The latest “Pro-Palestinian protest” at Columbia University, as liberal media likes to call it, included a series of chants to murder Jews and destroy the Jewish State.
Jewish students – almost all unmasked and sporting kaffiyehs to show solidarity with Gazan Arabs – chained themselves to Columbia’s gates and chanted to free Mahmoud Khalil and demanded the names of university trustees who handed over the names of students to the New York Police Department and federal immigration services.
It was a curious spectacle: Jewish students showed their faces as they demanded clarity regarding university due process and protections for fellow students, while students wearing masks for whom they were advocating, yelled antisemitic slogans as defined by the university.
If ever there was a group that took free speech arguments to the extreme, it is Jews that chain themselves to a fence to advocate for rights of students who despise them.
The Columbia chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) were suspended by the university on Nov. 10, 2023, after the groups “repeatedly violated University policies related to holding campus events.” That has not kept them from storming the gates of the university, partnering with not-soon-enough-designated-terrorist group WithinOurLifetime.
Columbia’s chapter of JVP was more explicit about violence “by any means necessary,” like the October 7 massacre.
Somewhere in the middle of the pro-Palestinian Jewish community at Columbia is J Street U, which is an officially recognized student group on the university’s undergraduate website. The group is worried about antisemitic incidents and chants of “Pro-Palestinian protesters” but also wants to protect their speech and keep them from getting kicked off campus without due process.
SJP appreciates that sentiment but demands more of Jews, specifically calling for the end of Israel. The Tufts chapter of SJP said “While SJP recognizes that many Jewish people begin their anti-zionist political journey through J Street U and appreciates that J Street U’s Tufts chapter agrees that antisemitism and anti-Zionism are not synonymous, it is crucial for students to refuse half-measures that condemn occupation while normalizing colonization.”
The Columbia and Barnard Hillel houses J Street U. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called Hillel and other Jewish groups “enemies of the Muslim community” for supporting Israel. It is seemingly lockstep with SJP and JVP that only Jews that call for destroying Israel “by any means necessary” can be considered allies.
There is a spectrum of left-wing Jews at Columbia and Barnard, ranging from virulently anti-Zionist, to modestly pro-Israel. Many are pro-Israel too, although they tend to be more centrist and right-leaning. The vast majority are targets of the pro-Palestinian gang. All of them are being ranked on an Israel litmus test for judgement, like no other diaspora community in the world.
Amid the rampant antisemitism at universities and claims of suppression of free speech, another troubling dynamic is emerging: the “al Aqsa-fication” of federal research grants to universities.
For background, the al Aqsa Mosque sits in the Old City of Jerusalem atop the Jewish Temple Mount. It is considered by Muslims to be its third most holy site. Muslims – and the United Nations – insist that the site is purely Islamic and prayer is only permissible to Muslims, despite the fact that it is the holiest site for Jews. The site’s religious matters are managed by a Jordanian Islamic waqf which insists that the “status quo” of barring non-Muslims from praying be maintained. They warn of violence and death should the status quo be altered.
Thousands of Jews praying at the Western Wall Plaza on Passover, beneath the Temple Mount which has a ban on Jewish prayer
And so it has begun for university federal grants, amid Hamas’s genocidal war which it named the “al Aqsa Flood.”
Americans are being schooled by liberals and scientists about the absolutely critical nature of the research work that universities perform. People are learning from the elite that people will die if their essential work stops due to a lack of funding. The academics bemoan any oversight that is not purely from within the academy, despite being funded by taxpayers.
Both al Aqsa (for Muslims) and federal research grants (for universities) see the root of the threat coming from Jews.
When Jews visit their holiest site on the Temple Mount, Islamic radicals claim they are desecrating it with “filthy feet.” University officials similarly think the government should be banned from any involvement in their work under the banner of “academic freedom.”
“Al-Aqsa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They [Jews] have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet. We won’t allow them to do so and we will do whatever we can to defend Jerusalem.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, September 2015
When Islamic radicals promote violence at the Temple Mount to block any non-Islamic presence, their leaders shout “we welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem.” We are now witnessing professors rallying around universities, ripping up diplomas, locking arms with anti-Israel protestors and demanding that the universities not give an inch to the government’s demands to protect Jewish students.
University research is the academy’s al Aqsa Mosque. The liberal administrations are the waqf which demand absolute control. They are warning everyone that should the status quo change because Jewish human rights and dignity are trampled with impunity, people will die.
Universities are bemoaning the “Judaization” of their research, as they feel under assault by unholy people in their sacred domain. When Israel introduced metal detectors onto the Temple Mount after Islamic radicals started to stockpile weapons on the site, the faithful rioted and managed to get Israel to remove the protective measures. The universities are now engaged in similar protests seeking the same goal: purity without oversight and guardrails.
