The APA is also considering repealing its adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, according to the congressional committee’s letter.

By Jessica Schwalb, The Washington Free Beacon

The Education and Workforce Committee launched an investigation into “rampant antisemitism” within the American Psychological Association (APA), the committee announced in a Friday letter.

The committee outlines a wide range of anti-Semitic incidents at the APA, which has received over $11 million in federal grants since 2020.

“Jewish APA members have reported being harassed and ostracized by their colleagues within the APA and at APA events because of their Jewish identity, their efforts to speak out against antisemitism, and their Zionist beliefs,” Education and Workforce Committee chairman Tim Walberg (R., Mich.) wrote in his letter to APA president Dr. Debra Kawahara.

“Members have also stated that their complaints to the association have gone unanswered, raising significant concerns about the APA’s commitment to addressing harassment.”

The committee cites Washington Free Beacon reports on a former APA division president, Lara Sheehi, who taught that Zionism is a mental illness.

She called to “destroy Zionism,” referred to Israelis as “genocidal fucks,” and wrote “how dare you slander the names of our martyrs as terrorists.”

The APA “allegedly failed to take meaningful action” against her, according to the committee.

The APA, the nation’s leading accreditor for psychological training, has faced mounting concerns over anti-Semitism in recent months.

In November, the Anti-Defamation League said anti-Semitic incidents at the organization—and its response to them—raised “major concerns,” requiring “substantial action.”

The Education and Workforce Committee flagged an open letter sent to APA leadership and signed by over 3,500 mental health professionals.

It highlighted statements on APA listservs such as “Hamas fighters in Gaza … are just protecting civilians,” “Kudos to Hamas’ and calls for ‘Intifada, Intifada.'”

“Of additional concern, the letter states that the APA has offered educational credits for members to attend conferences where speakers endorsed ‘violence against Jews and Israelis; antisemitic tropes; Holocaust distortion; minimization of Jewish victimization, fear, and grief; and pathologizing of Jewish people’s connection to their indigenous homeland,'” the committee wrote.

The APA is also considering repealing its adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, according to the congressional committee’s letter.

The group’s effort “makes light of antisemitism experienced by the association’s Jewish members by pointing to ‘weaponized antisemitism,’ which it defines as ‘the strategic and bad faith use of accusations of antisemitism, […] that […] has been used in particular to silence and punish people of color,'” the letter states.

Walberg wrote that his “Committee is gravely concerned about antisemitism at the APA.” In a statement to the Free Beacon, he added, “APA leadership has stood by for years while its members have harassed and endorsed violence against Jews. This vile hatred has no place in an organization that represents America’s psychologists across the country and purports to advocate for mental health.”

The Education and Workforce Committee demanded that the APA turn over a host of documents, including communications between the group’s leadership as well as materials surrounding anti-Semitism complaints filed by its members. The APA has until Jan. 2 to comply.

APA spokeswoman Sophie Bethune pointed the Free Beacon to her organization’s resolution on Anti-Semitic and Anti-Jewish Prejudice, which was last updated in August 2007.

“The APA unequivocally condemns antisemitism in all its forms,” she said in a statement. “We are committed to fostering an environment where all members can participate without experiencing discrimination.”

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Under former president Joe Biden, anti-Semitic incidents surged on college campuses, with Jewish students facing harassment and intimidation from protesters.

By Matthew Xiao, The Washington Free Beacon

The Biden administration failed to act on nearly 200 anti-Semitism complaints, even as anti-Semitic sentiment surged across the United States following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, according to a senior Trump Education Department official.

More than 150 of the unresolved complaints were filed after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack, which killed nearly 1,200 Israelis and triggered the war.

Instead of investigating the spike in anti-Semitism, the Biden Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) redirected limited resources to cases involving pronoun usage and “bans” on age-inappropriate school books, the official told Fox News.

