President Donald Trump issued the Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism on December 11 to fight anti-Semitism on college campuses. According to the Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitic incidents rose 48% from 2016 to 2018. Thirty percent of these occurred on college campuses or non-Jewish schools. 

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans discrimination based on race, color, and national origin in institutions that receive federal funding, such as colleges and universities. The statute does not include religion as a protected category. Institutions that violate Title VI may lose their federal funding. Instead of Congress amending the statute to expand protected classes, Trump’s order conflates Jewish religion practice with race, color, and national origin. 

According to The New York Times, the Trump administration had defined Jews as representing a “national origin” before issuing the Executive Order. 

“When I hear that come out of his mouth, I’m aware that part of his base are people that shout ‘Jews will not replace us,’” Upper School History Teacher Kevin Conlon said. “He has Jewish folks in his family, so I appreciate that, but I think he’s just playing politics.”

The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act stalled in Congress in 2018. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the Act threatened to “chill academic environments, suppress critical thoughts, and mandate political positions that ought to be openly contested.” 

Upper School English Teacher Cory Zeller believes that religion should be protected but worries about the implication of hate speech laws. 

“It was necessary to protect Jewish people because before they were not a protected class,” Zeller said. “Some of the articles that have come out have pointed to the irony of a conservative president being the one to institute an executive order through which a trickle-down effect could lead to hate speech laws.”

The ACLU argues that under the Executive Order, viewpoints that do not conform to foreign policy and histories of Jewish life will fall under anti–Semitism. Many are concerned that this act threatens the study of Palestinian and Jewish social and political history, culture, and forms of belonging, as well as suppresses activism and public speech that favor Palestinian freedoms and rights. 

“Anti-Semitism is primarily speech acts, and the order is protecting people from hate speech, which is hate speech law,” Zeller said. “If we are now instituting Title VI in this new way, it could lead to speech infringement.”

According to Foreign Policy, the order seeks to “regulate the very idea of who is Jewish by either assuming a national affiliation with the State of Israel or testing the lack of that affiliation.” In this description, the ‘real’ Jew “not only supports Israel but also belongs to Israel…and the ‘false’ Jew is critical of Israel.”

“If I were Jewish, I would be very offended at his decision, and if you want to cut him some slack, you can say he’s trying to combat anti-Semitism,” Conlon, who teaches International Relations, said. “It all gets negated by the politics he’s playing.”

Under this order, anyone who criticizes the State of Israel is now framed as criticizing Jews and engaging in anti-Semitism. The Jews are now a nationality represented by the State of Israel. This order coincides with the far-right politics of Israel because the Israeli government has invoked biblical claims to justify land theft. Now, the government continues to declare legal all settlements on the West Bank. 

Conlon is concerned about making equivalent criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The more right-wing pro-Israel groups have succeeded in getting state legislators to pass this legislation that the government cannot contract out with any companies that support boycotting Israel,” Conlon said. “If you want to protest the unjust treatment of Palestinians, you are anti-Semitic.”

On the other side, however, Heritage reports that “Jewish students welcome this partial solution from the Trump administration to this evil.” According to Heritage, Students for Justice in Palestine led a “prolonged interruption of a Vassar College event focused on the indigenous Jews in the Middle East, “Lambasting the audience with an overtly anti-Semitic chant.”

“Restricting hate speech is a slippery slope,” senior Adele Lowitz, a member of a reform synagogue in Highland Park, said. “I worry about the restrictions on free speech and the classification of Judaism as a race.”

Like Lowitz, Upper School History Teacher Jeanne Barr is concerned about the consequences of limiting free speech. “I’m not sure it was wise,” Barr, who teaches First Amendment Law in Civil Liberties, said. “The Executive Order is tempting because adding something into the Civil Rights Act would take both houses of Congress.

Heritage disagrees with The New York Times’s claim that the order would classify Judaism as a nationality. Heritage argues that the executive order states “what should be obvious: ‘individuals who face discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin do not lose protection under Title VI for also being a member of a group that shares common religious practices.’”

“It is politically unstable in this country to say anything critical of Israel,” Conlon said. “The United States is in an entrenched position we can’t get out of to move toward constructive think about a solution.”