What Trump’s antisemitism executive order actually means for college students and schools
The new order is less strident than the rhetoric that surrounded its release, but lays groundwork for more significant action
President Donald Trump leaves the stage after speaking at the Israeli American Council National Summit at the Washington Hilton in September. Photo by Getty Images
By Arno Rosenfeld January 30, 2025
The executive order on antisemitism signed by President Donald Trump Wednesday was far less sweeping than the rhetoric that preceded and surrounded it. But the order’s primary directive appeared to lay the groundwork for more dramatic action in the coming months, heartening those who believe such action is overdue while prompting fear for international students.
The order requires every federal agency to provide the White House — within the next two months — with a description of any legal tools they can use to combat antisemitism and a list of open legal complaints related to campus antisemitism.
The order is “creating a process,” said Alyza Lewin, president of the Brandeis Center, which advocates for pro-Israel college students. “Let’s learn the lay of the land, let’s see what all of our options are and then let’s make a very thoughtful, determined decision on how to move forward — that’s responsible.”
The Departments of State, Education and Homeland Security were also ordered to include “recommendations for familiarizing institutions of higher education” with an existing federal law that bars non-citizens who support terrorist organizations from the United States so that “such institutions may monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff.”
Alex Morey, an attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Express, said that although the order did not actually direct schools themselves to begin this monitoring she was worried that some may seek to do so anyway..
“Schools are often in risk Whack-a-Mole,” Morey said. “Right now the threat to federal funding — or some federal investigation — is much more pronounced. Nobody is suing them on First Amendment grounds yet.” Both the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee, which praised the order, also said in statements that the administration must follow due process and respect free speech rights.
Morey said that her organization was already fielding frantic queries from international students at American universities who are worried about being caught in a legal dragnet.
“These are not students that got arrested at a protest or vandalized a building, these are students who just went out and protested,” she said. “What we don’t want to see is schools saying, ‘Hey, Students for Justice in Palestine, I’m going to need a list of everyone in that club and we’re going to comb it for foreign students.’”
Examining legal cases — and foreign students
Among the order’s most specific provisions is a call for the attorney general to examine all open court cases related to antisemitism and determine whether the United States should intervene as a party in any of them.
Lewin said this sent a powerful signal to the Justice Department that combating antisemitism was a top priority for the administration, and could also help elevate the status of some of the civil rights cases where Jewish students are suing universities for antisemitism. “It just brings it up to a whole different level,” she said.
The order also “encouraged” federal prosecutors to consider using the conspiracy against rights law, which has historically been used to prosecute groups like the Klu Klux Klan, to go after antisemitism seemingly related exclusively to Israel. That recommendation mirrored one made in Project Esther, the Heritage Foundation’s roadmap for Trump to fight antisemitism, that the government use the RICO statutes originally aimed at the mafia to bring down a domestic “Hamas Support Network.”
Darryl Li, a progressive law professor at the University of Chicago, said it was too early to tell whether such a tactic could be used successfully against pro-Palestinian demonstrators engaged in legal activities.
“The federal criminal code is incredibly elastic so is it possible that an ambitious U.S. attorney somewhere tries to do something” he said. “It’s planting an idea.”
The order also hones in on a provision in federal immigration law that bars non-citizens who support terrorist organizations from the country. The notion that the raucous demonstrations against Israel that swept college campuses last year were driven by foreign influence has been relatively widespread — with some Israel supporters suggesting that Iran or Qatar may have played a role — though virtually no evidence has been provided to support that theory.
But some conservative activists have been pushing the administration to focus specifically on deporting foreign students and university staff. Betar USA, a far-right Zionist advocacy group, has been sending lists of foreign participants in campus protests to the Trump administration.
Lewin argued that there was a strong need for university leaders to be taught how to identify illegal support for terrorist organizations among students on their campuses: “Look at the people who are creating the disruption and the destruction on your campus, who are harming your ability to carry out your mission and if you see things that appear to possibly connect them to terror organizations let us know.”
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