A 1968 law prohibits violence against those partaking of federally financed projects.
The Trump administration has justifiably condemned and penalized leading national universities such as Harvard and Columbia for failing to protect Jewish students’ civil rights. The time has come for the Justice Department to initiate federal criminal prosecution.
Eighty people—purportedly “students”—were arrested by New York police when, masked in kaffiyehs, they occupied and defaced Columbia’s Butler Library on May 7. The following day anti-Israel rioters attempted to occupy part of Brooklyn College’s campus. Again there were several arrests.
Most of the suspects were charged with misdemeanor trespass. They will almost certainly never be tried on these misdemeanor accusations but will proudly brandish their arrest records as badges of honor. District Attorneys Alvin Bragg of Manhattan and Eric Gonzalez of Brooklyn can be counted on not to pursue prosecutions.
That’s where the Justice Department comes in. Attorney General Pam Bondi should instruct the U.S. attorneys for the Southern and Eastern districts of New York to activate a federal law that criminalizes violence directed against the “federally protected activities” of Jewish students at Columbia and Brooklyn College. Similar federal criminal cases should be initiated in other courts wherever anti-Israel protesters promote and engage in anti-Israel violence.
Section 245(b)(1)(E) of the U.S. Code, enacted in 1968, defines as a criminal anyone who, “whether or not acting under color of law, by force or threat of force willfully injures, intimidates or interferes with . . . any person because he is or has been . . . participating in or enjoying the benefits of any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
Jewish students at Columbia and Brooklyn College were participating and enjoying federally financed educational programs at their institutions. The vandalism at Columbia’s Butler Library was “force” and “threat of force” that injured and intimidated students and university employees. An offender found guilty under this law may be imprisoned for one year, and 10 years if “bodily injury results” or if “a dangerous weapon” is used or threatened.
Section 245 authorizes a federal criminal prosecution only if the attorney general or another high-ranking Justice Department official certifies in writing that it is “in the public interest and necessary to secure substantial justice.” Now that antisemitic violence has spread well beyond the campus—as evidenced by last week’s murder of two Israeli Embassy employees in Washington—Mr. Trump’s Justice Department should invoke federal law’s most effective deterrence.
Mr. Lewin is a Washington lawyer with a Supreme Court and litigation practice. He served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, 1968-69.
Appeared in the May 28, 2025, print edition as ‘Federal Prosecutions for Antisemitic Rioters’.