The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday announced it was forming a multi-agency task force to counter anti-Semitism in schools and on college campuses.
The task force will be headed by Leo Terrell, a senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, and will be coordinated through the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
In addition to DOJ representatives, the task force will include members of the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, “and other agencies as it develops,” the DOJ said.
The move comes after Trump on Friday signed an executive order to combat anti-Semitism, intended mainly to counter rising hostility against Jewish students on college campuses, especially those where pro-Palestinian activism has been rife since Israel began its retaliation against Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Of those incidents, 1,200 happened on college campuses, 1,000 more than the year before, according to ADL statistics.
The executive order reaffirms a 2019 Trump executive order that addressed anti-Semitism on college campuses, but “directs additional measures to advance the policy thereof,” the order read.
These measures require the head of the Department of Education within 60 days to submit a list of all pending administrative complaints of campus anti-Semitism, while other agencies have been ordered to submit a list and an analysis of all court cases regarding this matter.
Each involved agency is also required to submit a complete list of all legal devices at their disposal—civil and criminal—that may be used to combat anti-Semitism.
The order also targets pro-Hamas protesters on campus, including foreign students.
“I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”
