The ability of the federal government to protect Jewish students from antisemitic discrimination on college campuses has been in jeopardy for the past four years due to the Biden administration’s failure to issue new guidance on the definition of antisemitism. 

That’s the assessment from a leading authority on antisemitism and civil rights, Kenneth Marcus, who, under both the George W.  Bush and Trump administrations, worked to clarify protections for Jewish students under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 

Now, he fears that if Vice President Harris is elected president, the policy — which has served as a crucial legal foothold for Jewish students to fight antisemitism since  October 7 — may be made less effective in the next four years. Or worse: rolled back. 

“The fact that the Biden-Harris administration has lacked the courage to be firm, forceful, and explicit in discussing the IHRA working definition of antisemitism does raise a real concern that a Harris administration might not follow through and use the definition in the way that the order envisions,” Mr. Marcus tells the Sun. 

The policy dates back to 2004, when Mr. Marcus, while working as assistant secretary for the Department of Education, established in an official letter that Title VI protected the rights of ethnic groups that shared a religious faith, including Jews. Later coined the “Marcus Doctrine,” the policy was kept through the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.  

The policy was strengthened in 2019 when the Trump administration issued an executive order which affirmed the civil rights protections for Jewish students and called on federal agencies to “consider” the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition for antisemitism which identifies denying Jews the right to self-determination as a potentially antisemitic act. 

His effort was lauded by scores of Jewish groups, including the World Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, the Zionist Organization of America, and the Anti-Defamation League.

Although the Biden administration did not overturn the executive order, they have, for years, delayed issuing new Title VI guidance based on Trump’s executive order. The Department of Education first promised to issue a new rule in September 2020, before pushing the deadline to January 2021, and then to December 2022, and so on. “It’s not as if drafting the rule would have taken so long,” Mr. Marcus tells the Sun. I left a copy of it in my desk when I left.”

Should the Biden administration delay ad infinitum, the fate of the policy will rest in the hands of the next president. Mr. Marcus, for one, is less confident that a Harris administration will take up the mantle and codify the protections for Jewish students. 

Though Ms. Harris has issued statements condemning antisemitism on campuses, she has also, in the past year, defended anti-Israel campus agitators, saying at one point that “They are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza.”

“I think that we should legitimately fear that the hard fought protections could be reversed in a future administration — and that that future administration might be the Harris administration,” he tells the Sun, adding that, “we certainly haven’t heard anything from her that would instill confidence.” 

Those protections have only become more important as Hamas’s October 7 attack and the ensuing war in Gaza prompted an unprecedented rise in instances of harassment, intimidation, and assault against Jewish students. Title VI is, in Mr. Marcus’s words, “the central pillar” in most of the suits filed by Jewish students against their universities. 

At least 14 universities are facing lawsuits over their handling of antisemitism on campus after October 7 — including Harvard, Columbia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Not to mention dozens of Title VI administrative complaints filed with the Office of Civil Rights. “The stakes are high,” Mr. Marcus says. 

Trump, on the other hand, “made, by far, the most important advance in fighting campus antisemitism” during his presidency, Mr. Marcus claims. He has also, over the course of his presidential campaign, repeatedly pledged to forcefully combat antisemitism should he be elected, even threatening to revoke university’s accreditation and federal support should they fail to address their issues with Jew-hatred. 

Meanwhile, the democratic majority leader in the Senate, Charles Schumer, has been sitting on a bill that could make or break the executive order. The bill, known as the Antisemitsm Awareness Act, would require the Education Department to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. 

Although the measure passed the House with bipartisan support, Mr. Schumer — who is currently the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in America — has blocked it from entering the upper chamber. Though a regulation issued by the federal government would place the policy on stronger ground, the bill, Mr. Marcus says, “would do the trick.”