Jerry Nadler, the most high -end Jewish member of the House of Representatives, accused Donald Trump of being a “potential dictator” who cynically exploits the fight against anti -Semitism as a cunning to buffer his will on high -level universities.
In an interview with The Guardian, the member of the New York Congress was unleashed against the president for having used real dangers confronted with American Jews in the form of justifying his attacks against Columbia, Harvard and other universities. “Trump obviously does not care about anti-Semitism, it’s just an expression of his authoritarianism,” he said.
Nadler’s Broadside came while Trump administration intensifies his attack on Ivy League and other universities in an unprecedented challenge for academic independence. This week, $ 210 million in research grants at Princeton University were suspended by energy and defense services and NASA, under the mantle of a federal investigation into “anti -Semitic harassment”.
A few days earlier, the Trump administration announced that it would examine $ 9 billion in federal contracts and subsidies at Harvard University. Another $ 500 million in federal funds at Brown University were reportedly threatened.
The latest assaults against Ivy League follow the cancellation of $ 400 million in federal silver at Columbia University in New York. At least 60 other universities have been warned by the administration that they are faced with a similar punishment.
Earlier this week, Nadler published a severe declaration denouncing attacks. He said that the president “would arm the real pain with which the American Jews face to advance his desire to control the academic institutions for the search for truth”.
In his Guardian interview, Nadler has extended his position, warning American Jewish colleagues not to be taken by Trump’s rhetoric. He said that if the president was authorized to get away with his efforts to restrict freedom of expression on campuses, the Jews would be among those most affected.
“Whenever freedom is limited, the Jews in particular become victims,” said Nadler. “It’s story.”
He added that Trump’s actions in the name of the fight against anti -Semitism would paradoxically make the lives of American Jews less safe. “There are always anti -Semites looking for an excuse to react, so it’s dangerous and that certainly does not help.”
Nadler said that if Trump was sincere to protect the Jewish people, he would eliminate the “many anti -Semites he called to some of the highest positions in government”. Invited to specify the officials he had in mind, the Congress member appointed Kingsley Wilson, a spokesperson for the Pentagon.
Wilson amplified on far -right social networks on a Jewish businessman, Leo Frank, who was lynched by a hateful crowd in Georgia in 1915. Frank had been wrongly sentenced for killing a 13 -year -old factory worker.
Nadler also underlined the dismissal by Trump of a large number of investigators at the Civil Rights Office of the Department of Education who act as the front line of federal efforts to slow down anti-Jewish hatred on campuses. “If he was serious about anti -Semitism, Trump would present business before the civil rights office rather than destroy it.”
Nadler, 77, represented the 12th district of the New York Congress, which covers a large band of Manhattan, for 32 years. Until January, he was the democrat as a rank of the powerful judicial committee of the Chamber.
He describes himself as a “committed Zionist” and a fervent supporter of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people. Despite these convictions, he expressed himself more and more in the conviction of the aggressive manipulation of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the American campuses which broke out following the Gaza War.
“From my point of view, the demonstrators express unpleasant opinions, I do not agree with them. But they are entitled to these opinions,” Nadler told Guardian.
The Congress member recently signed a letter exciting the Trump administration for having held and tried to expel Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident of the United States who helped direct pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University last year. “I do not agree with the camp, but no matter what Khalil is entitled to freedom of expression and should not be expelled for his opinions.”
Nadler underlined the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of 1969, Brandenburg against Ohio, which says that the government can only punish the discourse “oriented towards incentive or the production of action without imminent law and is likely to encourage or produce such action”. Nadler said that in his analysis, pro-Palestinian demonstrations on American campuses did not comply with this standard and was therefore protected as a basic political discourse under the first amendment of the American Constitution.
In recent years, Nadler has also become an eminent criticism of the decision to define anti-Jewish hatred in the International Work Definition of the Holocaust Rembrance Alliance (IHRA). The definition of the IHRA of anti -Semitism was created by an agency of the European Union in 2005 and has since been taken up by a certain number of American entities, including the Ministry of Education and several major universities.
The definition of the IHRA has attracted censorship for having declared that certain forms of criticism of the State of Israel, as a Jewish community, can cross anti -Semitism.
In his Guardian interview, Nadler said that the definition was used to suppress legitimate criticism of the Israeli government’s actions. “The problem with the definition of the IHRA is that it leads to the confusion of anti-Israeli expressions with anti-Semitism. You can be anti-Israeli and non-anti-Semitic.”
Nadler made his own trip to this issue. In 2018, he was sponsoring the law on awareness of anti -Semitism, which requires that the definition of IHRA be used in all federal surveys on the allegations of anti -Semitism on the campus.
In recent years, however, Nadler has become a firm speaker in legislation, on the grounds that he would effectively prohibit anti-Israeli feeling on American campuses. When asked why he had a change of mind, he said: “I was wrong in 2018 – it was a mistake”.
A significant number of congresses, however, continue to support legislation. Last year, 133 Democrats voted for the law on awareness of anti -Semitism, as well as 187 Republicans. It is not yet adopted.
Nadler had a message for those of his colleagues who continue to support the bill. He said that their actions were “dangerous for the first amendment”.
The representative urged his colleagues Democrats to the Congress to do everything they could to support universities in Trump’s fire. But he reserved his strongest language for the universities themselves, in which he implored not to engrave.
Already, several major university institutions have capitulated in the face of Trump’s intimidation tactics. The almost total acquiescence of Columbia, described in a four-page letter, included an agreement to eliminate the control of the teaching of the faculty and the adoption of the controversial definition of the IHRA of anti-Semitism.
Despite the concessions, the Trump administration has not yet restored the $ 400 million in cuts, saying that the university must first comply first.
Harvard, who adopted this same definition in January, rejected two leaders of the faculty of the Center for the Center for the University’s Middle East studies. The university would have examined the programming of the center on Israel-Palestine “insufficiently balanced”.
Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber, on the other hand, said that he would not look into the coercion of the federal government. In an interview with Bloomberg reported by the Daily Princetonian, Eisgruber said that “we must be willing to speak, and we must be willing to say no to funding if that forced our ability to continue the truth”.
Nadler congratulated Princeton’s resilience and called on other universities to resist Trump. He warned that the capitulation included his own “great danger”.
“If the Trump administration behaves on its threats, then Princeton should go to court. He would obtain a preliminary injunction, because it is a violation of clear speech, then I would try to bring the members of the Congress to support the trial by submitting a friendly file. “
He added: “Federal agencies can place conditions on money given to universities, but they must carry out a legal process. There are many reasons to continue. ”
