![People, including a young woman holding a sign that reads:" Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism," chant slogans and carry Palestinian flags as they arrive at Potsdamer Platz during a "Freedom for Palestine" protest march that drew thousands of participants on November 04, 2023 in Berlin, Germany. [Sean Gallup/Getty Images]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/GettyImages-1774737762.jpg?fit=1200%2C793&ssl=1)
The US Education Department has launched probes into five universities for alleged anti-Semitism, Anadolu Agency reports.
In a statement on Monday, the Department said that, following US President Donald Trump’s executive order on combating anti-Semitism, it has launched investigations into five universities “where widespread anti-Semitic harassment has been reported”.
These actions come in response “to the explosion of anti-Semitism” on US campuses after the 7 October, 2023 start of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
The institutions being investigated include Columbia University, North-western University, Portland State University, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, all of which saw pro-Palestine demonstrations.
“Too many universities have tolerated widespread anti-Semitic harassment and the illegal encampments that paralyzed campus life last year,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Craig Trainor, said, according to the statement, adding that the universities allegedly made “astounding concessions” to camps set up on the campuses in solidarity with Gaza.
READ: US, Canadian universities hire Israeli firms to curb pro-Palestinian protests
In late January, Trump signed a presidential order, “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism”, that opened the door to the deportation of students participating in demonstrations in support of Palestine.
Protests at US universities
On 16 April, 2024, pro-Palestinian students at Columbia University staged a sit-in on the campus lawn and erected a tent called the Gaza Solidarity Camp in protest of the school’s continued financial investments in companies that support Israel’s attacks and Occupation of Gaza.
On the second day of the protests, Chancellor Minouche Shafik requested the assistance of the New York Police Department to disperse the demonstrators, and police entered the campus and detained 108 students.
On 29 April, after negotiations with the school administration reached an impasse, students entered the school’s historic Hamilton Hall building, and a day later, at the request of the school administration, NYPD riot police intervened and evacuated the building. Police also dispersed the tent camp in the garden.
After starting at Columbia, the pro-Palestine demonstrations spread to over 50 other universities in the country, where police detained more than 3,100 people, mostly students and faculty members.
The protests came in response to Israel’s genocidal war since 7 October, 2023, which in the months that followed have killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injured over 111,000.
The Israeli onslaught on Gaza has left more than 11,000 people missing, with widespread destruction and a humanitarian crisis that has claimed the lives of many elderly people and children.
Last November the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
A ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel took hold in Gaza on 19 January, halting the war that has caused widespread destruction and left the enclave in ruins.
READ: Berkeley launches one of US’s first Palestinian and Arab Studies programmes