After Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023, and the ensuing war in Gaza, a protest movement roiled college campuses across the country. The movement was primarily focussed on the enormous death toll in Gaza, and the United States’s support for Israel, although some of the demonstrations included incidents of antisemitism. Last month, the Trump Administration threatened sixty colleges and universities with “enforcement actions” if they fail to protect Jewish students. It has also revoked the visas of international students involved in the protests, and those who spoke out against the war. Some of these students, such as Columbia University’s Mahmoud Khalil, are currently in ICE custody, and a number of them have been accused of being Hamas supporters, often with no evidence.

Deborah Lipstadt, a Jewish History professor at Emory, was until recently the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism under former President Joe Biden. Lipstadt became famous—and was later portrayed onscreen by Rachel Weisz—for winning a judgment in a British court against the Holocaust denier David Irving, who had sued her for libel. Lately, Lipstadt offered surprising support for some of the Trump Administration’s actions, telling the Forward, “I’m not opposed to the administration rescinding the student visas of some of the people that they’re rescinding the student visas of.” She added, “To depict some of these people as martyrs and heroes is ludicrous.”

I recently spoke by phone with Lipstadt. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed whether the Trump Administration really cares about antisemitism, why she wanted to keep some of her comments off the record, and the problem with “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

Are you pleased that the Trump Administration is talking so much about antisemitism?

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.

And what do you see that agenda as being?

Well, I guess I’ve gone through a transition. Let me step back for a minute and say that from my first day in office, one of the things that I called for was for institutions—such as governments, universities, and the media—to take antisemitism seriously. I talk about antisemitism as a multi-tiered threat. One is the threat to Jews and Jewish institutions. But it’s also a threat to democracy. And I know that’s a very easy thing to throw around. People will say food insecurity is a threat to democracy. Which is true. But there’s a very direct link in terms of antisemitism. And that direct link is the fact that antisemitism is a conspiracy theory, in contrast to any other form of discrimination. Its distinctive characteristic is as a conspiracy theory.

What do you think the Trump Administration is doing to fight antisemitism and, in that sense, uphold democracy?

It’s calling universities to account. And, if you look at the first demands it made of Columbia, what’s striking about those things, like an end to encampments and masks—those were things that Columbia students have been asking for for a very long time. 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.

You are a smart person. Do you seriously believe that the Trump Administration cares about antisemitism? I’m a little confused here.

Yeah, I don’t . . . I don’t know. They haven’t spoken to me, they haven’t consulted with me. So all I can judge is by—

But Deborah, your entire career has been judging people for antisemitism, in some cases very effectively. The President hosted white supremacists for dinner. Elon Musk made what appeared to be a Nazi salute. Surely you can look into their souls here.

I have called that out.

O.K., but more broadly can you make some sort of judgment?

Yes, no, there’s been . . . there certainly has been a disturbing tendency, whether it’s whatever Elon Musk was doing with his arm, or when he appeared on video at a campaign event for the far right in Germany. There are a lot of examples. They’re disturbing and they’re bothersome.

I agree with you about the connection between antisemitism and democracy, but it also seems to me that picking up students off the street who write op-eds or demonstrate in favor of ending the war in Gaza is problematic for democracy, too.

Absolutely, absolutely. There’s no question about that. Look, we pride ourselves on being a country that abides by the rule of law, the democratic rule of law. When I say take antisemitism seriously, I mean we have a legal system that can address it. A judge made a ruling in August of 2024, after students filed suit because they had been blocked access to certain pathways at U.C.L.A. because they were “Zionist-free zones.” [The judge, Mark Scarsi, found that it was “abhorrent” that certain parts of campus had been physically blocked off from students who refused to denounce Israel and Zionism and ordered U.C.L.A. to insure equal access. The lawsuit is still ongoing.]

But the Jewish students on campus who have no way to bring their grievances, or, when they bring a grievance find that the university doesn’t take it seriously—which has been the case at a number of our most élite universities—they give up on the university. One of the calculations when applying for college now is: Will I feel safe there as a Jew?

There were some really terrible instances of antisemitism after the war in Gaza began, but now we are actually in a political environment where an American President is using antisemitism as an excuse to literally pick people up off the street for writing op-eds.

Freedom of speech is freedom of speech. 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.

The reason I ask all this is because in the Forward interview you said, “I don’t oppose many of the things that are being done. I just wish they would be done more deftly.”

Yeah, “deftly” was the wrong word. That sounds almost conspiratorial. They should be done according to law. 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.

Do you understand why, in the current climate, people who are advocating for an end to the war in Gaza may not want to identify themselves to the proper authorities?

Well, this current, you know, this current atmosphere is pretty difficult. But this has been going on for a long time.

I was just trying to get at the actual dynamics of who has power here.

This refusal to identify yourself—are we negotiating with students or are we negotiating with people off the street?

When you said that the people being picked up are not “heroes and martyrs,” what did you mean by that?

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.