The Trump administration’s deal with Brown is a poor reading of antisemitism

Brown University is the latest institution to come to an agreement with the Trump administration, in part, ostensibly, over antisemitism. In addition to costing the university the equivalent of $50 million over a decade, the deal requires the university to agree to take steps to make Jewish students feel welcome, such as outreach to Jewish day schools to inform students about applying to Brown, renewing “partnerships with Israeli academics and national Jewish organizations,” convening the campus community for a celebration of Jewish life and ensuring robust education about Israel and a thriving Judaic Studies Program.

Separately, the agreement prohibits the university from using “diversity narratives” in admissions or from trying to achieve race-based outcomes or diversity targets.

The logic here seems to be that these separate components of the agreement together indicate that special protections should only be available for Jews, and not other marginalized groups.

Even if only the safety and well-being of Jewish students are considered, this agreement raises three pertinent issues.

First, it is not actually possible to teach or learn about Jewish history and identities or antisemitism in the United States and abroad without also learning about other hatreds, specifically racism and xenophobia. An administration that encourages a university to pretend the latter is not real inhibits one’s ability to understand the former.

How can one learn about the malicious and enduring trope of the Jew as a perpetual outsider, disloyal to the nation, without learning about xenophobia? How can one talk about the quota on Jews coming from Eastern Europe to the United States during the Nazi era, which condemned so many to die, without talking about fear and hatred of immigrants?

And even if one leaves out the inspiration he took from the U.S. approach toward Black Americans, how does one teach about Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust and the Nazis’ racialized (and racist) policies toward Jews without teaching about racism? And the history of American Jews specifically, of our assimilation and acculturation and the challenges therein, cannot be discussed without also discussing race and racism in U.S. history.

Even something as seemingly innocuous as teaching about Jewish diversity today — how not all Jews are Ashkenazi and that Jews of color are indeed real — runs up against the ban on other forms of DEI. How do you acknowledge Jews of color if you will not also acknowledge race and racism?

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Second, not only is it impossible to teach about Jewish history and antisemitism in isolation, cordoned off from other hatreds, but if other universities follow Brown’s lead and enact similar programs, they will be sending the message to students of minority identity and communities that theirs are not concerns worth learning about — but Jews’ are.

The thinking here seems to be that DEI is responsible for a worldview of hierarchies of oppression — but also that the way to make college students take antisemitism seriously as a tool of oppression is to cancel lessons of all other hatreds.

This will only further the perception that Jews are separate from other marginalized communities and most likely lead to greater resentment of Jews within those communities. After all, if ours were really an identity like theirs, would we not learn about them alongside one another?

Finally, whose Jewish identity, exactly, are we talking about here? Whose understanding of antisemitism will be taught?

It is true, as legacy Jewish organizations remind us, that many Jews see loving the state of Israel as core to their Jewish identity. It is also true that, increasingly, especially for younger Jews, some do not, while many find themselves somewhere in between.

So, too, is it true that the definition of antisemitism and attempts to codify it have been hotly contested and debated by Jewish groups, communities and policymakers.

However, the Trump administration has one understanding of Jewishness. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has equated “the Jewish people” with Israel. President Donald Trump has taken it upon himself to say Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the history of his country, is “Palestinian” and “not Jewish anymore” (this manages to be both racist against Palestinians and deeply offensive to those of us who do not believe the president is the arbiter of authentic Judaism).

The details in Brown’s agreement with the government are counterproductive if the goal is to actually educate more students about antisemitism and Jewishness. And the agreement itself risks flattening Jewish identity to the administration’s own limited understanding of what that means.