This is bad news indeed. The Trump administration, in its ongoing campaign to harass institutions of higher education in the U.S., demanded a list of Jews from the University of Pennsylvania. The university, as well as Jewish groups, objected.
The Trump regime says it is combatting anti-Semitism on campus and wants to collect evidence. The university believes this is an intrusion into private and personal information.
What reason is there to trust the good faith efforts of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice? Under current leadership, it has tossed aside all efforts to defend the rights of historically marginalized groups. It fights DEI and any programs that are intended to help Blacks, Hispanics, women and LGBT individuals. The leader of the Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, has devoted her career to fighting civil rights law.
Frankly, their sudden obsession with anti-Semitism is likely to cause an explosion of anti-Semitism. Maybe that’s their goal.
As a Jew, I say to the Trump regime, “No, thank you.” I don’t want my grandchildren in your census. It stinks.
The New York Times reported on a federal judge’s decision to let the Trump thugs collect the information they want.
The Trump administration was within its rights to demand that the University of Pennsylvania turn over information about Jews on campus as part of a federal investigation into discrimination at the school, a federal judge decided Tuesday.
The government’s investigation had united Penn leaders with Jewish students and faculty members as they opposed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s subpoena. Many on campus drew parallels between the government’s approach and methods deployed in Nazi Germany.
But the Trump administration has said that its request was typical for discrimination investigations to seek potential victims and witnesses, and Judge Gerald J. Pappert of Philadelphia’s Federal District Court agreed on Tuesday. He gave Penn until May 1 to comply with the administration’s subpoena, though the ruling appeared unlikely to quell the debates around how the administration has pressured top American universities.
In his ruling, Judge Gerald J. Pappert of Philadelphia’s Federal District Court said Penn “relies on two federal-court opinions which hurt, not help, its position.”
Judge Pappert, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, appeared to hint at the discomfort that the government’s subpoena had prompted and at the accusations that the E.E.O.C. had gone too far with its tactics, especially a demand for information tied to groups “related to the Jewish religion.”