How many students must be harassed before a university tries to stop the offenses?
Jewish students at George Washington University are still counting, but in the meantime, the U.S. Department of Justice is stepping in. If the recent examples of civil rights-related settlements at Brown University, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania are any indication, George Washington officials will likely face requirements to realign with federal civil rights laws and perhaps even a hefty fine for years of inaction.
Earlier this week, the Justice Department sent a letter to university officials reporting its finding that they were “deliberately indifferent” to last spring’s antisemitic incidents that occurred when pro-Hamas organizations encamped on university grounds. The letter is full of examples that should send chills down the spines of parents and students alike.
For example, an economics professor who wrote a policy analysis for President Donald Trump’s administration found his office vandalized in February with flyers accusing him of “bloodthirsty Zionism” along with “Islamophobia, xenophobia, Zionism, racism and fascism.”
Near the end of the 2024 school year, a Jewish student exited the university’s law school building and was surrounded by a crowd of pro-Hamas rioters who threatened the student and told the student to leave the school’s University Yard. Then, according to the Justice Department’s letter, George Washington’s assistant dean of students told the student to leave because the student was “antagonizing and provoking” the rioting students.
These incidents are neither unique nor isolated.
In a May 2025 lawsuit filed against the university, Jewish students described antisemitism as “a consistent part of the GWU student experience.” Their suit cites incidents as far back as 2022—even before the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 that killed 1,200 people in Israel and took others hostage.
The suit said that university-funded student organizations had put signs up around campus using vile language to describe Jewish students in Oct. 2022. That same year, Jewish students documented that a psychology professor repeatedly harassed and intimidated Jewish students in her class, prompting a federal investigation (the professor disputed the claims and eventually left the university).
In fact, George Washington University was issuing apologies for antisemitic incidents at least as far back as 2021, when a Torah scroll was “desecrated” at a fraternity house on campus.
While then-president Thomas J. LeBlanc’s condemnation of this act was welcome, antisemitic acts clearly didn’t stop—and they only escalated after Oct. 7. In May 2024, Washington, D.C. police had to break up the pro-Hamas encampment at George Washington after an “escalation in volatility” that included an attack on an officer. 33 rioters were arrested.
With clear evidence of antisemitism at least as far back as 2021, George Washington University administrators have little room to dispute the Justice Department’s findings. In February, the university sanctioned nine student groups for participating in the encampments—but the economics professor still found threats plastered to his office door around the same time.
The Justice Department’s investigation found that school officials had taken no “meaningful action” since the 2024 encampments.
In their lawsuits and other complaints, Jewish students and families do not ask for special protection or status—just to be treated the same under the law as other students. Jewish students’ complaints aren’t efforts to gain special treatment—they’re appeals for the same protection from harassment as students of any other race or ethnicity.
George Washington administrators should anticipate that the White House will require them to make the campus safe for all students, including Jewish individuals. Brown University officials agreed to such a condition as part of that school’s settlement with the administration. Columbia University administrators were required to pay a settlement to students who had filed discrimination charges against the school, and they agreed to tighten security policies around demonstrations on campus.
If university employees and students resent the federal investigations and withholding of grants until settlement, then school officials should bring order to their own campuses before federal civil rights offices are engaged. George Washington University allowed antisemitism to persist, and school leaders are about to find out just how much a culture of harassment will cost them.