In 1980, Lauren Sugerman was enrolled in a vocational program aimed at getting more women and Black Americans into the steel mills.

Then, an industrial giant came calling.

It had won a federal contract to maintain and repair elevators for the Chicago Housing Authority. Under an executive order signed 15 years earlier by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the company was obligated to at least try to recruit women and people of color.

Still, the hiring supervisor tried to talk Sugerman out of the job.

“I always called it a dis-interview,” she says. “It was basically, ‘You don’t want this job. This job is too dirty for you. This job is too dangerous for a girl. You really won’t like it.'”

She took the job anyway.

Sugerman credits that interview, and her subsequent career advocating for women in the trades, to that 1965 executive order. Known as EO 11246, it required federal contractors to identify and address barriers to employment, especially for women and people of color.

Now, six decades after its establishment, Sugerman is mourning its end.

“A huge loss to have what’s happening now”

President Trump revoked EO 11246 on his second day in office as part of his own executive order cracking down on what he sees as widespread and illegal use of “dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences” under the guise of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.

“Illegal DEI and DEIA policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system,” Trump’s Executive Order 14173 states.

Trump also directed the government office that enforces the 1965 executive order to “immediately cease.”

The Labor Department is now expected to largely dismantle that office, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), since its primary task is gone.

Lauren Sugerman is shown in 1983 working on an elevator at Sears Tower in Chicago, then the tallest building in the world.

Michelle Citron

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Michelle Citron

Sugerman, who later tended to elevators and escalators at Sears Tower, then the tallest building in the world, wonders if the small forays that women have made in the construction trades since the 1980s will simply vanish.

“It is a huge loss to have what’s happening now,” she says.

The Labor Department did not respond to NPR’s request for comment on the impact the dismantling of EO 11246 may have on women and people of color.

Federal contractors employ 20% of the U.S. workforce

Trump’s plan to dramatically shrink the federal government targets myriad efforts focused on civil rights.

The end of EO 11246 cuts especially deep, given companies that do business with the government employ one out of every five workers in the U.S, says Jenny Yang, who headed OFCCP during the Biden administration.

By 1965, it was already illegal for employers to discriminate against workers and job applicants because of certain characteristics, including their gender and race. But the Johnson executive order obligated federal contractors across industries as varied as defense, academia and construction to take proactive steps to ensure compliance with the law, not just on government projects but at every office and job site.

“Not all companies are willing to look under the hood voluntarily to see whether they have a problem,” says Yang.

For federal contractors, looking under the hood meant analyzing their hiring and pay practices annually to try to figure out, for example, if women had better performance evaluations but were being paid less than men. They had to create plans for how to recruit and retain a diverse workforce that reflects the pool of available workers around them.

Matt Camardella, an attorney with Jackson Lewis who helps companies comply with employment law, says his clients took those responsibilities seriously.

“There was real risk in not doing this properly, or at all for that matter,” he says.

Investigations led to back pay

Every year, OFCCP audits hundreds of companies to see whether they are complying with EO 11246. Some of those audits lead to investigations, and some of those investigations lead to conciliation agreements.

For example, in 2020, Princeton University agreed to pay over $1 million in back wages and salary adjustments to more than 100 female professors after the government found pay disparities.

The university denied it had discriminated against women, finding fault with the government’s methodology, but agreed to look more closely at its pay practices.

Yang says over the past decade, OFCCP recovered more than $100 million for women in pay equity cases.

Now, though, things have gotten complicated.

Confusion over “illegal DEI”

Not only has Trump revoked Johnson’s executive order and halted its enforcement, but as part of his own executive order, Trump demanded that federal contractors certify that they’re not engaging in “illegal DEI.” He says ending these practices will allow people to compete based on merit.

Camardella says that’s left his clients confused.

“Nobody really understands what ‘illegal DEI’ means,” he says.

Camardella notes that nothing about federal anti-discrimination law has changed since Trump took office. He believes there’s nothing wrong with a company continuing to examine its pay practices, hiring and outreach to ensure it’s complying with the law.

“However, there may be a perception that somehow, that smacks of ‘illegal DEI,’ ” he says.

Paving a path to good-paying jobs

Lauren Sugerman now works for Chicago Women in Trades, which trains women for jobs in the construction industry.

