These 9 New England universities among those warned by Trump administration over antisemitism on campus

In the letter sent to the 60 universities, the administration said it was acting under the 1964 landmark Civil Rights Act to protect the rights of Jewish students.
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'The Department is deeply disappointed that Jewish students studying on elite U.S. campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year. University leaders must do better,' Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement.
The nationwide investigation comes
Last month, the administration began civil rights investigation at Columbia, Northwestern University, Portland State University, University of California, Berkeley, and University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
Among the other universities on the DOE list are Northwestern University, Ohio State, Princeton University, University of Virginia, Tulane University, and Stanford University.
Information from Globe reporting was used in this account.
John R. Ellement can be reached at

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Chicago Tribune

4 hours ago

• Chicago Tribune

Alexander Polikoff, public-interest lawyer behind landmark CHA segregation case, dies

Public-interest lawyer Alexander Polikoff spent decades fighting powerful interests, most notably in a case he filed on behalf of Black public housing residents against the city of Chicago that spanned most of his career. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 agreed with Polikoff and his clients' contention that the city had discriminated against Black public housing residents and had selected housing for them based on race. Polikoff spent the next 43 years holding the city accountable until federal oversight over Chicago public housing was lifted in 2019. 'Alex was not motivated by money, fame or life's comforts,' said Hoy McConnell, who succeeded Polikoff as the executive director of Business People and Professionals for the Public Interest, the small public-interest law firm that Polikoff joined in 1970. 'Rather, he dedicated his life to making change to improve the lives of those burdened by poverty and discrimination.' Polikoff, 98, died of natural causes May 27 at his home in Keene, New Hampshire, said his son, author Daniel Joseph Polikoff. A longtime Highland Park resident, Polikoff moved to New Hampshire in 2022 to be near his daughter. Born and raised in Chicago, Polikoff was the son of attorney Julius Polikoff. After graduating from Senn High School in 1944, he briefly attended Purdue University before joining the Navy. After his discharge, he earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in English from the University of Chicago. He then received his law degree from the Hyde Park school in 1953, and worked for the next 17 years at the firm that became Schiff Hardin. Polikoff performed extensive pro bono legal work, representing clients alongside the American Civil Liberties Union. 'I don't remember a time when my dad wasn't doing some pro bono work with the ACLU, taking on various causes,' Polikoff's son said. 'That pro bono work was very compelling to him — it was part of his character.' In 1965, he filed a lawsuit in Lake County on behalf of four pupils to force Waukegan's elementary school board to reorganize school boundaries in order to meet integration standards. The Illinois Supreme Court in 1968 ruled favorably on Polikoff's contention that race could be taken into account to redraw school district boundary lines to achieve integration. The longest battle of Polikoff's career started in 1966, when he represented a group of Black Chicago Housing Authority residents in a federal class-action lawsuit. The case is known by the name of one of those residents, tenant activist Dorothy Gautreaux. Polikoff alleged that the CHA had practiced racial segregation by building most of its public housing complexes in Black neighborhoods and had deliberately placed Black residents in those complexes. In 1969, Judge Richard Austin concluded that the CHA had discriminated against Blacks in violation of the U.S. Constitution's equal-protection clause and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which barred racial discrimination in any program receiving federal aid. Austin also ruled that three public housing units must be built in white areas for every similar unit built in a Black neighborhood. White aldermen refused to approve sites for new construction. The CHA also dragged its feet by simply stopping building instead of following Austin's directives. In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling on an appeal from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, unanimously concluded that the CHA had practiced segregation. Justices found that the CHA's problems were regional in nature, and that solutions could occur both in the city and the suburbs. Austin then expanded his order to include the entire metro area as an option for scattered-site housing. However, suburbs resisted new construction of lower-income scattered-site housing. A 1981 consent decree in the case placed CHA tenants in existing area housing and gave them federal Section 8 rent subsidies. 'The whole idea was to take the thinking beyond the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that ended school segregation and transfer it to the area of housing,' Polikoff told the Tribune in 1994. '(The) CHA's policy since the early 1950s worked to make each of its 168 high-rise buildings virtually 100% Black. It was illegal, immoral and socially disastrous to pile poor people on top of poor people.' The CHA eventually altered its operations and demolished numerous high-rises such as Cabrini-Green, the Henry Horner Homes and the Robert Taylor Homes in favor of scattered-site housing. The federal government ended its oversight of the CHA in 2019. At 92 years old, Polikoff was still involved in the case. 'It is well-known that the work Alex led changed public housing practices both in Chicago and nationally, and positively impacted tens of thousands of public housing residents,' said attorney Julie Brown, who worked for decades with Polikoff on the Gautreaux case. 'He was brilliant, of course, but always questioning. He had an uncanny ability to put aside extraneous issues and get to the heart of any matter he addressed. He had an innate sense that justice should prevail and insisted on doing everything he could to try to make it so.' Alex Kotlowitz, whose award-winning 1992 book, 'There Are No Children Here,' covered hardscrabble life in the Henry Horner Homes, praised Polikoff for challenging the CHA, 'which had become a kind of warehousing for the city's poor. He challenged the nation's conscience.' 'Alex was one of the first to recognize the profound effects of concentrated poverty,' Kotlowitz said. 'The Gautreaux litigation changed more than just housing policy. It forced us to reconsider how we treat the marginalized. It prodded us to consider our collective responsibilities to those who are struggling economically.' 'Gautreaux laid the foundation for the present-day national conversation about mixed-income housing, a reconsideration of how we think about community,' Kotlowitz said. Polikoff left private law practice in 1970 to join the staff of the public-interest law firm Businessmen for the Public Interest, later named Business People and Professionals for the Public Interest and now known as Impact for Equity. He became the executive director of the group, which provided a full-time platform for continued social justice advocacy, and held that post until 1999. He continued to work as the group's housing director until fully retiring in 2022. Under Polikoff, the group succesffully fought City Hall's proposal in the early 1970s to build a new airport on landfill in Lake Michigan. It also successfully fought plans for a nuclear power plant near Chesterton, Indiana, on the border of the 12,500-acre Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, winning a key court fight in 1974 when a three-judge panel of federal judges halted construction. The utility Northern Indiana Public Service Co. formally abandoned plans for a nuclear plant on the site in 1981. And pressure from Polikoff and his colleagues at BPI and from the Citizens Utility Board spurred utility Commonwealth Edison Co. to announce the settlement of 10 years of rate-case litigation in October 1993 with a record $1.34 billion refund to rate-payers. Polikoff's 'vision and passion inspired many of us,' recalled Environmental Law & Policy Center CEO Howard Learner, BPI's former general counsel and the lead consumer lawyer in ComEd settlement negotiations. 'Alex was always proud that part of his legacy in leading BPI was the multiplier impact from the number of talented public interest attorneys and vital new organizations that were developed at and grew from BPI to make a difference for the public good.' Bob Vollen, who worked alongside Polikoff at BPI from 1972 until 1982, said Polikoff had a 'way of posing a question that it allowed no possible answer other than the one he was seeking.' Polikoff authored five books, including 'Waiting for Gautreaux: A Story of Segregation, Housing and the Black Ghetto,' which was published in 2006. His most recent book, 'Cry My Beloved America,' an examination of anger and frustration in America, was published in 2024. Polikoff's wife of 71 years, author Barbara Garland Polikoff, died in 2022. A daughter, Joan, died in 2016. In addition to his son, Polikoff is survived by another daughter, Eve Kodiak; and five grandchildren. Services will be private.