Liberals see the Trump administration seizing grants like Jews moving into homes in Jerusalem’s Old City. A governmental audit of the purpose of research is vilified like archeological excavations near the Temple Mount. All are condemned as acts of sabotage which threaten the very stability of society.
The discussion of the government’s oversight and control of billions of dollars of research grants is inflaming passions. Like the Islamic faithful who rally when they see Jewish presence near al Aqsa, the global academy is outraged at the challenge to the “status quo” of unfiltered money. The Mourabitoun (men) and Mourabitat (women) on university campuses have taken up positions both physical and ideological.
University of Illinois professors protesting cuts to federal funding, February 2024Al Aqsa faithful in Karachi, Pakistan, April 2022. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)
As the world watches Jews being routed from universities without basic protections, we are witnessing the emergence of a new blood libel, that Jews will be the root cause of millions of deaths as medical research is cut.
There is the holy and profane. The world is normalizing and entrenching antisemitism by placing the Islamic waqf and elite universities on the side of the angels, while simultaneously accusing Jews of being aligned with the underworld for the audacity of demanding basic human rights.
Columbia University is cycling through yet another president. The latest leader is Claire Shipman, who takes over the “Interim/ Acting” role from Katrina Armstrong, who had the title for a short few months.
In taking over the position, Shipman offered no words to alumni about 1) the rank antisemitism on campus, 2) the perceived threat to “free speech” which anti-Israel rioters use as a red herring to mask the stink of their abhorrent conduct, nor 3) the financial sword hanging over the institution with the Trump administration’s demand for change. Instead, Shipman said she would attempt to be “transparent” about her efforts to navigate through this challenging time and sought a “partnership” with alumni.
Will Shipman openly review her responses to Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) demands, including that the university commit to $10 million for a Gaza “resilience fund” which will finance scholarships for as many as 40 students from the West Bank and Gaza for five years? Will Shipman partner with the Gaza Scholarship Initiative of the Center for Arab American Philanthropy in such effort? Will she feel compelled to have a similar donation drive for Israelis impacted by Hamas’s genocidal war?
CUAD wanted to make sure that antisemitic professors like Joseph Massad, who praised the October 7 massacre, would be “protected.” Will the school hire White Supremacists to teach students that Black people liked being slaves? Will Andrew Tate teach a class on Women’s Studies? Shipman’s letter said she “love[s] the sharp argument, the intellectual sprawl, the sense that anything feels possible.” Will vile racists be welcomed onto campus for a wide-ranging test of free speech?
CUAD demanded the reinstatement of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). Will Shipman grant the KKK a chapter at Columbia as well?
Dozens of professors signed an open letter to university administrators to protect professors like Joseph Massad, including Columbia Law’s “Human Rights Institute” team of Kelsey Jost-Creegan and Bassam Khawaja. The institute is funded by Kathy Surace-Smith, a university trustee. Will fellow trustees sway Shipman’s course of actions?
How transparent will Shipman be with her alumni donors and what kind of feedback will she incorporate into her action plan?
She may think she’s deciding between constituents, aligning with either students, faculty, alumni, trustees, or the government with competing desires. She may be debating who will provide the most funding or people over the long term. Or perhaps she just wants to test the parameters of “intellectual sprawl,” tickling the edges of harassment and intimidation.
Would a Gaza fundraiser help clarify her calculus?
Shipman said she wants to hear from you. Contact her and the school at officeofthepresident@columbia.edu, alumdev@columbia.edu and secretary@columbia.edu. The phone number is (212) 854-9970
In the year 2000, the United Arab Emirates president Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Nahayan announced a $2.5 million gift to the Harvard Divinity School to endow a professorship of Islamic studies “to promote a better understanding of Islam among the non-Muslim people of the world.” In 2003, after students at Harvard flagged the Abu Dhabi-based Zayed International Center for Coordination and Follow-Up (ZICCF) long list of anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish speakers and articles, Harvard felt compelled to return the gift. The Sheik announced closing the center with a press release that acknowledged that ZICCF “had engaged in a discourse that starkly contradicted the principles of interfaith tolerance.”
MEMRI noted that its work and translation of Arabic into English helped shed light on the centres conspiracy theories including that America and Israel committed the attacks of 9/11, that the Protocol of the Elders of Zion is true, as well as Holocaust deniers.
The Arab world was apoplectic at the closing of the centre and Harvard’s return of the gift. Al-Sharq Al-Awsat in London wrote that ZICCF had “an educational mission that allows the exploration of various points of view on issues of international significance. But it was accused of radicalism when the Americans and Zionists did not like the opinions expressed in it… The Centre was obliterated in order to silence it and to make an example to others. And the astonishing thing about all this is that it happened amidst calls to democratize the Arab world… to allow freedom of expression and to fight despotic regimes… [It] shows that the fierce influence that Zionism has on the American decision-making has extended outside the U.S.”
