Deborah Lipstadt, President Biden’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, said in a new interview that she’s pleased to see the Trump administration address antisemitism and said she supports some of the measures taken to hold universities and students accountable.
“I’m pleased that they’re addressing it, because that’s what I did for the past three years, which was to really push the Biden Administration to seriously address it. So I am very, very pleased that it’s on their agenda,” the renowned Holocaust historian said in an interview published Tuesday in The New Yorker.
Lipstadt praised the Trump administration for “calling universities to account,” pointing to President Trump’s initial demands of Columbia, including ending encampments and masks.
“Those were things that Columbia students have been asking for for a very long time,” she said. “So I was pleased by that because they were asking the university to live up to its own standards.”
“I’ve been told by people who are close to university presidents and administrators that many of them felt those were legitimate demands that should have been seen to earlier. So I didn’t have any gripe with those,” she added.
Lipstadt, in the interview, indicated she supports some of Trump’s efforts to revoke student visas, but she wouldn’t elaborate on which individual cases she supports.
She was asked to elaborate on previous comments she made that some of the people targeted by the Trump administration for deportation are not “heroes and martyrs.”
“I mean some of the people, and I’m not going to get into any specific cases, but some of the people who have been detained or cited are people who have obstructed entrances to universities, have taken over buildings, have broken the regulations of the university. I’m not talking about speech. I’m talking about action,” she said.
She stressed the importance of distinguishing between targeting individuals for action as opposed to speech.
“Freedom of speech is freedom of speech,” she said. “And I’m a stalwart supporter of freedom of speech. In other countries where they’ve outlawed Holocaust denial, I’ve spoken out against that. Freedom of speech is freedom of speech. Incitement is something else. I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not going to get into what that is.”
Lipstadt said the Trump administration must follow the law but said universities also have rules that should also be enforced.
“Here’s the other thing: universities have regulations, universities have rules. You can’t cheat, you can’t plagiarize, you can’t build encampments in certain places, you have to be able to identify yourself. People on campus have to be willing to identify themselves to the proper authority and can’t go around with a mask unless it’s, you know, for medical purposes,” she said.
