Amid the surge in antisemitic incidents on college campuses following Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel, Washington is looking to step up where higher education leaders are faltering. 

The secretary of education, Miguel Cardona, is threatening to withhold federal funds from public schools and colleges that fail to heed the legal obligation to address discrimination against Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, or Palestinian students. “If there are egregious acts, I want to make sure that we’re investigating,” Mr. Cardona told CNN. “Ultimately, if we have to withhold dollars from a campus refusing to comply, we would.”

Mr. Cardona and the White House’s domestic policy advisor, Neera Tanden, are launching an antisemitism awareness campaign. After hosting a roundtable discussion with Jewish students at Towson University in Maryland last week, Mr. Cardona said the department and the White House would release a letter “very soon” to college leaders with “very clear language around how we stand against this.” 

The initiative follows the failure of administrators at elite universities to quickly and strongly denounce rhetoric and behavior targeting Jewish students. “That’s the void that the Secretary Cardona is now attempting to fill,” the managing director of policy and political affairs at an American Jewish advocacy group, American Jewish Committee, Julie Rayman, tells the Sun. 

Mr. Cardona and Ms. Tanden’s campaign is part of the Biden administration’s national strategy to counter antisemitism unveiled last May. This “whole-of-society effort” calls upon government agencies, public officials, and private sector leaders to fight the pernicious ideology throughout the country. “The fact that they’ve been able to pivot,” Ms. Rayman says, “and use this outreach as a way to keep Jewish students safe now is really commendable.”

National organizations are lauding the effort while insisting that it alone is insufficient to combat the crisis facing Jewish students today. “We applaud the Biden administration’s newly announced actions to combat antisemitism on college campuses,” a representative of the Anti-Defamation League tells the Sun, “and urge more to be done to protect Jewish students and faculty around the country.” 

Following the October 7 attack, reports of anti-Jewish harassment, vandalism, and assault in America have increased by nearly four times compared to the same period last year, according to the ADL. The director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, warned last week that the Israel-Hamas war might inspire violence against Arab, Muslim, and Jewish Americans.

Lawmakers are seeking to ward against such violence at American universities through the Antisemitism Awareness Act, introduced by Senator Scott and Congressman Michael Lawler. The act would require the Department of Education to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism when investigating the behavior on campuses. 

“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews,” IHRA’s definition, which was adopted in 2016 and subsequently accepted by the European Parliament, states. “Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

If college leaders invoke this language, “we can provide much-needed clarity in identifying and combating this age-old hatred,” the associate vice president of the Jewish Federations of North America, Karen Paikin Barall, tells the Sun. She applauds the “significant legislation” from Messrs. Scott and Lawler and says, “we urge Congress to pass this bill swiftly to send a clear message that antisemitism will not be tolerated.”

To help guide IHRA in its work, Ms. Rayman’s organization, the American Jewish Committee, has provided examples of activity that falls under this definition, including “calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.” 

“The words are really valuable,” Ms. Rayman says. “But it’s only when you start to use them and implement them and make them a part of your day-to-day that something’s really going to change.” She asks that Congress advance more comprehensive legislation to ensure universities implement President Biden’s national strategy. “There are no silver bullets in the fight against antisemitism,” she asserts. “It takes a lot of collective energy by every facet of society.” 

Ms. Rayman also urges the education department to delineate the limitations of students’ First Amendment rights. College leaders, she says, must “ensure freedom of speech is protected while also being mindful of words that are perceived to be or legitimately are dog whistles or calls for incitement,” she says. Taking the side of free speech on these issues, she says, “is leading to situations that are untenable.”

Untenable, indeed, is the vitriolic language being spewed against the Jewish state and its diaspora across the country. “No genocide ever began with people picking up guns or machetes or creating gas,” Mr. Biden’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, said on PBS last week. “It begins with words, and it escalates from there.”