Twenty years later, the fountain of anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism under the cloak of free speech is home-grown and widespread.
Columbia University student holding sign with arrow at fellow students holding Israeli and American flags to be targets of Hamas rockets
This is not a problem that can be cancelled with a returned check. It is now an ingrained feature of the American educational system.
President Donald Trump announced his intention to root out the problem. He announced plans to close the Department of Education, to revoke visas and expel foreign students who promote terrorist groups and ideologies, and to withhold U.S. government grants to institutions that have essentially Americanized the Zayed International Centre.
US President Donald Trump holds an executive order to start dismantling the Department of Education (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)
It will not be enough.
Advancing Holocaust education in the schools will not be enough.
Providing transparency of foreign donations to schools through the DETERRENT Act will not be enough.
They are needed and helpful but systemic changes should be implemented throughout America’s schools.
Teacher unions – and all municipal unions – must be barred from contributing to any politician and making statements on any political races.
Tenure should be abolished in all schools.
Charter schools and private schools should receive funding proportionate with the number of students in the district attending those schools.
Schools that fail to teach minimum skills in critical subjects like math should be defunded and/or closed.
Teachers and administrators that vilify a segment of the population should be terminated and lose their pensions.
Other steps are also needed as people get their information from toxic sources outside of school. TikTok and any other foreign-owned media companies should be banned, based on a scale of level of concern of the country and content. Phones should be banned from classrooms so students can focus on learning skills and not lured by fake news and vortex of peer dynamics.
People may believe that the Trump administration’s actions to reverse both the decline of skills and increase in antisemitism in schools are draconian. In truth, a systemwide overhaul is needed.
Reed Rubinstein is a Senior Vice President of America First Legal and a former Deputy Associate Attorney General, U.S. Department of Education General Counsel (acting and delegated), and Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury. He was nominated to be a Legal Advisor to the State Department by President Trump and had a confirmation hearing on March 25, 2025 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
During the hearing, only a handful of Democratic senators asked Rubinstein any questions, preferring to spend their time on Mike Huckabee who is nominated to be the US ambassador to Israel. Astonishingly, TWO of those senators – Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) accused Rubinstein of believing in and promoting false anti-Israel and antisemitic conspiracy theories about the State Department and public school education.
Sheehan On Obama Administration Funding Group To Oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “Conspiracy Theory”
At 49:30 of the hearings, Sen. Shaheen said to Rubinstein “I’ve heard these conspiracy theories before. But I have been here through the Obama administration, the first Trump administration, through the Biden administration, and I can tell you that I never heard anybody at any of those administrations talking about a multi-front war trying to overthrow the Israeli government. I don’t believe it and I hear you saying that and try to justify that as a conspiracy theory.”
Sen. Shaheen gaslighting Reed Rubinstein during confirmation hearing, March 2025
One would hope that Shaheen, a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has heard about the Obama administrations efforts to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu through a group called OneVoice Israel (OVI), as there was a formal investigation.
The Senate performed a review of almost $350,000 which were granted by the State Department to OVI in 2014. The grant was quite large for an international NGO, as most State Department overseas grants average around $15,000. OneVoice built a large database of Israeli voters and then “absorbed and funded an Israeli group named Victory15 or “V15” and launched a multimillion-dollar grassroots campaign in Israel. The campaign’s goal was to elect “anybody but Bibi [Netanyahu]” by mobilizing center-left voters,” according to the report.
OVI originally got its State Department grant in September 2013 to “execute a grassroots campaign in conjunction with Secretary of State John Kerry’s effort to sustain negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.” The outreach effort was to run from October 15, 2013 to July 15, 2014, and the State Department made its final payment of grant funds to OVI on August 25, 2014, with the grant period ending on November 30, 2014. In addition to the $350,000 handed to OVI, the State Department gave the group $40,000 for outside consultants and another $115,000 to OneVoice Palestine, a sister NGO. It is estimated that over 1.3 million Israelis were exposed to OVI’s campaign, about 16% of the population.
By the end of the targeted grant period in July 2014, the Kerry Israeli-Palestinian peace plans were in shambles. By August, OVI leadership decided to use its now large infrastructure for direct political purposes, to “SHIFT SUPPORT WITHIN THE KNESSET AWAY FROM LIKUD/RIGHT WING COALITION BY ADVOCATING TO ‘SWING’ CENTRIST VOTER’S [sic] POLICIES AND SUPPORT POLITICAL CANDIDATES WHO EMBRACE AN EXPEDITED NEGOTIATION TOWARD A [TWO-STATE SOLUTION] AND THE END OF SETTLEMENT EXPANSION.” When Netanyahu announced new elections in December 2014, OVI quickly absorbed the “anybody but Bibi” V15 into its organization to oust Netanyahu.