Amber N. Ford for NPR

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Amber N. Ford for NPR

After six years maintaining and repairing elevators around Chicago, Sugerman had had enough. The work was hard, and the conditions even harder. She was often the only woman on a job site. She recalls men grabbing her breasts and making rape jokes and other vulgar comments in packed elevators.

She left her job and went to work for Chicago Women in Trades, a group that had sprung up in the early 1980s to help companies comply with EO 11246. In the decades since, the group has worked to create a pipeline of recruits, training women to become plumbers, carpenters, electricians, pipefitters, sheet metal workers and laborers.

In recent years, Chicago Women in Trades has been preparing for what’s promised to be a construction boom, with Congress’ passage of measures such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which unleashed billions of new dollars for federal infrastructure projects.

“We’ve doubled our programs. We’ve doubled our staff. We’ve really tried to meet this moment,” says Executive Director Jayne Vellinga, who believes there’s no shortage of women who want to work in the trades and who can do the work well, so long as they can get a foot in the door.

At the heart of Chicago Women in Trades’ decades-long push is ensuring women have paths to good-paying middle-class jobs.

Chicago Women in Trades is a nonprofit that trains women for jobs in construction, helping companies fulfill their hiring needs.

Amber N. Ford for NPR

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Amber N. Ford for NPR

In Chicago, union carpenters, who are predominantly men, earn $55 an hour. In contrast, Vellinga says, nursing assistants, who are predominantly women, earn $18 an hour for a job that can be just as physically taxing.

Going from “something” to, perhaps, nothing

Even with EO 11246, progress has been slow.

Women still make up less than 5% of workers in the construction trades, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. That’s despite OFCCP’s goal dating back to the 1980s of having women perform 6.9% of the work on construction sites.

“None of these things were fantastic. I want to be clear about that. There was more of an emphasis on checking boxes,” Vellinga says. “But it was something.”

Now, she fears, some federal contractors won’t bother to consider women at all.

“They are not civil rights organizations. They’re builders,” she says. “For how many people will this fall off the priority list?”

Wendy Pollack helped found Chicago Women in Trades and now is a lawyer with the Shriver Center on Poverty Law. She warns that the end to EO 11246 will lead to a dire situation for women and people of color.

Pollack began her career as a carpenter. Like Sugerman, she encountered resistance on the job. Through it all, she had a mantra.

“You know, I might not change your hearts and minds, but at least I have the law on my side,” she would tell herself.

Now with diminished enforcement of civil rights laws under Trump, she wonders if that will still be true.

Mehmet Oz — the surgeon-turned-TV-star better known as Dr. Oz — faced senators on Capitol Hill last week, asking them to confirm him as the new head of the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

“I commit to doing whatever I can, working tirelessly to ensure that CMS provides Americans with access to superb care, especially Americans who are most vulnerable: our young, our disabled, and our elderly,” Oz told the members of the Senate Finance Committee in his opening statement.

Most previous CMS administrators have come to the job with experience working on health policy in state and federal government. But President Trump’s pick is a relative newcomer. Oz worked as a heart surgeon at Columbia University and hosted a daytime talk show for 13 seasons before making an unsuccessful run for Senate in 2022.

CMS provides health insurance for 160 million Americans who get coverage through Medicare, Medicaid and the Obamacare exchanges, and its $1.5 trillion budget is nearly double that of the Department of Defense.

Last week, Democratic senators questioned Oz about his record of pitching unproven treatments like green coffee beans and raspberry ketones for weight loss.

Oz notably sidestepped questions from senators about Republican plans to cut Medicaid.

Trump has said he will not cut Medicaid, but experts say the budget resolution passed by House Republicans last month will necessitate hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts over the next decade.

Oz has also come under fire for failing to disclose his financial stake in the products he’s promoted, and for financial conflicts of interest with private Medicare Advantage plans, which he would be in charge of regulating as the head of CMS. (Oz said he would sell his health care and pharmaceutical stocks if confirmed.)

Throughout the hearing, however, the doctor used personalized responses and well-researched answers to avoid significant clashes. The meeting proved far less contentious than when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared before the same committee as the nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services just a few weeks earlier.

It’s unclear when the committee will vote on Oz’s nomination, but he is expected, ultimately, to be confirmed by the Republican-majority Senate.

