Trump Judges Defend Jewish Students on Campus

“The Court is dismayed by Cooper Union’s suggestion that the Jewish students should have hidden upstairs or left the building,” 

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

Judge John Cronan wrote, blasting the Manhattan college’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit by Jewish students who were trapped in the library by a mob of terrorist supporters. 

“These events took place in 2023—not 1943—and Title VI places responsibility on colleges and universities to protect their Jewish students from harassment, not on those students to hide themselves away in a proverbial attic.”

The strong language in the ruling was similar to how Judge Mark Scarsi had criticized UCLA.

“In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” Judge Scarsi wrote in response to the university’s complicity in Hamas supporters setting up checkpoints and encampments to harass Jews.

The two federal judges who spoke forthrightly in defense of Jewish students had two things in common: both were conservatives associated with the Federalist Society. And both men had been nominated by Trump.

To fully appreciate the moral courage of Judge Scarsi and Judge Cronan, compare them to their colleagues who had been nominated by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

When Jewish students at Harvard and MIT turned to Judge Richard Stearns, a Clinton nominee, he dismissed the MIT lawsuit entirely, claiming that MIT had not reacted “in a clearly unreasonable manner”, and dismissed the lawsuit charging that Harvard had discriminated and retaliated against Jewish students, but allowed the lawsuit accusing the university of maintaining a “hostile educational environment” to move forward.

He did concede that, “Harvard failed its Jewish students.”

Judge Fernando Olguin, an Obama appointee, however sneeringly dismissed a complaint by Jewish parents and students against the antisemitic Los Angeles ‘ethnic studies curriculum, claiming that he could not understand it. Olguin, who had worked for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a proponent of ethnic studies curriculums, proved to be one of the most unsympathetic judges yet.

In Pennsylvania, Judge W. Scott Hardy, a Trump appointee, refused a request by Carnegie Mellon to dismiss a lawsuit by a Jewish student who had been harassed by a professor over her Jewishness and Israel’s war on terror, upholding an allegation of “deliberate indifference” against the university.

Judge Haywood Gilliam, Jr, an Obama appointee, however showed outright skepticism of a lawsuit against the California College of the Arts in San Francisco brought by a Jewish professor who had been put through the wringer at her school for challenging Students for Justice in Palestine’s pro-terrorist student activists.

Judge Gerald Austin McHugh Jr, another Obama appointee, dismissed a complaint by Jewish students against Haverford College, mocking it as a collection of “every frustration and disagreement of Jewish students and faculty” that “reads more as an opinion editorial’ and tipping his ideological hand, accused them of strategically “seeking to blur the line between Zionism as a political philosophy and Zionism as a component of Jewish identity, and in the process implicitly sweep any and all criticism of Israel into the basket of antisemitism.”

The handling of lawsuits filed by terrorist supporters also varied wildly by federal judges.

Judge Peter Messitte, a Clinton nominee who had worked in Yemen, issued a preliminary injunction requested by CAIR, which had supported the attacks of Oct 7, to allow a pro-terrorist event on Oct 7. Messitte, now deceased, had also insisted on blocking a Trump order during his first term allowing local officials to stop terrorist refugee resettlement in their communities.

By contrast, Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg, a Bush appointee, had rejected a lawsuit by the Faculty for Justice in Palestine group against the University of Pennsylvania trying to force the university not to cooperate with a congressional investigation of campus antisemitism.

In Texas however, Judge Robert Pitman, an Obama nominee and the “first openly gay judge” in the Fifth Circuit, backed a lawsuit by CAIR and Students for Justice in Palestine, a campus hate group whose chapters cheered the Oct 7 attacks, against Gov. Abbott’s antisemitism policies.

And back in California, Judge James Donato, an Obama appointee who had waged a judicial war against the Trump administration, allowed pro-terrorist activists to help defend the University of Berkeley against Jewish students alleging campus antisemitism.

While much has been written about the direct actions by the Trump administration on behalf of Jewish students, President Trump’s judicial appointments are playing a significant role in challenging campus antisemitism. The moral clarity brought by Judge Scarsi redefined how judges could speak directly and succinctly about the state of hate on college campuses.

And Judge Cronan’s equally strong and forthright words show that is becoming the new norm.

Meanwhile the behavior of Obama appointees like Messitte, Olguin and Pitman show the other side of the equation, and what the stakes are for American Jews in federal judicial appointments. Trump appointees have stood up for the civil rights of Jewish students while Obama appointees, true to their president’s policy, have enabled campus antisemitism.

Democratic Jewish groups have warned about the alleged ‘extremism’ of President Trump’s judicial appointments and championed confirming Biden’s extremist judicial appointees.

“We urge the Senate to confirm President Biden’s judicial nominees and fill all 44 judicial vacancies before Trump and the GOP return to power,” the Jewish Democratic Council of America had pleaded.

That included Adeel Abdullah Mangi, who had served on a think tank that had promoted Islamic terrorist figures, calls for BDS and “vile antisemitic propaganda”. By contrast, fourteen conservative judges, most appointed by Trump, visited Israel after Oct 7.They included Judge Lee Rudofsky, a Trump appointee who had warned that he would reject any law clerks that supported Hamas.

Are American Jews better off with Judge Rudofsky or with Mangi on the bench?

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.