The Senate initiated an inquiry into this funding matter in February 2015. It found that “OneVoice did inform at least two State Department officials of its political plans, and it did so during the grant period. The Department took no action in response.”
To summarize the facts in Sheehan’s dismissal of the “conspiracy theory,” the State Department handed roughly $500,000 in total to organizations which built up a large infrastructure inside Israel which was used to try to replace Netanyahu in the 2015 elections. It is unclear whether this was directly at the behest of the Obama Administration or was simply a byproduct of the anti-Netanyahu left-wing US State Department’s animus towards Netanyahu, engaging in election tampering against an American ally.
To put that $0.5 million in perspective, the entire Israeli budget for the 2015 election was $62 million.
Kaine On K-12 Public School Anti-Israel, Antisemitic, Woke Education “Conspiracy Theory”
At 1:24:45 of the hearing, Sen. Kaine took aim at a post that Rubinstein made on LinkedIn saying “‘K-12 teachers are almost all products of extreme left teachers’ training programs in the colleges, then the same leftist antisemite professors provide training on MENA [Middle East and North America] and other issues. The system is not fixable.'” Kaine continued “A lot of us on the committee have parents, spouses, kids who are K-12 teachers who work in education programs, training K-12 teachers. A lot of us like me were governors appointing boards of universities with intimate knowledge of teacher training programs. There can be a bad apple in any organization but I got to say I read a comment like that – and it strikes me along the lines of what Senator Shaheen was asking – a kind of political fantasy or conspiracy that doesn’t really seem like the kind of thing that a careful lawyer offering narrow advice would say.”
Sen. Kaine gaslighting Reed Rubinstein during confirmation hearing, March 2025
Perhaps Kaine is ignorant or has put on blinders about the hatred being instilled by public school teachers into the next generation of students. Here are just a few:
The non-partisan American Jewish Committee (AJC) issued a report in December 2024 that “Leaders and activists within the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) have waged an aggressive campaign that has encouraged K-12 teachers to become pro-Palestinian activists and bring anti-Israel propaganda into their classrooms.” The documented MTA initiatives included “promoting multipleone-sidedanti-Israel resolutions,… Sponsoring programming, including a webinar that purported to address “anti-Palestinian racism” which was dedicated to attacking the legitimacy of the world’s only Jewish state,” and “curating and promoting on its website anti-Israel educational resources that it encourages members to bring back to their schools.”
In October 2023, right after the Hamas October 7 massacre in Israel, the Oakland Education Association, a teacher’s union, condemned “apartheid” and “genocidal” Israel. The OEA handed out material from Teach Palestine, with curriculums for educators. It suggested that in situations that get “pushback from Zionist parents,” to pivot the conversation to “compare youth incarceration in the U.S. and Palestine.”
In November 2023, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT 59) union produced a resolution which “condemn the role our government plays in supporting the system of Israeli occupation and apartheid, which lies at the root of the Palestinian Israeli conflict.”
Teacher union in Minnesota calling Israel an “apartheid” country and at fault for the Hamas-initiated war
In February 2025, the Santa Ana Unified School District of California settled a lawsuit for using “courses that were developed in secret and infected with anti-Semitism.” Committees at the school said “Jews are the oppressors,” and “racist” and worked with outside groups who decried “Zionist control.”
There is a new group called The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism (founded mostly by professors of the University of Santa Ana) which is trying to decouple the study of Zionism from Jewish Studies program in universities, and place it in “settler colonial studies” and put it in the context of “repressive work and solidarities” since “Zionism’s project extends beyond the borders of Palestine.” These efforts are being pushed in the University of California school systems and at New York University. The organization markets a “toolkit” for use by anti-Israel protestors.
Also in May 2024, Portland Oregon’s teacher union, the Portland Association of Teachers, had a meeting about how to teach students both inside and outside of the classroom how to be anti-Zionists, complete with a website to disseminate propaganda.
Professors all over the country have given “extra credit” to students who participate in anti-Israel protests. Students for Justice in Palestine are encouraging it on social media.
There are cases all around the country. In addition to Teach Palestine, teachers are encouraged to use materials from “Decolonize Palestine,” which is designed with animation for young students. It vilifies Israel as a racist colonial endeavor always designed to oppress local Arabs.
In July 2024, the National Education Association (NEA), the largest labor union and teachers union with around 3 million members held its annual meeting. It included resolutions to boycott Israel and praise the October 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel (NBI 8). NBI 9 urged the NEA and other trade unions to “pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and in the case of the US, to stop funding it.” NBI 74 sought to publish a list of government officials who accept money from groups supporting Israel.
In April 2021, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) which has roughly 1.7 members said that “American Jews are now part of the ownership class,… who want to take that ladder of opportunity away from those who do not have it.” Herself a Jew, her large base got the message that Jews are the 1% who are coming to steal opportunities from the 99%. In AFT’s July 2024 annual convention, there were seven anti-Israel resolutions.