Tom Scully, who led CMS under President George W. Bush, talked with the health policy news organization Tradeoffs about his take on Oz and the impact the head of this powerful health agency can have.

Here are highlights from that conversation, edited for length and clarity:

On why CMS administrators need strong political skills

You have to deal with 535 [members of Congress] that are angry at you every day about their hospital not being paid right or their physicians being underpaid. Everybody’s unhappy all the time, Republican and Democrat. So I think just the political skills of keeping those 535 people happy is difficult in itself. And I was there in a much less partisan era. I helped lots of Democrats with their hospital problems and their physician payment problems. And that made it easier to deal with them when you had other things on Capitol Hill.

On whether Oz’s inexperience in health policy worries him

I think everybody’s different. My job at the time I was there was to try to cook up and pass Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage. I spent all my time on Capitol Hill. That was my job. For Dr. Oz, 150 million people know who he is. That’s an advantage. When he says something, people pay attention.

If [the Trump administration is] going to have a big fight over health care and you’re going to go defend your Medicaid changes or your Medicare [changes] or anything you’re doing, the Democrats are going to run around and say, you’re cutting [health care], you’re cutting, you’re cutting. If I were [the Trump administration], I would use Oz to make all the public policy fights. And I imagine he’ll do an awful lot of that.

On Oz’s lack of policy experience on issues like Medicaid and Obamacare

He knows a lot about health care. He’s a very smart guy. As I told him [when we met before his confirmation hearing], he was months ahead, preparation-wise, where I was in 2001 when I took the job. And I had a lot of experience.

So anything Oz needs to know, he can learn. And I think it’s just a matter of what fights he wants to pick. … Medicaid, for better or worse, is probably the one that draws the most fire. At some point, he’s got to try to explain [the administration’s position to the American people], but I’m sure he can learn the basics in about three days.

On Oz’s position on Medicare Advantage, where he’s been criticized for boosterism and financial conflict of interests

From what I saw of the hearing, I think he’s going to spend a fair amount of time trying to fix Medicare Advantage and make it better. He is a big fan of Medicare Advantage, as am I. But if you’re a big fan of Medicare Advantage, it has to be regulated appropriately.

There are a million little adjustments you can make. And basically the plans, in my opinion, aren’t doing anything illegal. They’re aggressively following the incentives that CMS has created. We’ve given insurers all kinds of ways to identify sick people, and they get paid more for [those sicker patients]. And those things are kind of getting turbocharged and a little bit out of control. So fixing that and [changing] how you measure how sick people are and how much you get paid for [them], that is really the core to what Oz could do to fix this.

On Oz’s ability to influence health policy within the Trump administration

He has a huge advantage in that he has direct access whenever he wants, it seems, to Trump. And he’s very personally friendly to Kennedy, who doesn’t seem to care as much about Medicare and Medicaid. … So I think that’s a huge advantage. I think having a good relationship, which Oz clearly does, with RFK and the president, gives him a lot of running room.

On the advice Scully gave Oz when they met before the confirmation hearing

I said I don’t know what the White House staff are telling you, but go have lunch with [Democratic Sen.] Ron Wyden. Don’t ask anybody. Go get to know some of these [Democrats]. It’ll take the edge off. They may not vote for you. You might have a fight with them all the time. You’re always going to have some staff guy in the White House tell you what you can and can’t do. Just ignore them. They don’t know who you’re talking to. Go have lunch. Play basketball with Ron Wyden. That helps. Ron may never like anything you ever do, but it’ll be a lot easier if you have the ability to pick up the phone, and vice versa.

Dan Gorenstein is the executive editor of Tradeoffs, a nonprofit health policy news organization. Reporter Ryan Levi produced this story for the Tradeoffs podcast, and adapted it for the web.

You can listen below to Gorenstein’s full interview with Scully, and with reporter Tara Bannow, who’s been following the Oz nomination and CMS for STAT:

The National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center in Carr, Colo., is at risk of losing heat and power as its remaining employees rush to prepare for the animal’s breeding season.

A federal maintenance worker in the southern United States can’t make payments to do routine water testing for dangerous contaminants.

And rangers at one national park are funding meals for search-and-rescue volunteers out of their own pockets.

