Many Jews noticed national Democrats’ anaemic response to antisemitism after October 7. Nearly 19 months on, things haven’t changed.
Five Jewish Democratic Senators wrote to President Donald Trump last week opposing his “administration’s assault on universities,” specifically naming Harvard. They explained, “We also write as Jewish Senators who have spoken out strongly against rising antisemitism here in the United States, including on college campuses.” They accused the administration of “using what is a real crisis as a pretext to attack people and institutions who do not agree with you” and acting “out of spite.” The administration allegedly also makes “Jews less safe by pitting Jewish safety against other communities.”
We’ll see how the Trump administration handles this letter and its eight detailed questions requiring responses by April 30. However, American Jews should know which politicians are publicly commenting about campus Jew-hatred, which remains a pressing issue, as Jews. So, let’s consider the signatories.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer kept the Antisemitism Awareness Act from a stand-alone vote last year, even after it passed the House 320-91. This bill would codify President Trump’s 2019 executive order on antisemitism, and yes, it relates directly to combating campus antisemitism.
Connecticut’s Sen. Richard Blumenthal and California’s Sen. Adam Schiff sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee. That Committee’s Democrats used an early March hearing on campus antisemitism to downplay the issue and generally protect campus Jew-haters. Hawaii’s Sen. Brian Schatz shielded Rep. Ilhan Omar in March 2019, after Omar charged that American Israel-supporters "push for allegiance to a foreign country.” And Nevada’s Sen. Jacky Rosen is co-chair of the Senate Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism. Yet, whenever one Senate Democrat breaks ranks on antisemitism or Israel, it’s always Pennsylvania’s Sen. John Fetterman, who is not Jewish. For example, Fetterman voted to advance a bill sanctioning the International Criminal Court and to confirm strong Zionist Mike Huckabee as U.S. ambassador to Israel.
Jewish student activist Shabbos Kestenbaum told me, “It’s telling that these Democratic Senators are more interested in opposing Trump than articulating or actualising their policies to combat campus antisemitism. Tellingly, none of these Senators gave us students [combating campus antisemitism] the time of the day, so I would say their faux outrage is unwarranted.”
In short, the five signatories are not known for speaking “out strongly against rising antisemitism.” They are arguably followers, not leaders. These Senators apply Leftist logic, concluding that Jews’ well-being depends on not criticising Democrats’ allies, even when they target Jews. And they’re effectively saying that campus Jew-hatred might be bad, but the response is worse. That would sound less like blanket opposition to progress if they offered any concrete examples of what they consider “real solutions.”
Their letter also reflects very real trends among voters. In the Future of Jewish Substack, public opinion researcher Karen Cyphers recently described testing whether Americans favor more lenient punishments for antisemitic campus behavior and whether the aggressor’s identity matters. The answer to both questions, she found, is yes — especially among Democrats.
Cyphers wrote: “Among Democrats, 82 percent supported suspension or expulsion when the student was European and harassing Black students . . . That portion dropped to 69 percent when it was a European student harassing Jewish students, and dropped . . . to just 40 percent among Democrats considering the Palestinian intimidating Jewish students.”
When asked about government-driven punishments, identity mattered again: “Among Democrats, the wish to see the aggressor penalized with deportation or revocation of his green card fell from 74 percent for the European harasser of Jewish students to just 33 percent for the Palestinian one.” Meanwhile 42 percent of Democrats supported yanking federal funding from universities that shirk protecting students “when the aggressor was European and the victims were Black,” but only 28 percent did “when the aggressor was Palestinian and the victims were Jewish.”
Jay Greene, Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, tweeted in response to Cyphers’ findings, “This is about antisemitism. If it were about free speech, the identity of the victim would not matter.” And yet, it clearly does.
Jewish students have had their concerns about harassment and discrimination dismissed by university administrators for years. That’s harmful enough, but it’s worse coming from U.S. Senators.
Before this quintet comments on campus antisemitism again — especially as anything other than partisans — they should absolutely take their own advice. Speak “with a broad range of Jewish students” on the front-lines of this fight.