While Jews are suffering a horrible spike of antisemitism in the United States in the aftermath of the worst slaughter of Jews in Israel in 1,000 years, two Democratic senators took public aim at a Jew for supposedly promoting “conspiracy theories” about anti-Israel and antisemitic activity. It was gaslighting at the highest level, an affront to Jews everywhere.
ACTION ITEMS
Contact Sen. Shaheen and Sen. Kaine about your extreme disappointment with their public gaslighting of Jews about antisemitism and anti-Israel activities in the United States today.
As the Children of Israel walked the desert, they built a home, a mishkan, for God. Exodus 36: 2-7 introduces us to the work:
“2 Then Moses summoned Bezalel and Oholiab and every skilled person to whom the Lord had given ability and who was willing to come and do the work. 3 They received from Moses all the offerings the Israelites had brought to carry out the work of constructing the sanctuary. And the people continued to bring freewill offerings morning after morning. 4 So all the skilled workers who were doing all the work on the sanctuary left what they were doing 5 and said to Moses, “The people are bringing more than enough for doing the work the Lord commanded to be done.” 6 Then Moses gave an order and they sent this word throughout the camp: “No man or woman is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary.” And so the people were restrained from bringing more, 7 because what they already had was more than enough to do all the work.“
The Torah relates that there was such an outpouring of donations to help build the mishkan, that it overwhelmed those skilled craftsmen performing the actual construction work.
Alas, we do not have that kind of over-enthusiasm for causes today, but we definitely have many foot soldiers in trying to stem the tide of antisemitism in the Jewish diaspora.
Consider those fighting the rampant antisemitism at Columbia University. The university finally took action on March 21, 2025, announcing a plan that basically aligned with the demands of the Trump administration to protect Jewish students and faculty on campus. It did not happen in a vacuum.
Columbia’s Hillel had been trying to get the Columbia administration to make changes since the October 7, 2023 massacre of Jews in Israel and riots against Israel and Jews and at the university since then. Alums For Campus Fairness issued a 33-page report about antisemitism at Columbia in 2019. Countless alumni wrote letters to the school administration and withheld donations.
Announcement from Columbia Hillel on March 21, 2025
Leaders of the Jewish philanthropic world like Dan Loeb, Bill Ackman and David Magerman very publicly shifted their donations from their alma maters to Jewish schools like Yeshiva University and some in Israel. Some not so wealthy but public voices like Alan Dershowitz announced that they were shifting all of their philanthropic activities and pro bono work to Jewish causes.
All of these activities helped pivot public thought. It made former Republicans switch to the Democratic Party to help oust politicians perceived as antisemitic like Jamaal Bowman. It was part of what led a decades-long record percentage of Jews to vote for Donald Trump for president in 2024 with his promise to clean up the widespread failures in American schools.
Do not think that the work is done but take a moment to thank the many people who fought to stem the horrific tide of Jew hatred. We need them to keep putting money into Jewish institutions instead of naming buildings at disgraced universities. We need groups like StandWithUs and Brandeis Center to continue to advocate for Jews on campus. We need politicians like Rep. Ritchie Torres and Rep. Mike Lawler in the House, and Sen. Josh Hawley and Sen. John Fetterman to continue their principled work on behalf of Americans. We need the Trump administration to continue to pressure universities to stop enabling a toxic environment for Jewish and other students on campus.
Many people have been working for years to end Jew hatred and it should not be taken for granted. Now is a moment to thank them for their noble efforts.
To read progressive media, one would believe that the Trump administration is seeking to end “research and science” and “great debates” on the country’s campuses. That’s how papers like The New York Times understand the Trump administration’s letter to Columbia demanding change.
The New York Times article on March 20, 2025 misdirecting readers about the Trump administration’s letter to Columbia University
It could not be further from the truth.
The March 13 letter is just two pages long and covers nine points. Nowhere is “science” and “great debates” mentioned. “Research” is mentioned once, and the Trump administration’s letter is actively trying to protect it.
The first two points in the letter demand that the school must enforce consequences for the students that break university policies, including vandalism and harassment. It asks that the “Office of the President” handle such matters rather than the University Judicial Board, presumably because many members of the board are sympathetic to the student rioters.
The next three points build on this theme of discipline. It demands that the university adopt “time, place and manner rules,” – very common and ordinary measures – to prevent the disruption of “teaching, research and campus life” (emphasis added). It adds a mask ban so rioters can be held accountable and demanded a formalized university plan for groups that violate university policy.
The sixth point shifted from general disciplinary matters to define antisemitism, because that has been the crux of rioters’ conduct against Jews at Columbia. Presumably, it would help clearly define matters of free speech versus hate speech (to the extent that such thing exists).