These are just a few examples of the immediate impacts of federal spending cuts on the U.S. Department of the Interior, which encompasses 433 national park sites, around 70,000 employees and 11 bureaus, from the U.S. Geological Survey to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The Interior Department is reeling from the firings of probationary employees and President Trump’s Feb. 26 order issuing a 30-day freeze on government payment cards. Now, the threat of deeper job cuts looms, as the Trump administration has ordered federal agencies to submit plans for wide-scale reductions in force — even as many agencies move to reinstate fired probationary employees in response to court orders.

Employees working for different parts of the Interior Department say they have been scrambling to keep the lights on, complete functions like environmental impact assessments that are required by Congress and keep Americans safe.

“There’s no thought of ‘How do I reduce cost and increase efficiency while ensuring that congressionally mandated things are being done,'” a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee said. “They don’t care. There’s no thought that the laws that were passed have any bearing on the current administration.”

NPR spoke to 18 current and former employees at the Department of the Interior and its sub-agencies, from scientists to supervisors to maintenance workers, about the ongoing challenges of continuing to do their work amid chaos and uncertainty. Many requested anonymity, fearing reprisal from the Trump administration for speaking out and impacts to their future job prospects.

“Under President Donald J. Trump’s leadership, we are eliminating wasteful programs, cutting unnecessary costs, and ensuring every dollar serves a clear purpose,” said J. Elizabeth Peace, an Interior Department spokesperson, in a statement to NPR in response to a list of questions about the impacts of the spending freeze and job cuts described in this story.

Many Interior employees are used to scraping by on what they describe as a shoestring budget. That includes what the National Wildlife Refuge Association called a staffing crisis for federal jobs dedicated to wildlife conservation and close to a 6% decrease in jobs across the Interior Department during the first Trump term.

But the employees say the current atmosphere is different. They’re consulting with lawyers and union representatives to fight moves they see as disorganized, potentially illegal and deeply harmful to future generations.

“It’s very stressful. I wake up every morning thinking, ‘What is today going to bring?'” said one U.S. Geological Survey worker. “And I think the science community as a whole has taken a lot of big hits between the mass firings of people who are just starting their careers, people who are doing great work … you’re losing a lot of knowledge.”

Payment card spending capped at $1

Trump adviser Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of companies including Tesla and SpaceX, is spearheading efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to drastically downsize the federal government by slashing agencies’ headcounts, budgets, programs and real estate footprints.

One of Musk’s targets is 4.6 million government-issued payment cards, which are used by federal agencies to pay for needs ranging from hotel stays for FEMA employees during disaster responses to computers and protective equipment for the Department of Defense.

The General Services Administration, which issues many government purchase cards, has capped card spending at $1 to comply with Trump’s spending freeze order. Despite the order’s call for exceptions for “disaster relief or natural disaster response benefits or operations or other critical services as determined by the Agency Head,” Interior employees say the spending limit combined with restrictions on travel is affecting critical Interior Department work across the nation, particularly in far-flung regional offices that have unique needs.

U.S. Geological Survey hydrographer Samuel Jacob measures the flooded Winooski River’s discharge on July 11, 2023, in Montpelier, Vt.

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The $1 cap is affecting “the literal nuts and bolts” of the agency’s work, according to a second U.S. Geological Survey worker.

For example, USGS and its federal, state, local and tribal partners operate more than 10,000 stream gauges across the country that monitor water flow, which is critical for flood warning and managing water use. That equipment is often located in remote areas and needs constant monitoring and repair. “We can’t anticipate what’s going to break next,” the second USGS employee said.

The effective spending freeze means most USGS workers can’t go to the closest hardware store to buy supplies, but instead have to rely on the single person in each region authorized to make payments, who may be located far away.

It takes federal maintenance workers a full day to travel to one power plant in the Pacific Northwest. Now, they can’t drive there to make repairs, or pay for the necessary equipment, according to an employee working for an Interior Department agency.

The payment bottleneck is also affecting routine water safety testing for dangerous contaminants in the South, where a federal worker was unable to pay for that testing at a local government office that does not accept online payments, according to emails shared with NPR by the worker.

Members of the Shenandoah National Park Search and Rescue go over rope techniques as they train on a mountain cliff in Shenandoah National park, Va., on June 13, 2019.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

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Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

Meanwhile, rangers at one national park have personally paid to feed volunteer search and rescue teams and haven’t been able to buy propane for heaters at high-traffic ski and sledding areas, according to a National Park Service employee.

