Trump-era antisemitism policy expected to fuel flood of student lawsuits against universities
Jean Lee and Simone Weichselbaum
November 4, 2023
As campuses across the country continue to erupt in protests over the Israel-Hamas war, a little-known 2019 presidential executive order is expected to fuel a flood of student legal claims against universities.
Attorneys — from a mix of white-shoe corporate firms to Jewish advocacy groups — are meeting with students who say their schools are failing to protect them from antisemitic or anti-Israel conduct.
In 2019, then-President Donald Trump signed an order instructing federal officials to expand the interpretation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include “discrimination rooted in anti-Semitism” as a form of discrimination based on race, color and national origin — prohibited behavior for programs that get federal funding. Trump signed the order amid a series of violent incidents against Jews, including the 2018 killing of 11 congregants in a Pittsburgh synagogue and a 2019 attack that killed three inside a Kosher supermarket in New Jersey.