The seventh bullet transitions back to discipline, empowering university security to arrest rioters.
The eighth point refers to a particular department within the school – the Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department (MESAAS) – which is to be put under “academic receivership.” If there is a claim that Trump is coming after “research” and “great debates”, it must be in this discipline.
The ninth point seems to cover perhaps a related point to eighth – to make sure that admissions, including “international recruiting… conforms with federal law and policy.”
As seen above, the letter seeks to ensure the ability of students and faculty to do research (third bullet), albeit the MESAAS department has been marked as a problemed child.
The reality is that American universities have been trying to paper over their critical problems by importing students from the Global South, from those MESAAS countries. If there is a Trump target on academic research, it lies there, not in scientific matters, despite the Times claim that Trump is “imperiling the backbone of the nation’s research endeavors.”
America’s core problem lies in its PUBLIC K-12 schools which are FAILING TO TEACH MATH AND SCIENCE, with the US placing 25th among 37 OECD countries for 15 year olds. The country is relying more and more on international students – many deeply distrustful and anti-Western values – to fill the university’s STEM departments because America’s elementary and high schools have failed.
Progressive media will not place the blame squarely where it belongs – on the public school system – because it has long ago adopted the fiction that pouring billions of dollars into teacher unions will magically produce better educated students.
The Trump letter is an immediate call to make universities safe, not a call to dismantle research. The long-term fix is to remake America’s public schools, which have catered to teachers and administrators over students for far too long.
Columbia University had a horrific record of antisemitism on campus in the years preceding the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel that ramped up even more Jew-hatred on campus. In 2019, Alums For Campus Fairness produced a 33-page report documenting dozens of incidents including swastikas drawn on walls, mezuzahs ripped from doors and Jewish history denial from Columbia professors.
Office of Jewish professor at Columbia University covered with swastikas in November 2018
After the October 7 Gazan massacre of Israelis, it became open season on Jews at the formerly esteemed school grounds.
The Jew hatred was so intense that a rabbi at the school advised Jewish students to leave campus because the administration had abandoned them. The school president was forced to resign as anti-Israel agitators broke into buildings and blocked access for Jewish students repeatedly, and the school took little to no action to protect Jewish students despite government warnings.
In light of the school administration’s inaction, the US government began to step in. It sent a letter to Columbia’s interim president Katrina Armstrong on February 13, 2025 listing many of the antisemitic activities at the school, writing it was distressed that “Columbia has allowed these activities to continue.” It demanded that the school produce files related to eleven incidents which took place on campus from April 2024 through January 2025, within two weeks.
In March, the Trump administration began taking action, including suspending grants to the university and taking a leader of the anti-Israel horde into custody. The Trump Administration sent another letter to Columbia on March 13, 2025 demanding action because the university “has fundamentally failed to protect American students and faculty from antisemitic violence and harassment.” (emphasis added)
These are all plain facts. Yet in news article after article, and opinion article after opinion over the weekend of March 15, the New York Times would not refer to antisemitism at Columbia. The preferred – and only – narrative was that President Trump was waging war on free speech and opinions he didn’t like.
Somehow, there was no anti-Jewish conduct anywhere at Columbia and Barnard, just a suppression of “pro-Palestinian” speech that created a “volatile and dangerous” atmosphere FOR THE PROTESTORS.
This was clearly deliberate. The Times was seeking to both inflame the public against the Trump Administration as well as to lay a foundational defense for foreign students on American campuses. Framing the situation as free speech versus systemic anti-Jewish conduct is a get-out-of-jail card that Hamas Defenders hope to play.
Jew hatred on college campuses is not just prevalent but systemic and buttressed by a progressive media. It is part of a socialist-jihadi alliance which aims to remove the beleaguered minority-minority from positions of power and influence and replace them with people from the Global South.
Those positions include the physical presence on college campuses as well as in their Jewish homeland.
To whitewash the blatant antisemitism at universities, the socialist-jihadi media avoids mentioning the Jew hatred and attempts to rally the world to save higher education.
The New York Times has attempted to reframe the antisemitic actions at Columbia as a confrontation between an authoritarian Trump Administration and free speech and higher education. In such worldview, the Jewish victims are omitted from the narrative, a nuisance in the progressives’ war for their victims of preference.
Fewer people are going to college and graduate schools. Some of the drop-off relates to people having fewer children so the absolute number of people going to school has been declining. But the percentage of students going from high school to advanced degrees has also fallen considerably. Even in the years before the pandemic, the decline in high schoolers going to college dropped from 70% in 2016 to 63% in 2020. The figure dropped to 61.4% in 2023, with men being the most likely to skip college with only 57.6% opting for that education. The rates for Whites and Blacks were roughly the same at 59.9% and 59.6%, respectively, with Hispanics being lower at 51.8% and Asians surpassing every group at 84.7%. The overall impact can be seen in 2010 college enrollment of 10.2 million women and 7.8 million men, dropping to 8.9 million (-12.7%) and 6.5 million (-16.7%), respectively in 2021.
