OPINION:
The Trump administration must keep up the hard line in combating antisemitism and anti-Americanism on college campuses. The reaction on campus to U.S. and Israeli military action in Iran proves that the Department of Education cannot afford to be complacent.
Complacency creates voids of inaction that anti-American activists seize to radicalize and brainwash the next generation of leaders.
Take Columbia University. Last year, the Trump administration froze roughly $400 million in federal funding because the Ivy League school failed to protect Jewish students from sustained antisemitic harassment during anti-Israel protests.
Columbia agreed to a three-year, roughly $221 million settlement and adopted policies aimed at combating campus antisemitism, which some people likely interpreted as “mission accomplished.”
That narrative is dangerously incomplete.
Beneath the surface, anti-American and anti-Western currents still roil. On Feb. 28, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, self-styled as a coalition of campus activists, posted “Marg bar Amrika” (“Death to America”) on social media after U.S.-Israeli strikes in Iran. Columbia rushed to distance itself, noting that Columbia University Apartheid Divest is not a recognized student organization and may not even be run by current students.
That dodge is evasive. Columbia University Apartheid Divest traces back years as the spearhead of an 80-plus group campus coalition that staged disruptive and violent encampments and protests. Whether or not Columbia officially recognizes the groups, the ideas and sentiments it amplifies thrive on campus — in lecture halls, dorms and student networks — often under the guise of anti-Israel and anti-American activism.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest is not an isolated blip. University chapters of the socialist Society for a Democratic Society recently rallied in support of the Iranian regime and against the United States and Israel.
The Louisiana State University chapter called American military action “the last words of a crumbling U.S. empire,” and the San Jose State chapter characterized Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other regime leaders as “innocent.” These protests are not just speech but also the result of radical ideology taught, tolerated and normalized.
Universities exist to educate America’s future civic, military and political leaders, not to incubate hostility toward our own nation. Political activism on campus reflects what faculty teach and what administrators allow.
This existential threat makes me understand why Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has moved to ban active-duty military personnel from attending elite universities that were at the center of the antisemitism crisis and continue to harbor anti-American sentiment.
Tough measures may be unfortunate, but they are also prudent and necessary.
I applaud the Trump administration’s recent lawsuit against the University of California, Los Angeles, over its failures to address antisemitism. The government must continue legal action and, where warranted, freeze federal funding.
These tools have been among the most effective levers for reform, but the administration cannot implement those measures and expect discrete resolutions, not when anti-Western sentiment lurks in all corners of higher education.
• Zachary Marschall, Ph.D., is editor-in-chief of Leadership Institute’s Campus Reform and an adjunct assistant professor of arts administration at the University of Kentucky.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.