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Education Policy Brief #213 | Mindy Spatt | November 10, 2025 

Summary

Educators who are critical of the Israeli government or the occupation, or who voice support for Palestinian statehood, are increasingly at risk of disciplinary action or even job loss.  Extremist pro-Israel groups are advocating for and winning statutory and regulatory limits on educational content critical of Israel, all under the guise of fighting rampant Antisemitism.  Even the use of pro-Palestinian slogans like “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” on social media has led to teachers being placed on leave.  Educators and free speech advocates are organizing to fight back, and a recently approved law in California, ostensibly to curb antisemitism, is being challenged in federal court by the ADC.

Analysis

The House Committee on Education and Workforce recently opened an investigation into whether the National Education Association (NEA) is “contributing to antisemitism among its members and in classrooms across the United States.”  The investigation is in response to allegations of anti-Semitism against the nation’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association (NEA).

The NEA’s Representative Assembly had initially rejected a set of holocaust education materials promoted by the pro-Israel Anti-Discrimination League, due to a determination that the materials were biased.  Although the NEA leadership overturned the initial determination after public pressure, lawmakers have expressed concern about an NEA handbook that says the group will “educate members about the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism” and promote “free speech in defense of Palestine at K-12 schools, colleges, and universities.  Investigators are demanding that the union give them all communications, documents, or meeting minutes that include the words “antisemitism,” “Israel,” “Israeli,” “Palestine,” or “Palestinian,” since Oct. 7, 2023.

Committee chairman Tim Walberg (R., Mich.) said in a statement that the committee is weighing “legislation to specifically address antisemitic discrimination within labor unions and to combat antisemitism in federally funded schools.”  He referenced another teachers’ union that has come under fire over its “anti-Israel” agenda.  After the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) launched a fundraising campaign for ANERA, a 50-year-old Gaza humanitarian aid organization registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, it was accused of “working with Hamas” by the radical Zionist North American Values Institute, whose mission is to “mitigate and eventually overcome the impacts of extreme social justice ideology in their children’s classroom.”

Dr. Maura Finkelstein, a Jewish tenured associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania lost her job after a January 2024 social media repost related to Zionism.  The American Association of University Professors investigated her firing  concluded that the College, in “dismissing Professor Finkelstein from the faculty solely because of one anti-Zionist repost on Instagram, acted in violation of AAUP-supported principles and standards of academic freedom and due process.”  In addition, “the administration’s hasty action, facilitated by the monitoring and dissemination of Finkelstein’s social media posts by administrators, has severely impaired the climate for academic freedom at Muhlenberg College.”

In  Massachusetts, a legislatively mandated Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism approved a controversial set of educational and training recommendations related to the Holocaust and antisemitism.  The recommendations reference the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (ILHRA) definition of antisemitism, which advocates have long argued conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism.  In a public response, educators from Concerned Jewish Faculty and Staff and Together  criticized the recommendations as ineffective and warned they could undermine safe learning environments for both students and teachers.

In California, a fierce battle erupted over AB 715, a bill sponsored by the Jewish Legislative Caucus ostensibly to address rising antisemitism in schools.  A large statewide coalition organized to oppose the bill, which, in its original version, tied all Jewish students to Israel and elevated accusations of antisemitism for treatment different from other types of bias.

The California Coalition to Defend Public Education (CCDPE) organized a broad statewide coalition including teachers’ organizations, parents’ groups, civil rights groups, religious congregations, racial justice organizations, and supporters of ethnic studies to lobby hard against the bill and raise awareness of its unequal treatment of students and censoring of teachers.  The powerful California Teachers Association eventually opposed the bill, delaying its progress, and the Northern California American Civil Liberties Union also rejected AB715 as infringing on free speech.

They weren’t able to stop the bill, but did get some of the worst provisions amended.  Still, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is seeking to have it overturned in federal court on First Amendment grounds.  Plaintiffs include teachers and families who want accurate instruction and robust debate about modern Middle East history, including Palestinian perspectives.  Their complaint alleges SB 715 recommends teaching standards that “repeatedly conflate criticism of the State of Israel and of Zionism with antisemitism—for example, by deeming it ‘antisemitic’ to question Jewish people’s right to a majority state in a region inhabited by an equal number of Palestinians.”

In its Statement on Legislation Restricting Teaching about Race the AAUP comes out strongly against these types of statutory limits on educational content, saying “When politicians mandate the academic content that faculty can and cannot teach or the scholarly areas they can or cannot research or study, they prevent colleges and universities from fulfilling their missions. Such restrictions …portray robust academic inquiry and teaching as dangerous, deny students the opportunity to learn, and undercut the purpose of higher education. We therefore urge the defeat of these legislative initiatives and others of their kind to protect the academic freedom that is vital to the preservation of democracy.”

Engagement Resources

• Legislative Threats to Academic Freedom: Redefinitions of Antisemitism and Racism, American Association of University Professors, March 2022, https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/policy-statements/legislative-threats-academic-freedom
• Academic Freedom and Tenure:  Muhlenberg College, American Association of University Professors, April, 2025, https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/investigation-and-inquiries/academic-freedom-and-tenure
• California Democrats Are Fighting Trump’s Battle for Him, Lily Greenberg Call, Aug. 15, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/opinion/california-democrat-jewish-trump.html
• ADC Files Federal Suit Challenging California’s AB 715 for Chilling Classroom Speech, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Nov. 3, 2025, https://adc.org/adc-files-federal-suit-challenging-californias-ab-715-for-chilling-classroom-speech/

Education Policy Brief #212 | Charlie Sweeney | November 5, 2025

If this were a Harvard–Yale football game, it would be a blowout.

