Former President Barack Obama addressed a crowd of college students at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, on Thursday, calling on them to resist President Trump’s efforts to battle campus antisemitism.
The White House has been withholding federal funding as leverage to convince university administrations to battle the wave of antisemitism that has been part of the “Pro-Palestine” protests held since the massacre of Israelis by Palestinian Hamas on Oct. 7th, 2022. Currently, Columbia University has $400 million in federal funding paused over alleged inaction on antisemitism.
Several students in the United States on green cards have also been arrested due to the Trump administration’s accusations that they have supported terrorists and participated in pro-Hamas activity.
Obama told the crowd that universities aren’t doing enough to fight Trump’s agenda, and he is “deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities if they don’t give up students who are exercising their right to free speech.”
“If you are a university, you may have to say … ‘Are we in fact doing things right? Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?’ If not, and you’re just being intimidated, you should be able to say, ‘Well, that’s why we’ve got this big endowment. You know, we’ll stand up for what we believe in, and we’ll pay our researchers for a while out of that endowment, and we’ll give up the extra wing or the fancy gymnasium.'”
Obama described Trump’s anti-Jew hatred measures as violating the First Amendment’s right to Free Speech.
He was also critical of measures being taken against law firms that had been weaponized by the Biden administration against political opponents and conservatives.
“I am more troubled by the idea that a White House can say to law firms, ‘If you represent parties that we don’t like, we’re going to pull all our business or bar you from representing people effectively’,” Obama said. “That kind of behavior is contrary to the basic compact we have as Americans.”
Obama warned that the measure combating antisemitism would have economic repercussions.
“This has to do with something more precious, which is who are we as a country and what values do we stand for … I think people tend to think, ‘oh, democracy, rule of law, independent judiciary, freedom of the press,'” he said. “That’s all abstract stuff because it’s not affecting the price of eggs. Well, you know what? It’s about to affect the price of eggs.”
