Department of Justice to investigate antisemitism on Chicago area college campuses
The U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday that it would investigate Chicago as part of a mission to combat antisemitism.
This comes after the department began visiting ten university campuses that reported antisemitic incidents since October 2023. Columbia University in New York being one of them, where a second person who participated in pro-Palestinian protests had been arrested by immigration officials.
In the Chicago area, Northwestern University, DePaul University, and the University of Chicago saw similar protests last year. Now, there's growing concern that those protests will be part of this mission.
Some students are worried about what has happened to protesters at Columbia University.
An organizer who brought CBS News Chicago back to the encampment at DePaul last year says their movement was not violent, nor should it be the subject of an investigation, but that it was students exercising their First Amendment right to speech and assembly.
"The students had one demand. Which was divestment."
Husam Marajda is now a former student who helped to organize the pro-Palestinian encampment at DePaul University.
"Students had to escalate to encampments and occupations of buildings because, for a long time, they were ignored by universities," he said.
Marajda said the recent investigation by the Federal Antisemitic Task Force could threaten their movement and First Amendment liberties.
"Our movement is being criminalized as antisemitic. This is a growing movement that is fighting for liberation of Palestine. They want the end of the occupation, the end of Zionism, and you know it's being criminalized and demonized as antisemitic," Marajda said.
The Department of Justice says it plans to meet with city leaders in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and Chicago, as well as impacted students, community leaders, and local law enforcement, to determine whether federal intervention is warranted.
"There's a lot of powerful forces that are going after the mayor specifically for his support for the ceasefire resolution and that hasn't stopped since then," Marajda said.
"Universities need to be held to account. If they need to have rules, they need to enforce those rules. Freedom of speech doesn't include bullying and intimidation," Daniel Goldwin said.
Goldwin is the Jewish United Fund's chief public affairs officer. He says the fund has been tracking the rise in anti-Semitic incidents.
"Jewish students, Jewish families have to plan out their days. Think about security. Do they wear a Jewish symbol when they walk out of the house? Do they cover their head when they walk out of the house because they're afraid of being Jewish publically or afraid of being Jewish in their place of education?"
He continues, "If the federal government is going to take this seriously, and they're going to help schools and institutions take it seriously, things get better."
Chicago police data totals the highest number of anti-semitic crimes was at a five-year high last year. Their data, however, doesn't detail where those crimes happened.
"Here in Chicago we participated in DePaul encampments. Northwestern encampments, we didn't. There wasn't anything violent," Marajda said.
The Department of Justice did not respond to questions about how it would evaluate cities or how it would "intervene" if necessary.
