Executive Order 14188 and Antisemitism: What’s Next for Colleges and Universities?

Executive Summary

On January 29, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14188 (EO 14188 or the EO), “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism.” EO 14188 declares: “It shall be the policy of the United States to 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.”

Although EO 14188 reaffirms an executive order President Trump issued during his first term on this same topic (Executive Order 13899), the new EO goes further in two respects. First, EO 14188 cites the October 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks in Israel as “unleash[ing] an unprecedented wave of vile anti-Semitic discrimination, vandalism, and violence against our citizens, especially in our schools and on our campuses.” Second, the EO and its accompanying Fact Sheet, dated January 30, 2025 (the Fact Sheet), outline measures that executive departments, federal agencies, and institutions of higher education must take to combat antisemitism, with particular attention to monitoring and reporting “aliens” who support, or persuade others to support, terrorist activity or terrorist organizations.

On the heels of the EO, a number of federal agencies have taken a variety of serious steps to implement it by focusing on the conduct of various colleges and universities, as well as individual students and faculty affiliated with those institutions. This Advisory summarizes those developments and highlights the key takeaways from EO 14188.

Developments Since January 29, 2025

The Trump administration’s initial steps to implement EO 14188 have involved several departments:

• The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) has opened investigations into five universities “where widespread antisemitic harassment has been reported” and has sent letters to an additional 55 universities that are under investigation for antisemitic harassment and discrimination “in response to complaints filed with OCR.”
• The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has established a multi-agency Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, which announced, on February 28, 2025, that it will be “visiting 10 university campuses that have experienced antisemitic incidents since October 2023” to determine “whether remedial action is warranted.”
• Although both DOE’s and DOJ’s announcements included Columbia University among their targets, the Trump administration did not wait for those investigations to proceed before taking action against that institution:

• On March 7, 2025, the Task Force announced “the immediate cancelation of approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”
• The administration then sent a letter requiring the university to comply with a number of enforcement, disciplinary, and remedial measures by March 20, 2025 to “return Columbia to its original mission of innovative research and academic excellence.”
• On March 14, 2025, the Trump administration terminated an additional $30 million in grants to the university.

Columbia quickly took steps to comply with many of the government’s demands:

• On March 13, 2025, “the Columbia University Judicial Board determined findings and issued sanctions to students ranging from multi-year suspensions, temporary degree revocations, and expulsions related to the occupation of Hamilton Hall last spring.”
• And on March 21, 2025, Columbia committed to, among other things: (1) prohibit individuals from wearing “face masks or face coverings” “for the purpose of concealing one’s identity in the commission of violations of University policies or state, municipal, or federal laws”; (2) “appoint[] a new Senior Vice Provost” to conduct a thorough review of the university’s “portfolio of programs in regional areas” (“starting immediately with the Middle East”) and “steward the creation of new programs to address the full range of fields”; (3) “review [the university’s] admissions practices … and make recommendations to the President and Provost about how to improve them and ensure unbiased admission processes,” especially in light of “a recent downturn in both Jewish and African American enrollment”; and (4) adopt the “definition of antisemitism recommended by Columbia’s Antisemitism Taskforce in August 2024.” Each of those commitments, as well as others undertaken by the university, will warrant serious review by other institutions.

• Columbia was not the only institution on which the administration immediately focused. On March 17, 2025, DOJ filed a Statement of Interest in support of the plaintiffs in Frankel et al. v. Regents of the University of California et al., Case No. 2:24-cv-04702-MCS (C.D. Cal. 2024). In that litigation, three Jewish students and a Jewish professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) asserted several causes of action against the university, alleging they were excluded from portions of UCLA’s campus during a pro-Palestinian encampment “because they refused to denounce their faith” and support for the Jewish state of Israel. DOJ’s position is that UCLA has been supporting antisemitism on campus.

The Trump administration’s actions have not been limited to institutions themselves:

• On March 9, 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in coordination with the U.S. Department of State, arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and green-card holder, for “[leading] activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”
• Additional non-citizen Columbia University students, a Brown University professor, and a Georgetown University graduate student have also been arrested, detained, or deported for their alleged ties to Hamas or support for terrorism.