The revelation comes as President Donald Trump has cracked down on campus anti-Semitism, revoking billions in federal funding from universities that fail to protect Jewish students and rein in anti-Semitic protests.

Under former president Joe Biden, anti-Semitic incidents surged on college campuses, with Jewish students facing harassment and intimidation from protesters.

Trump officials have rolled back Biden-era policies on the “book bans” and expanding Title IX to cover “gender identity.”

“The Biden administration placed an undue burden on OCR by stretching the scope of civil rights law beyond its statutory purview,” Trump Education Department spokeswoman Julie Hartman told Fox News.

“The Trump OCR is cleaning that up daily,” Hartman went on. “By enforcing the law as it is written, the Trump administration’s OCR is using its personnel and resources responsibly and eliminating wasteful and unfounded investigations.”

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According to the state DOE ruling, the teacher showed students two videos about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but didn’t offer a pro-Israel perspective.

By Grace Gilson, JTA

A California school’s ethnic studies curriculum that included discussions of Israel as a “settler colonial state” was found to have discriminated against Jewish students.

The California Department of Education issued the ruling last Friday following an investigation into a September complaint by the Bay Area Jewish Coalition — Education and Advocacy, which is affiliated with the local Jewish federation.

The advocacy group said teachers at Branham High School, in San Jose, had presented “biased” content about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a 12th-grade ethnic literature curriculum.

The investigation found that a lesson discussing whether Israel is a settler colonial state and a teacher’s response to a student presentation on the “Genocide of Palestinians” had been discriminatory to Jewish students.

In the lesson, according to the state DOE ruling, the teacher showed students two videos about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but didn’t offer students a pro-Israel perspective.

After the first video, a Vox explainer called “The Israel-Palestine conflict: a brief, simple history,” the topic of whether Israel is a “settler colonial state” was discussed, according to the report.

“In this lesson, in order for the information to be unbiased, there would have needed to be a video that reflected a pro-Israel perspective,” the ruling said.

“This would have encouraged students to create authentic  answers regarding the questions provided in the lesson.”

In another instance, a student group presented a project with a slide titled “Genocide of Palestinians.”

The investigation found that the teacher in that case did not respond adequately to the presentation to ensure the classroom wasn’t “hostile” to Jewish students.

“By [the teacher] not commenting on the slide regarding Palestinian genocide, it could have been interpreted by the student audience as approval of the presented thesis,” the report said.

The ruling is the latest development in the yearslong fight over ethnic studies in California.

The state requires that high schools teach the subject — an effort to reflect the experiences of minority communities — but a model curriculum draft in 2019 drew widespread outcry from Jewish groups.

Critics said the draft included antisemitic and anti-Israel statements, and that it neglected to include the Jewish experience.

Subsequent drafts also splintered the Jewish community. Some praised the revisions for including material on local Jewish communities, while others criticized them for promoting a “narrow political ideology.”

Since then, Jewish watchdogs have been on alert for schools opting to use the original model curriculum, or a version of it.

One Orange County school district has stopped teaching the curriculum altogether following a lawsuit alleging the district concealed its development of the material.

In a February settlement, the Santa Ana Unified School District was required to stop teaching ethnic studies courses until they undergo revision.

Last week, in response to critiques of California’s curriculum, the American Jewish University announced the launch of a free online course designed to fulfill the ethnic studies requirement.

To correct the discrimination found in the San Jose investigation, English language arts and social studies teachers at the school will be required to do a one-hour training before the next school year, and to discuss instruction on “controversial topics” as part of their anti-bias training.

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President Trump criticized the Department for its failure to combat antisemitism and the overall decline in educational standards and student grades nationwide, despite receiving over $3 trillion in funding.

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Just this week, the office sent letters to 60 colleges and universities warning them that they could face consequences if they did not fulfill their responsibility to protect Jewish students.

