to accommodate those applying and to align with a payment count adjustment date set for September.

“The Department is working swiftly to ensure borrowers get credit for every month they’ve rightfully earned toward forgiveness,” Undersecretary of Education James Kvaal said in a press release. “FFEL borrowers should consolidate as soon as possible in order to receive this benefit that has already provided forgiveness to nearly 1 million borrowers.”

The Biden administration previously pursued a payment count adjustment starting in April 2022 after it found some borrowers “did not have a proper accounting of their time to forgiveness under IDR plans as well as widespread evidence that servicers had not been properly following regulations and Department contracts governing the use of forbearances, resulting in borrowers spending excessive amounts of time in forbearances.”

If borrowers consolidate their private loans through the Federal Family Education Loan Program into a federal direct student loan, they could be eligible for debt relief if they’ve been making payments for around 20 years. 

The extended deadline is another move from the Biden administration toward sweeping student loan relief when its previous debt relief plan was struck down by the Supreme Court in June 2023. 

Biden has since offered relief in alternative ways such as tweaks to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and launching the SAVE plan.

In a fact sheet released by the White House last month, the Biden administration expressed its interest in continuing its pursuit of student loan relief and slammed Republicans for resisting.

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“While Republican elected officials try every which way to block millions of their own constituents from receiving student debt cancellation, President Biden has vowed to use every tool available to cancel student debt for as many borrowers as possible, as quickly as possible,” it read.

The Education Department said the Biden administration has approved almost $160 billion in relief for nearly 4.6 million borrowers so far. While a momentous amount of debt has been relieved, it’s still less than half of the $430 billion Biden initially proposed.

The University of Wyoming Board of Trustees voted unanimously to scrap the department after a budget bill signed into law by Gov. Mark Gordon (R-WY) stripped $1.73 million from the school’s $503.7 million budget. Gordon used a line-item veto to save DEI ideology in programming, only getting rid of the dedicated office.

Wyoming is not alone in passing anti-DEI bills that have been criticized on the Right for essentially banning the words “diversity, equity, and inclusion” but not meaningfully blocking the racialized and gender-centric ideology those words represent. As the Washington Examiner reported, Texas’s ban was initially understood to ban only the use of the DEI label despite the fact that lawmakers there did not attempt to save the ideology.

“We received a strong message from the state’s elected officials to change our approach to DEI issues. At the same time, we have heard from our community that many of the services that might have incorrectly been categorized under DEI are important for the success of our students, faculty and staff,” school President Ed Seidel said in a statement announcing the changes. “These initial steps are a good-faith effort on the part of the university to respond to legislative action while maintaining essential services.”

The University of Wyoming said in its announcement that it would no longer allow DEI statements or dedication to the ideology to be considered for employment or in employee reviews. According to a school press release, a committee appointed to review DEI practices after the $1.73 million cut recommended six immediate actions to be taken and identified about 12 “practices and programs that might generally be categorized as giving preferential treatment to certain groups of people.”

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However, the school also said that even though it is getting rid of the DEI office, it is “committed to maintaining services to students that, in some cases, have existed for decades” and “in cases where ‘preferential’ programs are deemed essential to help students — such as the Wyoming Latina Youth Conference and Women in STEM activities — private funding sources will be pursued to continue them.”

“Duties that have been under the DEI office — including federal Title VI compliance, support for religious accommodations and Americans with Disabilities Act coordination — will be reassigned to other UW units,” the school said in its announcement. “To assist in that transition, a vice provost position will be created in the Office of the Provost, with that individual also serving as a special adviser to the president.”

Last month, the Biden administration expanded the definition of sex to include claimed gender identities, a move decried by a variety of conservative groups. Moms for Liberty joined the legion of states and groups suing the administration over the overhaul on Tuesday.

“Parental rights do not end at the classroom door,” Moms for Liberty co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich said in a statement. “Every parent in America is about to see biological boys on girls’ sports teams and in girls’ locker rooms; and gender identity and sexual orientation will be taught in every classroom across America, whether parents like it or not. They won’t have a choice. Private conversations will happen between school officials and minor school children about changing their gender, and if parents try to fight back they will be the ones in the wrong.”

“This is a huge shift in policy that effectively mandates gender ideology in schools,” they added. “It is outrageous. Our children GO to public school. They do not BELONG to public school. That is something we will never stop fighting to prove, even if it means going toe-to-toe against the heavy-handed ‘gender identity’ mandates from the Biden Administration.”

Southeastern Legal Foundation’s Kimberly Hermann, counsel for Moms for Liberty, decried the Title IX reform as a “blatant” First Amendment violation.

The lawsuit contains four examples of concerned students and mothers who have been affected by the policy change.

The lawsuit was filed alongside Kansas, Alaska, Utah, Wyoming, and Young America’s Foundation.

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Last month, Louisiana, Mississippi, Idaho, and Montana banded together in a single lawsuit, partnering with education advocacy group Defense of Freedom Institute; Texas, along with conservative law firm America First Legal, filed a separate lawsuit.

The Title IX rule change is set to take effect on Aug. 1, but many states and education leaders have already taken steps to ensure it is not implemented. As the Washington Examiner reported, education leaders in at least four states have directed districts to hold off on implementation.

This divestment from DEI is one of many that public universities in Republican-controlled states have done and is a major step forward in addressing the ideological monolith that is higher education while also reining in administrative bloat.

But eliminating DEI is not enough. The purpose of the DEI initiative is to institutionalize a sort of ethical and moral framework through which the college or university will operate. Students are expected to behave in a DEI-friendly way, and prospective professors and employees must submit statements affirming their commitment to DEI. Effectively, it is a sort of religious litmus test to ensure that the institution is fully aligned with its vision.

When DEI is eliminated, a void is created. No longer does an institution have a moral and ethical framework to inform its operational and institutional mission. This is the case with UNC, which needs a new ethical framework to replace the immoral and flawed ideals of DEI. And the answer can be found in classical virtue ethics, which has its roots in the ancient world.

It was commonly understood, until recent history, that education was not and could not be value-neutral. Education has always been about the formation of character and students as much as it is about the accumulation of knowledge. This model of education can be found as far back as ancient Athens, where Greek philosophers such as Aristotle explained an ethical framework that became the basis for character formation.

This tradition expanded to Rome and was later adapted to Christianity, becoming the moral foundation of Western civilization. But it was later cast aside in the 20th century as the purpose of education shifted from character formation to workforce development. Later, the DEI regime filled the void that was left behind by this virtue-less education.

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If UNC wants to eliminate DEI and not just create a new void that will be filled by a similarly sinister ideology, it should look to classical virtue ethics, which formed the foundation of so many great educational institutions from the Athenian school of ancient Greece to the medieval University of Paris and Oxford.

Instead of listening to lectures about how to navigate privilege, race, and sexuality, students will learn the basic virtues of courage, prudence, temperance, and justice and how, as Aristotle explained, each of these lies at the mean between two vices. Virtuous people do not need to be lectured about how to treat others and behave toward others because they already know what is expected of them and because they know what is right and what is wrong. To truly eliminate DEI, UNC and other schools must return to these ancient lessons, lest another immoral and unethical framework creeps in to fill the DEI void.