By: Fern Sidman

George Washington University (GW) in Washington, DC, long regarded as a bellwether for tensions around Israel and antisemitism in American higher education—has once again found itself at the center of controversy. According to a report that appeared on Monday in The Algemeiner, the institution has faced repeated allegations of indifference toward a wave of anti-Jewish harassment on its campus. This month, those allegations culminated in a Department of Justice (DOJ) finding that the university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by responding with “deliberate indifference” to antisemitic abuse directed at Jewish students and faculty.

Now, as the Trump administration seeks to negotiate a settlement that would spare the university potentially crippling financial penalties, anti-Israel groups at GW have mobilized. In a flurry of statements coinciding with the start of the academic year, these groups urged administrators to reject cooperation with the federal government. Their rhetoric—framing the DOJ’s intervention as authoritarian overreach and a threat to campus activism—calls attention to the widening gulf between Jewish students seeking protection and radical anti-Israel activists determined to cast accountability measures as assaults on free expression.

On August 12, the DOJ released a document detailing its investigation into GW. The conclusions were stark: university officials had repeatedly failed to address antisemitic harassment, thereby depriving Jewish students of equal access to education in violation of federal law.

According to the DOJ, complaints of harassment—from slurs and threats to vandalism and intimidation—were met with little or no meaningful institutional response. “GW took no meaningful action and was instead deliberately indifferent to the complaints it received, the misconduct that occurred, and the harms that were suffered by its Jewish and Israeli students and faculty,” the report said.

As The Algemeiner report noted, the DOJ made clear that immediate remediation would be required. Absent a voluntary settlement, GW risked facing penalties similar to those levied against Columbia, Brown, and Harvard, each of which has suffered reputational and financial blows over related federal investigations into campus antisemitism.

Rather than welcoming federal oversight, several anti-Israel organizations at GW responded by urging resistance.

GW Alumni for Palestine released a statement on Friday denouncing the federal settlement effort as an “authoritarian attack” on academia. “The Trump administration has targeted universities as part of its authoritarian agenda, curtailing political expression, and punishing movements and individuals that challenge its power,” the group claimed.

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a radical anti-Zionist group that GW suspended through May for promoting antisemitism and attempting to stage an unauthorized event on April 20—Hitler’s birthday—charged that the DOJ’s actions were disingenuous. “This action by the Trump administration is not a good faith effort to combat antisemitism but another attempt to use Jewish people as an excuse to silence, persecute, and attack our peers,” JVP declared.

The GWU Left Coalition accused the administration of waging “war against colleges and universities across the country” and warned that any agreement with the DOJ posed an “imminent danger to student safety and privacy.”

As The Algemeiner report observed, such responses exemplify the inversion at the heart of campus discourse: antisemitism is reframed not as a civil rights crisis but as collateral damage in an imagined war on student activism.

The federal findings come after years of mounting concern. As The Algemeiner has documented, GW has become a hub for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and other extreme anti-Zionist organizations whose activities often cross the line into outright antisemitism.

In recent years, Jewish professors have been threatened, Jewish students harassed, and pro-Israel voices silenced.

In May, a civil lawsuit cataloged dozens of antisemitic incidents following the Hamas-led massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, including vandalism of the campus Hillel, threats of violence against Jewish students, and destruction of Jewish-owned property.

Perhaps most shockingly, one student at her commencement ceremony accused Israel of genocide and apartheid in remarks that administrators said bore no resemblance to the approved speech. The incendiary rhetoric, echoing tropes popular among both jihadist and neo-Nazi groups, was broadcast to the entire graduating class.

Faculty misconduct has also been highlighted. In 2023, psychology professor Lara Sheehi faced allegations of harassing Israeli and Jewish students. According to a civil rights complaint filed by Stand With Us, Sheehi told an Israeli student on the first day of class, “It’s not your fault you were born in Israel,” before spreading rumors about her Jewish students and filing misconduct charges against them. Administrators, the complaint alleged, failed to intervene or provide alternative accommodations.

As one student told The Algemeiner at the time, “We never even learned what policies we were accused of violating—it was just a way to silence us.”

Friday marked the deadline for GW to signal whether it would enter into a voluntary resolution agreement with the DOJ. Such an agreement would commit the university to significant reforms—potentially including enhanced training, accountability measures, and monitoring—in exchange for avoiding more severe penalties.

GW confirmed that discussions were ongoing but declined to comment on substance. “We have taken appropriate action under university policy and the law to hold individuals or organizations accountable, including during the encampment, and we do not tolerate behavior that threatens our community or undermines meaningful dialogue,” spokesperson Shannon Mc Clendon said in a statement. She added that GW has worked “diligently” with members of its Jewish community and local authorities to combat antisemitism.

Yet as The Algemeiner report observed, such statements have done little to reassure Jewish students who feel abandoned by their administration and endangered by unchecked hostility on campus.

The reaction from anti-Israel groups highlights a familiar inversion: Jewish students, the targets of harassment and intimidation, are erased from the narrative, while radical activists claim to be the true victims of government overreach.

This rhetorical sleight of hand, as The Algemeiner has repeatedly noted, has become a hallmark of campus discourse on Israel. By framing accountability as censorship, groups like JVP and SJP effectively demand impunity for conduct that would never be tolerated against any other minority group.

Such logic was evident in JVP’s claim that “criticism of Israel is not inherently antisemitic”—a truism deployed to deflect responsibility for rhetoric and actions that have directly endangered Jewish students.

GW’s predicament is not unique. Across the United States, universities have faced a reckoning as antisemitic incidents surged following the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7. Columbia, Harvard, and other elite institutions have all faced federal scrutiny, congressional investigations, and donor revolts.

The Trump administration has made campus antisemitism a policy priority, seeking to enforce Title VI protections vigorously. Supporters argue that Jewish students deserve the same protections from harassment as other minorities, while critics claim the administration is weaponizing civil rights law to suppress political speech.

What is clear is that the old equilibrium—where antisemitic hostility was tolerated as part of campus “debate”—is no longer tenable.

George Washington University now stands at a crossroads. On one path lies cooperation with federal authorities, meaningful reforms, and the possibility of restoring trust with its Jewish students. On the other lies defiance, the embrace of radical activists’ rhetoric, and the risk of both financial penalties and reputational collapse.

As The Algemeiner report indicated, the stakes are immense—not only for GW’s Jewish community but for the integrity of American higher education itself. The university’s history of indifference has already inflicted profound harm. Whether it seizes this moment to change course, or succumbs to the pressure of anti-Israel groups demanding rejection of accountability, will determine not only its legal fate but its moral standing.

For Jewish students who have endured harassment, vandalism, and threats, the question is not abstract. As one young woman told The Algemeiner after receiving a death threat on campus, “I just want to know that my university will protect me.”

That plea for protection—simple, urgent, and just—should be the measure of GW’s next steps.