Politico

4 hours ago

• Politico

Trump hints at detente with Harvard: ‘very possible that a Deal will be announced'

The feud between Harvard University and President Donald Trump could be coming to a close, after months of bitter legal battles between the Ivy League school and the White House. The president on Friday signaled a 'historic' deal between his administration and Harvard may now be on the table. 'Many people have been asking what is going on with Harvard University and their largescale improprieties that we have been addressing, looking for a solution,' Trump said in a post on Truth Social, the social media site he owns. 'We have been working closely with Harvard, and it is very possible that a Deal will be announced over the next week or so.' Since Trump took office in January, his administration has been in a multi-front war with Harvard. It has accused Harvard of perpetuating antisemitism; terminated $2 billion in grants; and tried to ban the school from granting admission to foreign students. Trump on Friday said that the school has 'acted extremely appropriately' during negotiations, and that it appears to be 'committed to doing what is right.' 'If a Settlement is made on the basis that is currently being discussed, it will be 'mindbogglingly' HISTORIC, and very good for our Country,' the president concluded. A spokesperson for Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Harvard has not been the only school to draw the president's ire. Columbia University was the first school to come under the administration's scrutiny. In March, the administration cancelled $400 million in grants to the New York school. At the time, the administration said the school had failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitic protests on campus. Shortly after the funding was pulled, Columbia agreed to a series of changes the administration set forward, including changes to the school's on-campus protest policies, security and the Middle Eastern studies program. Trump's suggestion that a deal with Harvard might be imminent came just after a federal judge in Boston issued a preliminary injunction extending her earlier block on one of the Trump administration's highest profile moves against the school. U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs said on Friday that the Department of Homeland Security cannot move forward with an attempt to stop visas for Harvard's international students based on Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's May 22 letter purporting to immediately kick the school out of the 'Student Exchange Visitor Program.' Burroughs, an Obama appointee, has also issued a temporary restraining order preventing officials from implementing a proclamation Trump issued earlier this month attempting to use his immigration powers to block international students and 'foreign exchange' visitors destined for Harvard. The order blocking Trump's directive is set to expire Monday, but the judge is considering a longer-term injunction against the president's action.

Axios

4 hours ago

• Axios

"Zero tolerance": SF leaders denounce recent acts of antisemitism

Local officials and community leaders gathered Friday at City Hall to condemn a recent string of antisemitic incidents and to assure San Franciscans that perpetrators will be punished. Why it matters: The public stand comes after Jewish-owned cafe Manny's was vandalized and a man accused of a violent attack in the Marina was charged with a hate crime. What they're saying: "As a member of the Jewish community, these incidents hit close to home," Mayor Daniel Lurie said. "I want to be clear that we have zero tolerance for acts of hatred. ... If you commit a hate crime in San Francisco, we will find you and we will arrest you." There has been "a dramatic rise in antisemitism locally and nationally, on both polar extremes left and right of our politics," Tye Gregory, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said at the press conference. "This isn't about what's going on outside of the United States in the Middle East or anywhere else," district attorney Brooke Jenkins said. "This is about what we believe and who we are." State of play: Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, the Bay Area Jewish Community Federation has recorded over 40 threats — including bomb threats to local synagogues, schools and community centers — and more than 220 incidents of harassment and intimidation, senior vice president Rebecca Randall said Friday. Manny's was hit with graffiti saying "F**k Manny" and "The only good settler is a dead 1" following a night of anti-ICE protests earlier in June. Meanwhile, the attack in the Marina occurred after a Jewish woman asked a group of people to stop shouting "F**k Jews, free Palestine," she told the San Francisco Chronicle. Juan Diaz-Rivas punched the woman's friend, repeating antisemitic remarks and causing him to lose consciousness, prosecutors allege. Diaz-Rivas has pleaded not guilty. The big picture: Jewish leaders across the nation have warned that President Trump's invocation of antisemitism to justify policies like slashing college funds and deporting student protesters risks making Jewish people scapegoats.