By Philissa Cramer, JTA

Acting on decades of Republican ambitions, the Trump administration is dramatically scaling back the federal education department, including its civil rights office— which has gone into high gear addressing antisemitism allegations at colleges and public schools.

Staffing at the Office of Civil Rights, which handles complaints filed under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, is among the casualties of the administration’s mass firings.

According to Chalkbeat, an education news site, half of the 12 regional civil rights offices are being eliminated. The New York Times reports that only “a skeleton crew” remains in major offices in New York City, Boston and San Francisco.

The Office of Civil Rights handles discrimination claims against schools and has been a central source of recourse for Jewish and pro-Israel students who believed their rights were infringed upon by pro-Palestinian campus protests since Oct. 7, 2023.

The office has opened dozens of Israel-related civil rights investigations since then, including several since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, amid vows by both the Biden and Trump administrations to protect Jewish students on campus.

Just this week, the office sent letters to 60 colleges and universities warning them that they could face consequences if they did not fulfill their responsibility to protect Jewish students.

Critics of the civil rights office have charged that its investigations take too long and result in inadequate changes.

As Trump prepared to take over, watchdogs said they expected that the Department of Justice could be a likely new home for campus civil rights issues including Title VI if the education department shrank or closed.

Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, has vowed a hard-line approach against campus pro-Palestinian protesters.

The education department’s announcement of the overhaul said it would “continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview” but did not mention the civil rights office. The department administers federal funding for schools serving students from low-income families and for students with special needs.

(The vast majority of funding for public schools comes from local and state budgets.) It also manages federal student loans for college students.

Republicans have long argued that the department, elevated to the Cabinet level by Congress in 1980, represents an inappropriate assertion of federal power in a matter of local authority.

As culture wars have deepened in the decades since, conservatives have pilloried the department, which does not decide what is taught locally, as advancing progressive ideas in schools.

The New York Times reported that a draft executive order that would fully dismantle the department was circulating in Washington last week. Its only clear instruction to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, the newspaper reported, was to “terminate any remaining diversity, equity and inclusion programs.”

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In the complaint, Jewish students said that Sheehi, the GW psychology professor, targeted them for their religion and Israeli nationality.

By Alana Goodman, The Washington Free Beacon

A federal civil rights investigation uncovered evidence that the George Washington University faculty retaliated against Jewish students based on “shared ancestry-related advocacy” by placing them in a remediation program after the students lodged an anti-Semitism complaint against an anti-Israel professor.

The Department of Education also ordered the school to conduct a review of former GW psychology professor Lara Sheehi’s social media posts—which included calls to “destroy Zionism” and described Israelis as “genocidal fucks”—to determine if the comments created a “hostile environment” for Jewish and Israeli students.

The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights raised the concerns in a confidential settlement letter with GW on Jan. 16, which followed a two-year investigation, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

As part of the settlement, GW agreed to “review and revise” its anti-discrimination policies and train professors against “unlawful discrimination.” The school also agreed to expunge any disciplinary action from the students’ records.

A group of Jewish and Israeli psychology students at GW filed the civil rights complaint in 2023, saying the school failed to protect them after they were “singled out for repeated and persistent harassment” by anti-Israel professors and classmates in the program and later subjected to retaliation when they complained.

In the letter, the civil rights office said it had “concern that the students may have been placed on remediation plans in retaliation for asserting their rights” under the Civil Rights Act’s Title VI anti-discrimination clause.

It added that the decisions to place those students into a remediation program “appear to encompass [the students’] shared ancestry-related advocacy.”

“Evidence provided to OCR indicated that the students made in-class statements during the course that constituted protected activity,” the letter stated.

StandWithUs, the group that brought the complaint on behalf of the students, told the Free Beacon that the settlement letter was a positive step.

“StandWithUs welcomes this result, as well as the requirement that GW must also remove all vestiges of the retaliatory disciplinary process to which Sheehi and fellow Program faculty subjected some of those students when they displayed the courage to speak up about the antisemitism they were experiencing,” said Carly Gammill, the group’s director of legal policy.