A manager in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service told NPR that payments to contractors who help do environmental permitting that is required by law to protect threatened animals and habitats are also being disrupted.

“Bottom line is, this will make us less efficient and be costly to conservation of the land, listed species, data and the taxpayers,” a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist said. “It’s a plan that lacks thought, and like most things this administration has done, is clumsy and counter to what their goal is, to save money and make the government more efficient.”

Firings jeopardize endangered species conservation

On Valentine’s Day this year, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center found itself leaderless, and down two additional staff who keep the largest captive population of this endangered species alive.

“It’s putting the entire recovery program in jeopardy,” said another USFWS biologist in Wyoming who worked on ferret recovery before getting fired last month.

Many such programs are now at risk. The USFWS oversees the recovery of over 1,600 species listed under the Endangered Species Act, and more under consideration for listing. In February, about 420 probationary staff were fired, and nearly 300 more took the Trump administration’s “fork in the road” resignation offer, gutting capacity in many of those programs.

Tessa Corsetti was a probationary USFWS biologist working on long-term conservation strategies for bats in Maine. She was fired last month, along with several others in her roughly 15-person office. “It felt like somebody was trying to do surgery with a machete,” she said.

This week, some fired Interior probationary staff started being offered their jobs back, in compliance with recent court orders. But even if they all return, the disruptions of the past month could have lasting consequences for some endangered species.

It’s unclear how many workers will take back their old jobs. One fired employee expressed hesitation to feel anything positive, given the impending reduction in force.

Steeper staff reductions are coming

Late last month, some divisions within the Interior Department were asked to draw up plans for cuts of up to 40%, according to multiple Interior officials.

The impacts could be far-reaching at the sprawling department, whose work ranges from managing federal lands and fisheries to conservation to oil and gas leasing to relationships with Native American tribes.

A wide assortment of birds populate the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge on Feb. 9, 2025, in Merritt Island, Fla.

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Some parts of the agency are pushing back and trying to blunt the impact of involuntary reductions through federal programs offering early retirement and buyouts, Interior employees told NPR. Recent all-hands meetings across the department have been canceled at the last minute as managers say they don’t have any information on what might happen in the coming weeks and months.

Job cuts at the Bureau of Indian Affairs are on hold, according to one of the Interior officials, because of concerns over legal obligations the U.S. government agreed to when it signed treaties with tribes. Tribal nations have already sued the federal government over probationary firings at the Bureau of Indian Education, alleging the government failed to consult with them as it’s required to do.

One employee at a Department of Interior agency said there are plans to possibly consolidate and restructure IT teams, which could involve relocating staff to Washington, D.C. Employees are pushing back, given the vast network of expensive and antiquated IT infrastructure across the country that’s critical to the functioning of key systems.

“Finding someone equipped to manage decades-old systems will not be easy,” the employee noted in a conversation with NPR. “If these systems go down, essential services, especially those supporting rural communities, could be severely disrupted.”

There is also confusion over how the Interior Department will evaluate performance as part of planned reductions, because the department’s leadership canceled all active performance plans in late February, according to an email shared with NPR by Interior employees.

“We worry that this makes us vulnerable to termination based on shifting standards,” one of the Interior employees who received the email said.

“Everyone is super anxious,” said one of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services employees. “No one knows what they’re being judged on; it’s super random,” they said.

Disrupting the pipeline of future scientists

The Interior Department also employs thousands of scientists who study everything from U.S. lands and climate change to conservation and natural disasters. They fear for the future of their work and the careers of young scientists who are just getting started.

New employees hired in recent years, those still in probationary periods, were the first to be cut during Trump’s second term, according to one manager at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Even if they’re reinstated, it will be difficult to recruit going forward, the manager told NPR.

“This younger generation of scientists, in 15 years there’s going to be nobody to step into the shoes of the federal science community … they’ve all been let go,” the manager said.

One government scientist studying climate told NPR they fear their entire field is “on the chopping block,” threatening the U.S.’s position as a global leader in climate science.

The climate scientist and a U.S. Geological Survey worker, both of whom are studying the impacts of natural disasters, said the U.S. will be less prepared for catastrophic storms and dangerous weather patterns going forward if their work is restricted or eliminated.

