From the Community | Combating campus ‘antisemitism’ is an outrageous ploy to destroy public research infrastructure
In early March, the Trump administration canceled federal grants totaling $400 million to Columbia University for their alleged failure to combat “antisemitism” during a tense period of campus protests last spring. If these cuts are maintained, they will endanger or entirely halt a large body of research serving the public interest, threaten patient care and disrupt university function, according to Columbia’s interim president. Additionally, termination of these grants will harm countless academic workers like graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and research staff who rely on them for salary and healthcare benefits. Similar events are unfolding at other universities across the country. Beyond economic threat, multiple student activists have been detained by federal agents and threatened with deportation, in what many have rightfully called out as flagrant violations of basic civil rights.
As members of the academic community, we should all be deeply disturbed by these brazen attacks on higher education, attempted federal control of university governance and dystopian throttling of free speech. As President Donald Trump and his administration have assured, these abuses will not stop at Columbia University. It is not a question of “if” for Stanford, it is a question of “when” — in fact, on March 11, the federal Office of Civil Rights sent Stanford a letter warning of ‘potential enforcement actions’ for antisemitic violations. Our community must be prepared to respond.
To the Stanford administration, first and foremost: we call on you to repudiate this deplorable and dangerous weaponization of antisemitism and to defend our university’s stated commitment to “freedom of inquiry, thought, expression, publication and peaceable assembly.” Protect your students and workers when you will inevitably be called upon to abet discriminatory immigration orders that target those who have entrusted you with their safety or called upon to provide sensitive disciplinary records to external congressional committees. The Stanford administration must learn from the case of Columbia: acquiescing to these demands does not offer protection; the professed concern for Jewish safety only conceals the true project to dismantle our academic institutions. Stanford has an opportunity to formulate a different kind of response to these threats, and lead our peer institutions in doing so.
To the Jewish members of the Stanford community: be not fooled – MAGA has not, does not and will not ever care about our safety. Rather than denouncing white supremacist groups or defamatory conspiracy, they embrace and enflame. They willfully conflate criticism of Israel’s devastating war on Gaza with the very real, painful legacy of antisemitism to provide a cover for their campaign to destroy educational institutions. We cannot allow Jewish safety to become synonymous with the repression of free speech, the detainment of our own students and the destruction of precious public research infrastructure. These actions stand in direct conflict with our core Jewish values of educated debate and intellectual pursuit. We must loudly and resolutely refuse them, as they are taken in our name.
And to those of conscience in the campus community, to those concerned about the future of research funding and all that it enables — we must remain clear-eyed and stand together in unity. Call your elected representatives. Organize around these issues on campus and in the larger Bay Area community. Speak up, if you are able. This fight extends far beyond the boundaries of Judaism, and we will need you.
Alex Jaffe is a postdoctoral fellow in the Doerr School of Sustainability.
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