Hofstra, Stony Brook University faculty, students: Trump antisemitism order could stifle free speech, target international students

A White House executive order that calls for a crackdown on antisemitism on college campuses — including by deporting foreign student protesters — has some students and staff at Long Island colleges worried it would target immigrants and stifle free speech. 

“One result of this document is to put international students in our universities on notice that they need to stay away from protesting,” said Carolyn Eisenberg, a Hofstra University history professor who specializes in 20th-century U.S. history and foreign policy. More broadly, “It is an effort to prevent debate or protest about U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine.”

She called the order "the most serious effort to crush dissent on college campuses since the McCarthy era."

Some Jewish student leaders said they were conflicted. Stony Brook University senior Ely Soumikh is vice president of the campus Chabad House, a gathering place for Jewish members of the school community. He said antisemitism needed to be addressed but that he opposed measures that would make students scared to speak freely.

"Students should feel free to talk about their political views — it's America," he said. Soumikh said he viewed free speech as a core American right because his parents, immigrants from Morocco and Iran, "came here fleeing antisemitism so they could speak their minds."

At the same time, he said, he welcomed the impulse behind the order, which he said would make Jewish students like him "feel safer — we just want to get a better education to better our lives."

Soumikh said that since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, he had challenged demonstrators at anti-Israel protests on campus. On some of those occasions, he said he was encircled by protesters and "spat at and flipped off. They called me Zionist."

Rise in antisemitism

The executive order, issued Wednesday by President Donald Trump, was in part a response to pro-Palestinian protests after the Hamas attack. Around 1,200 people were killed in Israel, and in the months that followed, according to the Gazan Health Ministry, more than 46,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza and 109,000 wounded. 

Protests at colleges across the country, including at Stony Brook University and Hofstra University, were mostly nonviolent but coincided with a nationwide rise in antisemitic incidents, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights group.

At Stony Brook University, a pro-Palestinian protest in May led to the arrest of 29 people, including students and professors. Disorderly conduct charges against them were dismissed in June. 

“I applaud, finally, the actual acknowledgment of this movement of antisemitism,” said Stony Brook University political science professor Gallya Lahav, who has previously criticized the protests on campus. But “this idea of demonizing immigrants as culprits — it’s not what we were expecting,” especially because most of the college protesters were Americans, she said.

Stony Brook already has strong rules about antisemitism, though “there are people at the university who would like to see enforcement stepped up,” and the order could encourage that, Lahav said.

Trump's order called for the federal government to “prosecute, remove or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” It directed federal agencies to catalog complaints of civil rights violations against colleges and universities since the Hamas attack and to guide colleges to “monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff” that could be related to antisemitism.

An accompanying fact sheet said that, “Immediate action will be taken by the Department of Justice to protect law and order, quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.” It included promises from Trump to cancel student visas of "Hamas sympathizers" and to deport “resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests.”

Eisenberg said that even before the executive order, Hofstra had imposed new rules limiting demonstrations on campus. Representatives for Hofstra and Stony Brook did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, Molloy University vice president of student affairs Janine Biscari said there had been no incidents of antisemitism reported on campus, that the school complied with the law and that the Molloy community would be alerted “if changes to current policies or practices are warranted." St. Joseph’s University spokeswoman Jessica McAleer Decatur said the school was “closely monitoring the ever-changing developments as they unfold, as well as the potential impact this can have on higher education.” 

Free speech concerns

Anti-Defamation League president Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement that the group welcomed “this effort by President Trump to put the full force of the federal government against rising antisemitism in our country.”

In 2024 the group said that 83% of Jewish college students surveyed reported experiencing or witnessing antisemitism since the Oct. 7 attack. 

But New York Civil Liberties Union senior policy counsel Justin Harrison said the administration erred by attempting to police political speech. “Religious discrimination must be combated, but addressing antisemitism cannot be a fig leaf for attacking political speech, suppressing protest or censoring academic inquiry by threatening criminal charges and deportation,” he said in a statement.

Hofstra student government president Lincoln Anniballi said that body “believes we can both fight antisemitism and protect students’ free speech.” It was impossible to “know what the impact of this order will be until it is actually enforced,” he added. 

Josh Dubnau, a Stony Brook University neurobiology professor who was arrested in the May protest, said the order does not target antisemitism but rather what he considers to be "legitimate criticism of Israel."

He said the order would have a “deeply chilling” effect on speech on college campuses that could jeopardize America's role as a leader in higher education. “One of the things that has made academics great in the U.S. is the diversity of people and perspectives, the open doors to bring in the very brightest people from the U.S. and internationally,” Dubnau said. 

Rabbi Adam Stein, director of Stony Brook University's Chabad House, declined to comment on the order but said that while the university was “not as hostile as other campuses … there’s a general feeling that there is a large minority of people that actually support terrorist actions against Jews in Israel.”

Sanaa Nadim, the university’s Muslim chaplain, said the motives of most protesters on campus had nothing to do with antisemitism. Instead, she said, the protesters were motivated by “seeing people killed, deprived of food, medicine and shelter. … How can you judge them as hateful people?”