Congress Poised To Close Without Passing Any Major Legislation on Antisemitism — Is Chuck Schumer To Blame?

With only a handful of days to go before the 118th session of Congress comes to a close, Senator Schumer is poised to fall short on his promise to pass the Antisemitism Awareness Act, a bill that would codify a key legal foothold for Jewish students fighting antisemitism on college campuses. The legislation, which calls for the Education Department to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism for its investigations of antisemitic discrimination, strengthens a Trump-era executive order which affirmed protections for Jewish students under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That policy, according to a leading authority on antisemitism and civil rights, Kenneth Marcus, serves as “the central pillar” in most of the suits filed by Jewish students against their universities for their handling of campus antisemitism. At least 14 universities, including Harvard, Columbia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, and The University of Pennsylvania, are facing such legal challenges. One of the plaintiffs behind the lawsuit against Harvard, Shabbos Kestenbaum, describes the Antisemitism Awareness Act as a “desperately needed” bill, particularly as college campuses have become “incubators of antisemitism,” he tells the Sun. Mr. Kestenbaum argues that “one cannot defeat antisemitism without defining antisemitism,” adding that, “this bill would give the federal government a clear mandate to not only aggressively combat Jew-hate, but understand exactly what it looks like.” The act passed the House with bipartisan support in a 320-91 vote in May, but came to a standstill in the Senate. Although Mr. Schumer — who is Washington’s highest ranking Jewish elected official — assured Jewish leaders that the bill would see the light of day, he declined to bring the measure to a standalone floor vote. Mr. Schumer’s recent efforts to attach the bill to either the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act or the latest stopgap funding bill, however, failed, making it unlikely that the bill will get through the Senate before the end of the year. That leaves Congress slated to conclude its session without passing any major new legislation aimed at fighting antisemitism, even as antisemitic attacks in America have skyrocketed in the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 last year. Many major Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Federations of North America, the UJA-Federation of New York, and others, back the bill, and have, for months, been pushing Mr. Schumer to bring the measure to the Senate floor before the start of the fall academic year. The heads of those organizations, among others, penned a letter to the Senate Majority leader in June, stressing the bill’s importance for protecting Jewish students on campus and urging Mr. Schumer to make good on his promise to move the bill “within a short timeframe.” Sources familiar with the situation tell Jewish Insider that Mr. Schumer refrained from bringing the bill to a vote over concerns that it might “expose a significant divide among Senate Democrats over the legislation.”Some liberal Democrats oppose the bill over the claim that it would suppress criticism of the Jewish state — and, by default, the war at Gaza — and hamper free speech by linking anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Some conservative lawmakers have branded the measure “anti-Christian” given that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance lists the accusation that the Jews killed Jesus as, depending on the context, a potential example of antisemitism. Mr. Schumer’s efforts to attach the measure onto a larger legislative package were blocked in the House by Speaker Johnson, who has called on Mr. Schumer to assemble a stand-alone vote. Hours after Mr. Schumer publicly offered to attach the legislation to the annual defense bill, Mr. Johnson accused the Democratic lawmaker of wanting to “avoid a vote of accountability” and said that the National Defense Authorization Act would be “strictly limited to matters pertaining to national security.” The head of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, called it “a shame” that politics got in the way of the bill’s passing, but refrained from pointing fingers at Mr. Schumer. “I know what he was trying to do. I just wish it had worked out differently,” he told Jewish Insider. Mr. Marcus, who served as the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education during President Trump’s first term, points out the “irony” in Mr. Schumer’s political maneuvering, which he tells the Sun, “has exposed precisely those fractures” within the Senate Democratic caucus “and, worse, has shown that the Jewish community will pay a price for the divisions that Democratic leadership would evidently prefer that we not see.”Trump has pledged to fight antisemitism on college campuses in his effort to make higher education “great again.” Though it is unclear whether the legislation will be taken up in the Republican-majority House next year, particularly given the strong opposition to it from a select few right-wing lawmakers. The development serves as the latest blow to the reputation of Mr. Schumer, who has described himself as a “shomer” or “guard” of the Jewish community, and plans to release a book in February about antisemitism in America. Mr. Kestenbaum, for his part, lambastes the Democratic Senator for choosing “politics over the American Jewish community” and goes so far as to tell the Sun that “There has been no greater obstacle toward protecting Jewish students on college campuses than Chuck Schumer.” Mr. Schumer has not yet responded to the Sun’s request for comment.

Congress Poised To Close Without Passing Any Major Legislation on Antisemitism — Is Chuck Schumer To Blame?

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