The Justice Department announced in a press release on Feb. 3 that they would be establishing a task force to investigate claims of antisemitism on college campuses. The Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism will be led by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and headed by Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Leo Terrell.
The task force will include the Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services and “other agencies as it develops,” according to the press release.
The Task Force comes as a part of President Trump’s Executive Order on Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism. The Jan. 29 order requires that within 60 days of Jan. 29, 2025 each executive agency must submit a report identifying all pending administrative complaints and court cases alleging civil-rights violations related to post-Oct. 7, 2023 campus anti-Semitism involving institutions of higher education. The US Attorney General is “encouraged to employ appropriate civil rights enforcement authorities to combat anti-Semitism.”
The Justice Department said in the press release that “first priority will be to root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses.”
Reuters reported that the Department of Education said it would be opening investigations of antisemitic harassment at Columbia University, Northwestern University, Portland State University, University of California, Berkeley; and University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
In 2023, as CNN reported in November, the Brandeis Center, a Jewish civil rights legal advocacy organization, filed complaints with the Department of Education alleging that Wellesley College failed to adequately respond to harassment of Jews on campus. The complaint alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act — which protects people from discrimination in programs that receive federal financial assistance, like Wellesley.
Now, with the Executive Order requiring a report on all pending civil rights complaints post-Oct. 7, it is possible that Wellesley will be named in any report generated.
Denise Katz-Prober, the Brandeis Center attorney overseeing the Wellesley complaint, told The News that the Brandeis Center’s Wellesley complaint is still pending before the Office for Civil Rights within the Department of Education. However, a new administration does not signal the end of the investigation.
“Just because there’s a new administration, it does not mean and certainly Wellesley College should not think that this point is going to be forgotten,” she said.
Wellesley has been in the news for accusations of antisemitism since Oct. 7, 2023. Fox News reported on events on campus after Oct. 7, and CNN reported on the Brandeis Center’s complaint against the College in Nov. 2023. However, Katz-Prober does not believe that only the most prominently featured schools will receive the brunt of the legal action.
“It’s not just the Ivies, it’s not just the ones that are prominently in the news. It’s a wide range of different kinds of schools,” she said.
The Department of Education also announced that it would be opening investigations of antisemitic harassment at Columbia University, Northwestern University, Portland State University, University of California, Berkeley and University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Katz-Prober spoke to the message she sees this Executive sending:
“What it signals to colleges and universities across the country, including Wellesley, is that this administration is not sitting back and just waiting for complaints to be filed. It is proactively addressing the problem of antisemitism as it sees it occurring on campuses,” she said.
She also noted the greater scope these investigations present for prosecution.
“These directed investigations are initiated by the administration, and they also allow the administration to address the problem and direct their investigation more broadly,” she said. “They’re not confined to a narrow set of allegations in a complaint.”
The directed investigations are not the only proactive step the Executive Order allows for. The Executive Order states that “The Attorney General is encouraged to employ appropriate civil-rights enforcement authorities, such as 18 U.S.C. 241, to combat anti-Semitism.”
Under 18 U.S.C. 241, if two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person, they shall be fined or imprisoned for up to ten years. The consequences increase to imprisonment for any term and/or the death penalty if death, sexual abuse, kidnapping or any attempt to commit these crimes occurs.
The executive order also requires the Secretary of State, Secretary of Education and Secretary of Homeland Security must also provide recommendations for informing institutions of higher education about how to monitor for and report “activities by alien students and staff” that would lead to investigations and potentially deportations.
The statute referenced for this section of the order (8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3)), which denotes security and related grounds for inadmissibility to the US and ineligibility for visas, states specifically that “an alien who is an officer, official, representative, or spokesman of the Palestine Liberation Organization is considered, for purposes of this chapter, to be engaged in a terrorist activity” that would make them inadmissible.
A spokesperson for College Administration said that they were not aware of any Justice Department actions that might specifically affect Wellesley.
Contact the editors responsible for this story: Jessica Chen, Sazma Sarwar, and Valida Pau
