By Joshua Arnold

The Federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism on Friday announced campus visits to 10 elite universities. The visits place pressure on schools that infamously failed to restrain anti-Semitic demonstrations — which often violated university rules — in the wake of Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel. In some cases, anti-Semitic incidents at these schools continue.

The task force will visit “Columbia University; George Washington University [GWU]; Harvard University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University [NYU]; Northwestern University; the University of California, Los Angeles [UCLA]; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota; and the University of Southern California [USC],” according to the Department of Justice press release. The schools on this shortlist stand out both as some of America’s most prestigious universities and as the sites of some of the worst anti-Semitic protests over the past 18 months.

At Columbia University — especially its Barnard College — anti-Semitic demonstrators erected repeated encampments, despite arrests. Police arrested hundreds of demonstrators at NYU, who occupied campus buildings and barricaded themselves against a siege. Fortified encampments at UCLA and GWU also led to dozens of arrests, while clashes with police at USC led administrators to close the campus and hold a virtual graduation ceremony last spring.

But that embarrassing era of American campus life did not end with the arrival of summer or President Trump’s election romp. In January, keffiyeh-clad Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) demonstrators disrupted a class on the History of Modern Israel and threw threatening flyers at students.

Columbia expelled two ringleaders in the demonstration, but last Wednesday, more than 50 demonstrators occupied Barnard College’s Milbank Hall, blockading Dean Leslie Grinage in her office and demanding the “immediate reversal” of the expulsions and the abolition of the school’s disciplinary system. They mobbed one security guard who resisted them and sent him to the hospital.

“We have taken the administration completely off guard! They will have no peace until we have justice,” CUAD boasted on Instagram. “This space is ours as long as we’re here, take back our university.” After hours of negotiations, the demonstrators finally dispersed at 10:30 p.m., claiming that they had “won.”

“Thanks to the efforts of our staff and faculty, the protesters have now left Milbank Hall without further incident,” announced Barnard President Laura Rosenbury. “But let us be clear: their disregard for the safety of our community remains completely unacceptable.”

Her words contrast sharply with the actions of her administration, which — by allowing such misbehavior to go unpunished — suggests that the college will accept such irregular demonstrations.

“The university condemned the incident. I thought their words were a little lackluster. … [My parents] are paying $95,000 a year for me to be educated and I can’t even access that education,” complained Barnard freshman Shoshana Aufzien. “Protesters took a dean hostage. They refused to let her go to the bathroom. And they impeded students from accessing an education. That should be grounds for not just condemnation, but real change. And that’s what I want to see, and I haven’t seen it yet.”

The next day, more than 100 masked demonstrators assembled outside Barnard College and attempted to cross police barricades that had been set up in response to the previous day’s violence, suggesting that anti-Semitic activities at Columbia University’s Barnard College have not peaked yet. A petition to reinstate the expelled demonstrators has garnered more than 110,000 signatures.

The anti-Semitic incidents are not confined to New York City. Last Tuesday, anti-Semitic activists had vandalized GWU professor Joseph Pelzman’s office door, plastering it with a so-called “Notice of Eviction,” which called him an “architect of genocide” and a “pernicious symptom of the bloodthirsty Zionism permeating this campus.” Pelzman had submitted a proposed plan for the relocation for Gazans to President Trump’s team after Trump announced that option as a potential solution to Middle East tensions.

Thus, the Anti-Semitism Taskforce’s campus visits come as campus violence is heating up.

President Trump created the task force by executive order on January 29 “to bring the full force of the federal government to bear in our effort to eradicate Anti-Semitism, particularly in schools,” said Leo Terrell, leading Task Force member and senior counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. It aims to ensure “that no one should feel unsafe or unwelcome on campus because of their religion.”

The visits serve as a reminder to the universities that, while anti-Semitic protestors may be loud and disruptive, placating them is not the sole duty or responsibility of college deans. The federal government can also mete out consequences to universities who fail to uphold the civil rights of minorities. And, under the Trump administration, it seems that the Justice Department intends to exercise effective oversight to ensure that universities do fulfill their obligations to keep students safe.

The Anti-Semitism Task Force is obviously not visiting every university campus roiled by an anti-Semitic uprising. But, by placing some of America’s most powerful and prestigious universities under the microscope, the task force sends the message that no one is too powerful to escape the consequences of their actions.

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.