Opinion

By Martin Gottlieb

So now Jews are the chosen minority? The Trump administration is energetically – hyperenergetically – destroying programs that are designed to combat historic and current prejudice against other minorities: Black people, women, Muslims, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. The destruction of these DEI programs is defended largely on the grounds that DEI amounts to special treatment that harms those not included.

But what is the Trump focus on antisemitism if not special treatment? How, in an exceptionally diverse society, can the focus on prejudice against only one minority be justified?

Trump is not satisfied to go after DEI efforts. He is shutting civil rights offices where they exist in the government, and he has radically redesigned the main one. Justice Department lawyers are quitting in droves because the civil rights division that was created largely to fight racial prejudice has been redirected.

Rather than being focused on discrimination against Black people, women, Muslims, and members of the LGBTQ+ community, the division has now actually been sicced on transgender people and focused on discrimination against Christians, as well as on antisemitism.

It’d be one thing if the administration just minimized enforcement of antidiscrimination laws in general on the principle of minimizing government.

But when instead the president makes an exception for one group, he might as well be declaring openly that his motives are not philosophical, not ideological, not idealistic, but purely political.

When antisemitism was publicly associated mainly with the political right, Trump had no problem with it. Remember “good people on both sides,” his response to antisemitic outrages at Charlottesville, Va.?

But when, after Oct 7, 2023, antisemitism became more associated with the left, all of a sudden Trump was the great friend of the Jews. How much more transparent could he possibly be?

His plan, unmistakably, is to make political and financial war on institutions he sees as liberal enemies. That plan lends itself nicely to driving a wedge between Jews and other minorities. Meanwhile, he can pick up some Jewish support.

On top of everything else, Trump’s anti-antisemitism thrust is, on balance, probably bad for the Jews. Being the chosen minority of the billionaire strongman loathed by half the population is, at best, a double-edged asset.

As with Trump’s embrace of White “refugees” from South Africa while he rejects all other refugees, there is no principle at work here, just a self-serving choosing up of sides.

Much has been said about the absurdity of fighting antisemitism by defunding research programs at elite universities.

For one thing, Jews are as likely as any demographic group to be hurt: as researchers, as students who want to be at a school that attracts top researchers, as parents paying tuition precisely because of the nature of the institutions, and as members of the public benefiting from research on health, the environment, and whatever.

Without question, antisemitism at some of these universities is real and serious and must be addressed. But when Harvard had a committee of students, professors, and others report on just how serious the prejudice problem is at Harvard, it found, among other things, this: While 15% of Jewish faculty, staff, and students feel physically endangered, 47% of Muslim faculty, staff, and students do.

Does anybody expect the Trump administration to get serious about fighting anti-Muslim prejudice at Harvard?

How best to combat antisemitism is a question that has no easy answer. After all these centuries, people still search. Now comes Donald Trump, not to solve the problem, but to take advantage of it.

Retired Dayton Daily News editorial writer Martin Gottlieb is advisor to The Dayton Jewish Observer.

To read the complete June 2025 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.