Unlike the famed 1968 matchup—when a heavily underdog Harvard team tied Yale and The Harvard Crimson ran the cheeky-but-triumphant headline, “Harvard Beats Yale, 29–29,” this contest has been one-sided from the start.

In relentless fashion, with the nation’s premier universities in its sights, the Trump administration’s assault on academic freedom has been lopsided, swift, punishing, and unwavering—with no signs of letting up.

The scorecard tells the story: Columbia University capitulated and paid more than $220 million in damages; Northwestern’s president resigned under pressure after nearly $790 million in federal funds were frozen; and the University of Virginia’s president stepped down amid an administrative purge of diversity programs.

From Harvard to Stanford, the message was unmistakable—comply or be cut off. The campaign, launched soon after Trump’s return to office in 2025, has transformed federal education funding into a weapon aimed squarely at the nation’s most prestigious campuses.

While showing no signs of slowing, Trump‘s assault on the nation’s premier universities has not gone unnoticed by academia. Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, warned, “What we’re seeing is not policy correction—it’s political retribution dressed as reform.” She added, “The federal government is holding higher education hostage to ideology.”

In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Lee C. Bollinger, former Columbia president and first amendment scholar, said, “This is a dangerous inversion of academic freedom. Instead of protecting the independence of knowledge, the state is now dictating its boundaries.”

Signs of Trump’s upcoming “War on Higher Ed” were clear in his first administration, but nothing could’ve prepared academics for the assault that was to come after his inauguration this passed January.

Beginning in 2025, the Trump administration escalated it’s long-standing feud by accusing major universities of political bias, intellectual intolerance, and moral decay. Officials claimed that elite schools had become “woke factories,” indoctrinating students instead of educating them.

The administration charged that universities protected antisemitic speech while silencing conservative viewpoints, prioritized diversity and inclusion over merit, and wasted taxpayer dollars on gender, race, and global-studies programs that “undermined American values.”

Federal officials also turned their attention overseas, questioning research partnerships with China and other foreign entities. The White House framed these collaborations as potential national-security risks and argued that universities were “selling out American innovation.” The rhetoric marked a new frontier in federal oversight—an effort to reassert Washington’s authority over what universities teach, fund, and research.

But this was no mere war of words: the administration quickly followed its rhetoric with punitive action.

In early 2025, the Department of Education froze $400 million in funding to Columbia University, citing its “failure to protect Jewish students” during campus protests following the Israel–Hamas conflict.

Harvard was next: the administration withheld roughly $2.2 billion in research and education grants after the university refused to dissolve DEI offices and modify admissions policies.

By spring, the White House introduced the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” offering restored or expanded funding to schools that agreed to a suite of federal conditions—among them tuition caps, limits on foreign students, and an “alignment with American and Western values” across curricula.

Analysts estimated that the administration had frozen or threatened between $3.3 billion and $3.7 billion in grants affecting more than 600 institutions nationwide. These measures represented a radical reimagining of federal education policy: research grants, once distributed on merit and peer review, became bargaining chips in a broader ideological campaign.

Universities have met this assault with a mix of compliance, defiance, and crisis management. Columbia University chose capitulation—paying more than $220 million, adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and rewriting its protest and disciplinary codes to regain access to federal funds.

Harvard University, by contrast, sued the administration, arguing that the funding freeze violated the First Amendment and represented unconstitutional retaliation against perceived ideological opposition.

Elsewhere, leadership turnover signaled turmoil. Northwestern’s Michael Schill resigned amid frozen grants; at the University of Virginia, James E. Ryan was ousted following accusations of “pervasive DEI bias.”

Other institutions, including Brown University and MIT, outright rejected the administration’s compact, asserting that the terms would “compromise academic independence.”

Yet even some defiant campuses quietly restructured diversity offices, modified speech codes, or altered admissions practices in anticipation of further scrutiny—gestures that blended resistance with survival.

As 2026 approaches, the clash between academia and Washington shows no signs of easing. The Trump administration appears intent on using federal dollars to realign higher education with its political agenda, while universities brace for sustained financial and ideological pressure.

Courts may ultimately determine how far an administration can go in conditioning public funding on ideological conformity—but by then, the cultural terrain of American higher education may already be transformed.

If the administration’s campaign succeeds, the result could be a compliance-driven academic landscape—less independent, more politically policed, and divided between institutions that capitulate for funding and those that resist at great cost.

If universities prevail, however, this era may be remembered not as the downfall of academic freedom, but as its hard-won reaffirmation in the face of unprecedented federal coercion.

Engagement Resources

• The Guardian – Columbia University Settlement (July 2025)The Guardian – Columbia University Settlement (July 2025)
• Reuters – Northwestern President Resigns After Funding FreezeReuters – Northwestern President Resigns After Funding Freeze
• Chronicle of Higher Education – Interview with Lee C. BollingerChronicle of Higher Education – Interview with Lee C. Bollinger
• Time – Overview of Trump Administration’s Higher Education PoliciesTime – Overview of Trump Administration’s Higher Education Policies
• American Association of University Professors – Statement by Irene MulveyAmerican Association of University Professors – Statement by Irene Mulvey