As campus protests flare, Congress seeks reckoning on antisemitism

As student protests roil Columbia University and other campuses across the United States, Congress is stepping in to the fray.

The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed an antisemitism bill 320-91 that would pressure universities to rein in rhetoric against Israel and Jews, or risk losing government funding. 

The bill, though bipartisan, faced significant opposition from Democrats, some of whom see the bill as a Republican election-year ploy to score political points. Some Republicans also voted against it.

The vote follows months of House Republicans chastising top colleges for not having the backbone to rein in students protesting Israel’s military response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. 

“The country needs clear moral authority,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said on Tuesday, after taking the unusual step of personally visiting Columbia and speaking to the protesters last week, citing a vacuum of leadership. “We need the president to say, what’s happening on college campuses is wrong.”

While Mr. Johnson described the issue as black and white, the purported reason for this bill – to spell out more clearly what constitutes antisemitic rhetoric and behavior – tacitly acknowledges that it can be difficult to draw that line. Just how to protect the rights of American Jews without violating the First Amendment principle of free speech has become a matter of intense debate, and campuses have become the crucible for hashing that out. 

The Anti-Defamation League recorded more antisemitic incidents in 2023 than in any previous year since it began keeping track in 1979, with a sharp uptick in incidents following Oct. 7. 

Over the past week, nationwide campus protests have escalated, with protesters at Columbia taking over a building there for the first time since 1968. They have demanded that their university divest from corporations that “profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine.” New York City Mayor Eric Adams raised concerns about protesters’ rhetoric, from yelling “We are Hamas” – considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. – to saying “We don’t want no Zionists here.” Another frequent pro-Palestinian chant is “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – a phrase that has been used by Hamas to reject an Israeli state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, a tract of land that includes Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip.

Mr. Johnson, a constitutional lawyer who long advocated for free speech before coming to Congress, supported vigorous debate and the right to protest at a Tuesday press conference on Capitol Hill. But, he added, the Columbia protests have gone too far, violating the rights of others. After an Orthodox rabbi urged Jewish students to leave campus, the university first canceled classes for a day and then offered hybrid classes for those who didn’t feel comfortable attending in person. 

In order to receive federal funding, universities must comply with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including Title VI, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump issued an executive order extending those protections to individuals on college and university campuses facing antisemitism. The order instructed government agencies that enforce Title VI to consider the definition of antisemitism developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and the present-day examples it offers. Wednesday’s bill would require that the Department of Education use that definition and supporting examples to enforce Title VI. 

Examples, as worded by the alliance, include:

• Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
• Applying double standards by requiring of it [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
• Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

Even Jews themselves disagree on what constitutes antisemitism versus anti-Zionism. 

Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, a Jewish Democrat who described himself as “a deeply committed Zionist” during debate on the House floor Wednesday, raised concerns that the bill could chill constitutionally protected speech. 

“I’ve devoted much of my life to combating antisemitism, and I am as attuned as anyone to threats and bigotry aimed at Jewish people,” he said. While acknowledging that criticism of Israel could take the form of antisemitism, he said the bill was too broad. 

“Colleges could end up suppressing protected speech criticizing Israel or supporting Palestinians,” he added, describing the rushed bill as a “cynical attempt to exploit for political gain the deep divisions currently on display on college campuses across the country.”

House Republicans are now vowing to review whether schools that have received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds are living up to their responsibility of upholding Title VI.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state, who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees the National Institutes of Health, said Tuesday that Columbia received about $682 million in taxpayer-funded research grants from the NIH in the past fiscal year. Harvard received $409 million. The University of Southern California, which just canceled graduation ceremonies due to the protests, received $508 million. 

“We will be increasing our oversight of institutions that have received public funding and cracking down on those who are in violation of the Civil Rights Act,” said Chair Rodgers. 

This bill will give her and other GOP chairs a sharper tool for doing so if it also passes the Senate and is signed into law by President Joe Biden.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional context about the phrase “from the river to the sea.”