New York, Columbia, Northwestern, John Hopkins, Harvard, and George Washington Universities are among them.
In a related press release, a DOJ official says the agency is "aware of allegations that the schools may have failed to protect Jewish students and faculty members from unlawful discrimination, in potential violation of federal law."
As AFN has reported, Campus Reform's own editor in chief, Zachary Marschall, has sent numerous complaints to the department about antisemitism at various institutions, and the Biden administration responded to some of those by opening investigations.
"This is all holdover and a continuation of the investigations that were happening even during the Biden administration after October 7th," Marschall notes. "This is a positive development because this is really the first time that the federal government is choosing to put boots on the ground and visit these campuses."
He is more pleased with Trump's action than Biden's and expects to see a lot of positive developments come from this investigation.
"I think one of the biggest problems we had in 2023 and 2024 was that people really were not believing how bad it was," Marschall suggests.
If the Biden administration had cared enough to send people to visit and audit these universities in person, he thinks they would have learned a lot of ugly realities about what was going on.
President Trump has also announced that any high school, college, or university that allows illegal protests will lose all federal funding.
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, wonders why so many institutions let it come to this.
"It was obvious these were students violating university policy and often violating the law," he says. "There never should have been a situation where the federal government had to step in, but sadly, that's where we are."
He suggests no university would have allowed it if protestors had white sheets over their heads.
"Why is it that bigotry against Jews is treated in an entirely different way?" Menken poses.
Like Marschall, he is glad to see that President Trump is "absolutely keeping his promises."
As for the pushback that will inevitably come from the "scared" Left about Trump supposedly violating free speech, the rabbi points out that universities exist to provide education, and they should be more concerned with protecting students, the learning environment, and school property than with harboring violent and destructive protestors.