In the complaint, Jewish students said that Sheehi, the GW psychology professor, targeted them for their religion and Israeli nationality. When one of the students introduced herself to the class as an Israeli, Sheehi responded, “It’s not your fault you were born in Israel,” according to the complaint.

Sheehi also invited a guest lecturer who reportedly assailed “white Israeli racism” and praised a Palestinian terrorist who stabbed an Israeli child, according to the complaint.

When some Jewish students pushed back on Sheehi’s anti-Israel rhetoric in class, the professor allegedly argued that Zionism was racist and anti-Semitic.

Sheehi reportedly complained about the students to other professors in the psychology program, and “faculty voted to initiate disciplinary proceedings against [the students],” according to the complaint.

Sheehi—who attacked Israel on social media as “racist” and “genocidal”—has since left GW for Hamas-friendly Qatar.

The university hired a law firm to investigate the allegations against her, which found “no evidence substantiating the allegations of discriminatory and retaliatory conduct,” according to a statement from the firm.

But the OCR settlement letter indicates that the case still remains a concern.

The office ordered the school to “evaluate and determine whether a hostile environment based on national origin, including shared ancestry, was created for students on campus as a result of [Sheehi’s] social media activity,” including anything she posted before resigning. GW must submit its findings to OCR by later this spring, according to the settlement.

“Far from exonerating Sheehi or GW, OCR made clear that what happened to these students was wholly unacceptable under Title VI, and it imposes concrete obligations on GW to best ensure that such mistreatment does not recur,” said Gammill.

A GW spokeswoman declined to comment. She directed the Free Beacon to a statement on the school’s website that said the “investigation concluded without any finding that GW was in violation of Title VI nor any other law” and that the settlement was a “voluntary agreement, which is similar to agreements recently adopted by a wide variety of other universities.”

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The announcement comes as the Biden administration’s Department of Education reached last-minute toothless settlements with several universities over anti-Semitism allegations just weeks before Trump’s inauguration.

By Jessica Costescu, The Washington Free Beacon

The Department of Education on Monday opened investigations into “widespread antisemitic harassment” at Columbia University and four other schools in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians.

The probe stems from an executive order President Donald Trump signed last week announcing that the federal government will “combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.”

Along with Columbia, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating the University of California, Berkeley, and Northwestern University under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The law protects students from discrimination and harassment based on national origin, including shared ancestry.

“Too many universities have tolerated widespread antisemitic harassment and the illegal encampments that paralyzed campus life last year, driving Jewish life and religious expression underground. The Biden Administration’s toothless resolution agreements did shamefully little to hold those institutions accountable,” acting assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor said in a statement.

“Today, the Department is putting universities, colleges, and K-12 schools on notice: this administration will not tolerate continued institutional indifference to the wellbeing of Jewish students on American campuses, nor will it stand by idly if universities fail to combat Jew hatred and the unlawful harassment and violence it animates.”

Also under investigation are Portland State University and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

“These investigations build upon the foundational work of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce under then-Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, which found that university administrations ‘overwhelmingly failed’ to protect or support their Jewish students, even making ‘astounding concessions’ to illegal, anti-American encampments,” the press release announcing the probes states.

The announcement comes as the Biden administration’s Department of Education reached last-minute toothless settlements with several universities over anti-Semitism allegations just weeks before Trump’s inauguration.

Biden settled with five University of California campuses, including the University of California, Los Angeles, along with Rutgers and Johns Hopkins universities. Biden’s settlements allowed the universities to escape punishment for civil rights violations and to forgo any admission of wrongdoing.

Columbia continues to deal with rampant campus anti-Semitism. Just last month, for example, anti-Israel student activists unleashed mayhem at the Ivy League school to kick off the spring semester.

