The Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced investigations into four medical schools over alleged antisemitic incidents during their 2024 commencement ceremonies.
While HHS did not identify the schools subjected to these investigations, the Wall Street Journal reported that Harvard, Columbia, Brown and Johns Hopkins medical schools were the targets. The investigations will come after a school year riddled with what critics have described as antisemitic incidents after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
“After October 7, we saw Jew-hatred explode not just on college campuses and city streets, but in the medical profession. This has caused a lot of concern that anti-Jewish bias in medicine endangers the lives of Jewish patients – and these concerns have not been conclusively addressed to date,” said Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at The Lawfare Project, which provides pro bono legal services to protect the civil rights of the Jewish community. “The investigations announced by HHS are a crucial first step towards addressing these concerns.”
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Harvard’s 2024 commencement ceremony was ridiculed over the school’s decision to tap media CEO Maria Ressa as the school’s commencement speaker following a year of incidents that included an assault against an Israeli student by pro-Palestinian protesters, scores of alleged antisemitic displays and chants, including some that praised Hamas, and numerous civil rights allegations from Jewish students. In addition, Harvard was accused by its own students of turning a blind eye to antisemitism.
Ressa, not long after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, penned an op-ed comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, and during her commencement address complained that she had been attacked over her pro-Palestinain advocacy “by power and money because they want power and money,” which people construed as promoting antisemitic stereotypes. Ressa was also accused of praising pro-Hamas demonstrations happening on campus during her address.
The commencement ceremony was allegedly so bad that a campus Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi felt compelled to confront Ressa during the event and subsequently walked offstage. According to media reports, Zarchi later described the ceremony as a “really vile program.”
Harvard Medical School spokesperson Ekaterina Pesheva said in a statement to Fox News Digital that the school “condemns antisemitism and remains committed to combating all forms of discrimination and harassment.” Pesheva added that Harvard would “continue to advance our efforts to ensure that all community members feel they belong” and said the school is currently reviewing HHS’s civil rights request and will cooperate to address the agency’s questions regarding the 2024 commencement ceremony.
Columbia, Johns Hopkins and Brown similarly faced a slew of complaints over alleged antisemitism on their campuses and the universities’ failure to address them. The environment at these schools was so hostile, reportedly, that some Jewish students who were admitted to these Ivy League schools decided to go somewhere else. A rabbi at Columbia went so far as to tell Jewish students to leave campus for their safety.
President Donald Trump has moved quickly to challenge antisemitism in the U.S., with news of the investigations coming the same day the Trump administration’s Department of Justice announced the formation of a multi-agency task force to combat antisemitism. News of the probe also came after Trump signed an executive order several days after taking office seeking to combat antisemitism, particularly on college campuses.
“HHS has been so quick to implement President Trump’s Executive Order is tacit recognition of the failure on the part of these universities to address antisemitism, despite several lawsuits and congressional investigations,” Filitti said. “The Biden Administration, for all its rhetoric, failed to do nearly as much as President Trump has in only one week to address Jew-hatred, and we now have a President clearly willing to use the power of the executive branch to take concrete action to stamp out antisemitism and protect the civil rights of Jewish Americans – and all Americans.”
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In addition to facing potential consequences over the school’s failure to address antisemitism on their campuses, Trump has also threatened to withhold millions of federal dollars in research grants if they do not comply with new orders quashing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
“Antisemitism has no place in American society, least of all in medical schools,” said Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of the nonprofit Do No Harm, which seeks to root out identity politics in medical education. “Medical schools, especially those who push a DEI agenda have become hotbeds of antisemitism, the department of Health and Human Services is right to raise concerns about blatantly antisemitic protests.”
On Monday, the Department of Education also launched a slew of additional civil rights investigations into Columbia, Northwestern, the University of California – Berkeley, the University of Minnesota and Portland State universities.
Fox News Digital reached out to Harvard, Columbia, Brown and Johns Hopkins for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