The reasons that most Americans are skipping college include a strong job market paying good wages, the desire to avoid college debt, people pursuing jobs that don’t require advanced degrees, and the ability to learn many skills online.
To address the declining enrollment, universities are taking many more international students. In the 2023/24 academic year, U.S. universities had over 1.1 million foreign students, a record. These students mostly came from the “Global South,” the emerging, principally non-White economies. The majority of students came from southeast Asia including India (331k), China (277k), Nepal, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Taiwan. No European country was in the top ten. The only countries in the top ten which are part of the Global North were South Korea and Canada. The countries with the largest spike in students over the past year were all from the Global South including Ghana (+45%), Bangladesh (+26%), India (+23%), Iran (+15%) and Nigeria (+13%).
Global North in blue and Global South in red
The student exchange is not reciprocal. Only 280,000 Americans studied abroad and the majority (64%) went to Europe, with Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, and France dominating the destinations. Two-thirds of those students identified as White.
The Americans abroad tended to go during their undergraduate years, spending just a few months away (only 2.4% went for a year). They tended to be women (67%), and studied business and management (20%) and social sciences (18%). This is in sharp contrast to international students coming to the United States who were typically graduate students pursuing a degree in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) at 56%.
The international students are older and come for longer periods of time. They often marry and have kids while pursuing their degrees, establishing a foothold in America, while Americans-in-Europe simply have a quick experience away from home.
The universities are very happy to have these paying students fill their classrooms which are being abandoned by Americans. In 2019 and 2020, 49% of all STEM master’s degrees and 57% of all STEM doctorate degrees were conferred to international students. The economics of running courses and an institution without half the students would have required eliminating courses and teachers, and perhaps shutting whole departments.
Technology companies want and need these skilled students as future employees. Google, Apple and Microsoft count on new STEM graduates to fill their ranks each year and lobby the government accordingly. Open Doors estimates that these international students contribute roughly $50 billion to the U.S. economy, or about $5,000 per student.
The U.S. government plays a heavy hand in all of this, not only seeking to salvage American university programs and building feeders to the American technology landscape, but on a political level as well.
Two situations highlight U.S. politics driving international students to these shores: Saudi Arabia and Israel.
As the United States ramped up pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding its nuclear program from 2007 to 2015, the U.S. sought to reassure its ally, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which is a foe of Iran. During those years, the number of Saudi students in American universities climbed from just a few thousand to over 61,000. The Saudi students learned courses like petroleum engineering to better extract and process oil, as well as nuclear physics to be able to build nuclear power on their own. Just after the nuclear agreement was signed, the number of Saudi students dropped significantly, down to under 15,000 in the 2023/24 academic year.
American politics playing out for international students from Israel is more explicit, and targets high school students, as long as they are Arabs.
On September 12, 2023, the U.S. embassy in Israel posted an advertisement that the U.S. State Department “is seeking a group of Arab citizens of Israel secondary school students to participate in a Study- in-the-USA initiative for high school students during the 2024-2025 school year.” (bold in original) It is backed by the YES Program Scholarship which gives “many countries with significant Muslim population an opportunity to study at American high schools and live with American host families for one academic year,” funding “all expenses in connection with the study tour including airfare, room and board, pocket money and most other costs.” It is part of the broad U.S. policy to make amends for the “War on Terror,” and selected only non-Jews from the Jewish State to learn in America.
The cherry-picking of certain types of international students demands a deeper exploration of the segments of the Global South that are in American schools.
The Global South has two principal regions as it relates to American immigrants: Latin America and everywhere else.
The United States was primarily populated by European migration from 1840 to 1920. World War I, the Great Depression and World War II stemmed immigration for several decades before it picked up with the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. Since that time, 49% of immigrants have come from Latin America and 27% from Asia. These groups are very different. The typical immigrant from Latin America had little formalized education (only 9% of Mexicans in the US in 2022 had a college degree). That compared to those from South Asia where 72% had a college degree, 55% from Central Asia and 49% from East and Southeast Asia.
Those coming from Latin America typically came for jobs not requiring a college degree while those coming from Asia came with degrees or obtained them at American universities.
The demographics between Latin America and Asia are also very different regarding religion.
About 50 million Muslims live in the Global North which has a population of roughly 1.6 billion, or about 3% of the population. It is even lower in Latin America which has roughly 4 million Muslims out of a population of 665 million, or about 0.6%. That is is sharp contrast to roughly 1.8 billion Muslims living in the Global South with a population of 6.4 billion, or roughly 28%, or 31% x-Latin America. If one were to exclude China as well which has around 25 million Muslims, the Global South is over 41% Muslim (x-China and x-Latin America).