“We have an obligation to the people of the United States to help them prepare and rebound after natural disasters,” said the USGS employee, who has lived through the aftermath of a dangerous hurricane and seen firsthand what it takes to rebuild.

“I’ve spent my whole life working towards being a scientist,” the employee continued. “It’s who I am.”

Have information you want to share about the ongoing changes across the federal government? Reach out to these authors: Jenna McLaughlin is available through encrypted communications on Signal at jennamclaughlin.54, Shannon Bond is on Signal at shannonbond.01, and Jonathan Lambert is on Signal at jonlambert.12

The Trump administration is taking a hardline approach to what it alleges is a failure to protect students from antisemitism on college campuses.

The administration canceled $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University, claiming the school failed to address antisemitism on campus. The Department of Education also sent letters to 60 colleges and universities, warning they are under investigation for accusations of antisemitism.

Kenneth Stern, director of the Center for the Study of Hate at Bard College and the lead drafter of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, said the administration’s approach is making Jewish students feel less safe. The administration adopted Stern’s IHRA definition in its executive orders.

“It puts pro-Israel Jewish students in a situation where they may be seen as trying to suppress speech rather than answer it,” Stern said.

He also said that the definition is being distorted and used to silence anti-Israel critics. He was the lead drafter of the definition in 2004-2005 to help European countries have a common definition to track data on antisemitism. Then it was officially adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016.

Stern acknowledges the existence of antisemitism on campuses but believes that the Trump administration’s approach could create a much worse situation.

He noted that while most Jews, including himself, are Zionists, there is a growing number of younger Jews whose understanding of Judaism leads them to an anti-Zionist position. While he would debate the political implications of this shift, he would not label them as antisemites.

After the conversation was recorded, NPR reached out to the White House for comment. Principal Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields replied, “The only people weaponizing antisemitism are the liberal activists pushing Hamas propaganda on colleges and across our nation. President Trump is committed to holding these radical agitators accountable and deporting non-citizens who are conducting this behavior.”

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Interview highlights

Leila Fadel: Now the Trump administration has repeatedly said it is going to root out antisemitism specifically on college campuses. Canceling 400 million dollars in federal funding to Columbia and telling 60 colleges they’re under investigation for failing to protect Jewish students. What do you make of that claim and the actions?

Kenneth Stern: I think it’s a total assault on the university, which has been a very important institution for Jews over the last number of decades. JD Vance had talked about following the playbook of [Victor] Orban in Hungary on dealing with education. I think that’s what we’re seeing unfold.

We’re seeing an attempt to not do things like saying, OK, we’re going to make a distinction between actual harassments, true threats and so forth. We’re going to go after the views of people and hurt the university that way. I mean, the case with Khalil…

Fadel: Mahmoud Khalil is the green card holder who was a protest leader at Columbia and was detained.

Stern: What they basically said is he was handing out pro-Hamas propaganda. Well, excuse me. I don’t like pro-Hamas propaganda, but that’s speech. And when you start saying that we’re going to go after people whose speech we don’t like, for nothing more [expressing an opinion we don’t like], that’s the predicate. Where does that end?

To me, one of the things that’s important for our ability to combat antisemitism and other forms of hate is having strong democratic institutions. When we’re assaulting free speech, that’s McCarthyism. We don’t have strong democratic institutions anymore.

Fadel: So are you saying then that the administration is weaponizing antisemitism?

Stern: Yes, it’s absolutely weaponizing antisemitism. It’s not to say that there isn’t antisemitism on campuses. There have been horrible situations. But look at what they’re not doing and what they’re doing.
Look back to the Biden administration. It had a very detailed, comprehensive, national strategy for combating antisemitism that had buy-in across the Jewish world. That’s no longer the case.

Fadel: And like you point out, there is real antisemitism and a rise in antisemitism. Does this approach make students any safer?

Stern: No, it makes them less safe. When I teach, and I teach about antisemitism and I teach about Israel and Palestine, I want students to be able to say what they think. I want to create a space where they feel comfortable to be wrong and experiment with ideas. If we don’t have that as the core of the American educational enterprise, we’re going to suffer tremendously in the long run.

Ally Schweitzer edited the audio version of the story.