Finally, the administration is using other executive orders to reinforce its message about combatting antisemitism:

• On March 14, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order that threatened to take a variety of measures against Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. In exchange for the withdrawal of the executive order, the law firm agreed to, among other things, provide $40 million of pro bono legal services to support the Trump administration’s initiatives, such as assisting the president’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. The agreement does not specify, however, what role the law firm will play in those efforts.

Summary of Key EO 14188 Provisions

1. Removing “perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence”: EO 14188 makes clear the Trump administration’s intent to use U.S. immigration laws to bar and remove non-citizens — including student protestors and others — who endorse Hamas or the acts of terrorism on October 7, 2023. The Fact Sheet explains the president’s goal quite explicitly: “The Order demands the removal of resident aliens who violate our laws.” It also warns those “resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests”: “we will find you, and we will deport you. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

Of particular significance to colleges and universities, EO 14188 aims to achieve that goal by directing the relevant agencies to recommend ways to “familiariz[e] institutions of higher education with the grounds for inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C 1182(a)(3).” Among other things, this statute provides that any “alien” who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization” is “ineligible” to receive a visa and cannot be admitted to the United States. Similarly, the EO makes clear that such “aliens,” if already in the United States, must be deported.

EO 14188 stands in stark contrast to the immigration policies of the Biden administration, which limited ICE’s authority to conduct arrests, interviews, searches, and surveillance at or near “sensitive locations,” including schools. In that way, EO 14188 goes beyond requiring additional measures to combat antisemitism: it also reinforces the Trump administration’s immigration policy that schools, among other “sensitive locations,” are no longer afforded “semi-sanctuary” status.

2. Reporting, Monitoring at Institutions of Higher Education: Of potentially even more significance to colleges and universities, EO 14188 also directly enlists the assistance of institutions of higher education by requiring them to “monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant” to the grounds enumerated in 8 U.S.C 1182(a)(3). Those institutions must ensure their “reports about aliens lead, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens,” pursuant also to 8 U.S.C. 1227. The EO does not, however, provide any guidance as to how colleges and universities are to fulfill these new obligations or how the Trump administration will measure their compliance.

3. Other Reporting Requirements of Executive Departments and Federal Agencies: Finally, EO 14188 gives “each executive department or agency” until March 30, 2025 to submit a report “identifying all civil and criminal authorities or actions” within that department’s or agency’s jurisdiction that it may use to “curb or combat anti-Semitism.” Each must also provide “an inventory and analysis of all pending administrative complaints” “against or involving institutions of higher education alleging civil-rights violations related to or arising from post-October 7, 2023, campus anti-Semitism.” In other words, the focus on colleges and universities will only increase.

Looking Ahead

Like President Trump’s other executive orders, EO 14188 does not purport to change any existing laws. But it does directly portend a meaningful uptick in enforcement action by the federal government. It will also likely lead to litigation on First Amendment, due process, and other grounds. For example, Mahmoud Khalil is challenging his detention, and at least one other lawsuit has been filed by Cornell University students (one of whom DOJ has asked to surrender to ICE) seeking a temporary restraining order and/or a preliminary injunction to prevent enforcement of EO 14188 and another recent executive order.

Institutions of higher education across the country are also now on notice that the Trump administration will likely use all the tools at its disposal to dig deeper into how those institutions responded to the wave of campus unrest that followed the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks. It also appears that the Trump administration intends to rely on academic institutions to police whether non-citizens on those institutions’ campuses are engaging in conduct that warrants or justifies their deportation. It is imperative that universities conduct thorough reviews of their internal policies, practices, and procedures to ensure that they appropriately address antisemitism on campus. In addition to the administration’s recent actions, we expect continued congressional scrutiny relating to campus antisemitism matters, which will include congressional oversight hearings, potential further investigations, and legislative activity. 

Arnold & Porter will be closely monitoring those developments, as well as the Trump administration’s additional pronouncements, guidance, enforcement action, and congressional developments. Our firm has extensive experience filing complaints with OCR on behalf of Jewish students, representing Jewish plaintiffs in federal Title VI lawsuits, and advising many institutions of higher education regarding their government relations strategies, and internal policies and procedures that address antisemitism on their campuses. If you have any questions or would like more information, please reach out to one of the authors of this Advisory or your existing Arnold & Porter contacts.

© Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP 2025 All Rights Reserved. This Advisory is intended to be a general summary of the law and does not constitute legal advice. You should consult with counsel to determine applicable legal requirements in a specific fact situation.