While China does not resemble much of the Global South in both religious demographics and not having a history of European countries on its soil, it is now in an aggressive competitive battle against the Global North for power. As such, China is leveraging its regional position alongside the Global South to wage a cultural and economic war against the West.
China and the Global South have advanced efforts to promote anarchy in the United States alongside far-left non-White movements like Justice Democrats. The calls to Defund the Police and Abolish ICE were designed to tear down walls of protection and flood the United States with people from the Global South. The chants to “Globalize the Intifada” on American campuses and streets are calls to dismantle Western civilization’s capitalism and support for the Jewish State, with a broad redistribution of wealth and power to the preferred people in the Global South.
“Intifada” protest at Columbia University streets
When people in the Global North hear the chants of “Intifada,” they recognize the vile terrorism of Palestinian Arabs blowing up buses and pizza stores in the Second Intifada. However, the Global South considers it an Arabic term meaning “shaking off” the colonialism and imperialism of the West. The South’s overriding desire of taking on western civilization overwhelms the facts that Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel and that the Intifada is a premeditated violent attack on civilians. The Islamist Global South rallies to its coreligionists.
Banner with “Intifada” hung outside Columbia University
The population on America’s campuses does not resemble the rest of America. The disproportionate number of Asians and Muslims enrolled at America’s universities come from regions which are in active competition with the West, and embrace the Stateless Arabs from Palestine’s (SAPs) jihadi war against the Jews. The universities which enroll the international students of the Global South, attempt to tie them with American minority groups whose ancestors originated from those regions. Remarkably, a cause like Black Lives Matter which has nothing to do with the Global South, becomes hitched to the Israeli Defense Forces.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) on hearing about antisemitism at universities showcasing “Intifada”
The declining enrollment at American universities has led to them being taken over by international students from Asia and Africa. This has led directly to antisemitism on campuses and in the streets. It was true before the October 7 massacre and has only accelerated since then.
New York City march to “Globalize the Intifada” in September 2021, two years before the October 7 massacre by Gazans
Americans and the Global North are watching the initial battles of the Global South on the beachheads of American universities and are dumbstruck. The West would be well served to reevaluate those international students admitted to study here, and use this time to prepare for the battles to come.
ACTION ITEM
Contact the White House to vet international students coming to study at American universities, trimming the numbers coming from the Global South and making their visas conditional to peaceful behavior.
The Global South in downtown New York City taunting Jews and Israelis attending an exhibition about music lovers slaughtered by Gazans on October 7, 2023
So why start another PAC that does the same thing? It’s not as though Bowman’s PAC is going after conservative non-White voters; it’s using the same alt-left agenda as Justice Democrats, including supporting Gazans who initiated and supported a jihadi genocidal massacre against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.
Bowman knows he has a terrible record. His brand is so tainted that he needed to go around the country including California and Virginia with other members of Congress to try to raise money during his failed primary run.
A new congressional run – perhaps this time for Rep. Ritchie Torres’s seat in NY-15 if Torres decides to run for governor against the unpopular Kathy Hochul – would require money that may not be so forthcoming to a censored former politician. As such, creating a new PAC BEFORE he announces his intention to enter a race, could give him several advantages:
He may be able to market the cause more successfully if it isn’t about him personally
He gets practice stumping and meeting donors without being forced to disclose his numerous failings
Bowman can use the Zeteo platform with Mehdi to go even more viciously anti-Israel than Justice Democrats may be willing to go, perhaps unlocking deep jihadi pockets
Disclosure rules are more lax for PACs. Pro-terrorist groups have easier times giving money to blind pools than individual candidates. Bowman can court antisemitic donors with greater ease
Should Bowman enter the race, he may attempt to repurpose this PAC to himself. This is a tactic that was used by Rick Scott who took over the New Republican PAC in 2016. Scott’s moves in this regard brought multiple investigations. As the non-partisan group OpenSecrets stated about the issue, “Federal law would prohibit an announced federal candidate or campaign from coordinating with either state-level committees or federal super PACs, which can take unlimited corporate money that federal candidates are not permitted to receive.” Campaign Legal Center wrote at that time “Campaign finance laws are in place to prevent schemes like this one that hide information from voters about which wealthy special interests are spending big money to secretly influence our votes and our government.” Imagine these aren’t “wealthy special interests” seeking profit but groups out to destroy America and its allies.
Built to Win PAC may become the alt-left anti-Israel piggybank for Bowman and his co-host on Zeteo, Cori Bush, who made their losses all about the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC rather than their own failings.
Bowman’s reemergence on two platforms: Zeteo to engage the public in race-baiting, and with a PAC to draw in unlimited monies, is potentially a cause for serious alarm for the country, especially Jews in the midst of a horrifying spike in antisemitism.
First One Through 