In one instance, four keffiyeh-clad student activists stormed an Israeli history class and targeted Jewish students with anti-Semitic flyers that glorified Hamas, showed a trampled Star of David, and advocated violence.

In another instance, Columbia’s leading anti-Israel student group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, dumped cement into a building sewage system and vandalized another building with red paint.

“We are reviewing the communication from the Department of Education,” a statement from the university read. “Columbia strongly condemns antisemitism and all forms of discrimination, and we are resolute that calling for, promoting, or glorifying violence or terror has no place at our University.”

“Since assuming her role in August, Interim President Armstrong and her leadership team have taken decisive actions to address issues of antisemitism, including by strengthening and clarifying our disciplinary processes,” the statement continued.

“We look forward to ongoing work with the new federal administration to combat antisemitism and ensure the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff.”

Berkeley and Northwestern saw similar rises in anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incidents in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.

Last year at Berkeley, a violent protest erupted on campus over a scheduled speech by an Israeli lawyer, Ran Bar-Yoshafat.

During the event, which was canceled due to the violence, mobs of anti-Israel students “choked a female student attendee, spit in another’s face, and shouted, ‘Jew, Jew, Jew.’”

Meanwhile, during the anti-Israel protests at Northwestern last year, demonstrators defaced the Star of David and chanted that Jews should “go back to Germany,” among other anti-Semitic incidents.

The investigations are Trump’s latest move to combat campus anti-Semitism. Earlier on Monday, the Department of Justice announced a multi-agency task force intended to “root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses.”

Last week, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to look into deporting anti-Semitic resident aliens, including student visa holders, who broke U.S. law.

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A campus protester held a sign that read, ‘Go Hamas, from the river to the sea, finish the job’ and featured a swastika, according to the Department of Education’s investigation.

By Lexi Boccuzzi, The Washington Free Beacon

President Joe Biden’s Department of Education reached an agreement with Johns Hopkins University to settle civil rights complaints that alleged widespread campus antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack.

The agreement will see Hopkins, which did not admit wrongdoing, implement underwhelming reforms like general anti-discrimination training.

Hopkins agreed to “provide annual training to all employees and staff responsible for investigating complaints and other reports of discrimination” as well as general training “addressing discrimination based on race, color, and national origin” to all staff and students.

The university will also conduct a survey “to evaluate the climate with respect to shared ancestry and the extent to which students and/or staff are subjected to, or witness discrimination.”

Hopkins will then report the survey results to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

Antisemitism at Hopkins especially reared its head in May when an Israeli Ph.D. student said she was “hit by a girl holding a Palestinian flag, right at the campus entrance.”

The girl “shouted at me to go back to Europe and hurled insults at me and Israelis,” the Israeli student said in a recent interview about Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.

In another example, a campus protester held a sign that read, “Go Hamas, from the river to the sea, finish the job” and featured a swastika, according to the Department of Education’s investigation.

On the anonymous campus social media platform Sidechat, one user described a Jewish student as a “witch,” and another user described Jews as “people with more pointy noses.”

The Hopkins investigation, launched in February, found that the university did not adequately respond to those and other antisemitic incidents.

The Hopkins settlement closely resembles other antisemitism settlements the department reached in the last month with both Rutgers University and the University of California system.

Both schools refused to admit wrongdoing and agreed to provide training to employees engaged in discrimination oversight.

Hopkins released a statement in April acknowledging that its “Office of Institutional Equity (OIE) has seen an increase in reports of antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of religious hate in our community since last October, including incidents of hateful graffiti and comments on social media.”

“All incidents reported to the Office of Institutional Equity or Johns Hopkins Public Safety are taken with the utmost seriousness and investigated,” the university said. “The appropriate action is taken upon the conclusion of these investigations.”

While the Biden Department of Education has opened scores of antisemitism investigations targeting other schools, many remain unresolved. In other cases, like the one at Hopkins, settlements have brought insignificant changes.

Hopkins did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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