The courts are demanding them, though. I’ve heard of something like this before.
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the University of Pennsylvania to hand over records about Jewish employees on campus to a federal agency as part of an investigation into antisemitic discrimination but said it did not have to reveal any employee’s affiliation with a specific group.
First, you get a list of all the Jews at the university. Then you fire them, imprison them, and kill them. This was the trend in the 1930s and 1940s, when there were sweeping purges of Jewish professors, led by prominent non-Jewish scientists. Here’s a useful word to remember: Rassenhygiene.
The emergence of eugenics as an ‘applied science’ culminated in the horrendous atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Third Reich. Society was to be cleaned of all alien contamination, hence the German phrase ‘Rassenhygiene’ meaning ‘racial hygiene’. Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and people with hereditary diseases were deprived of their human rights, herded into concentration camps, used for scientific experimentation and murdered. And the scientists who provided the scientific backing were respected university professors or researchers of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWS), the predecessor of the Max Planck Society. Many of them remained in renowned positions even after 1945, influential enough to delay an unbiased historical confrontation.
These things sneak up on you. You provide a list for the purposes of “an investigation into antisemitic discrimination,” and next thing you know, Stephen Miller is holding it.
I have another useful word to add to your vocabulary: Lebensborn.
The Lebensborn e.V. (e.V. stands for eingetragener Verein or registered association), meaning “fount of life”, was founded on 12 December 1935,[1] to counteract falling birth rates in Germany, and to promote Nazi eugenics.[2] Located in Munich, the organization was partly an office within the Schutzstaffel (SS) responsible for certain family welfare programs, and partly a society for Nazi leaders.
Sound familiar? This was an organization designed to promote racial purity by determining who was a good Aryan.
The USA doesn’t have an official Lebensborn policy yet, but I note that it is so important to Trump that we end birthright citizenship that he is actually attending Supreme Court hearings today on that subject, an unusual move to use his vast prestige and power to influence a court decision. Let’s hope it backfires on him and that the court decides that the 14th Amendment stands.
On the face of it I can’t see such ill intent in asking for a list of Jewish people to contact for investigation into alleged antisemitism on a university campus as to compare this inquiry to what happened in Nazi Germany. That it could be construed that way does indicate how ill thought out the approach is though. And isn’t Stephen Miller of Jewish descent? His Wikipedia page says he attended Hebrew school. So I’m not sure, even as evil as he is, what need he would have for a list of Jews.
The birthright citizenship issue being brought to SCOTUS with Trump attending is troublesome in itself, especially given what has been happening to immigrants thus far under fascist Trump and his gutstapo thugs. Yet a judge awkwardly asking a university for a list of Jewish people to investigate alleged antisemitism doesn’t seem to me linked to Rassenhygiene, Lebensborn, or the birthright case before SCOTUS.
Why would the university (or any employer for that matter) have this information in the first place?
If anything, the intent of this inquiry seems to me to be more geared toward stifling criticism of Israel by protestors.
From: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/31/us/upenn-subpoena-jewish-community-list
Some protestors against Israeli atrocities in Gaza (and now in Lebanon again) perhaps crossed the line. And chants like “river to the sea” are a bit over the top IMO alongside keffiyeh appropriating cosplay, but neither criticism of Israel nor protest against Israel are inherently antisemitic.
And I agree that asking for a list of Jews is just a bad idea, plain and simple, but I don’t think the intent is the same as it was in Germany, given it is to investigate alleged antisemitism. Maybe a more passive approach for Jewish employees to voluntarily come forward and offer their takes.
For what it’s worth, Stephen Miller is Jewish. A Jewish Nazi seems like a strange concept, but that’s what he seems to be.
This sounds like a particularly awful April Fools day joke.
There is nothing in the article that gives background on the EEOC investigation beyond the claim that Penn is ‘rife with antisemitism’ because of a swastika spray painted in a student space.
Demanding a list of Jewish people is a strange plan if you are supposedly investigating antisemitism.
Privacy falls under the fourth amendment.
The targets change but the underlying philosophy is the same.
Stephen Miller’s targets are largely the same as the old Nazis but the priorities are different. He is after nonwhites; Latinos, Blacks, and Asians.
These racists aren’t hiding anything.
Their whole idea is to turn American White Again.
Tethys @5
A university getting all up in an employee’s religious views could have a first amendment component. I think it may be about the government demanding info on religious identity from the university, which is itself a private entity though. UPenn being private instead of public kinda muddies things per application of 1A on their part, no? Ideally they would use 1A as a policy guide regardless.
The Guardian article says that federal investigators sometimes request such info to enable them to reach out to possibly affected persons (seems maybe reasonable on the face of it?), but doesn’t say how that’s implemented. I don’t recall any employer or university ever asking me about my religion or ancestry (“Jewish” might refer to either), and I might very well decline to answer such a question from them, so how the hell could they even have complied with an order to report that about me? (Assuming anyone had a particular interest about atheists of English descent, which seems unlikely).
From what I heard, Penn doesn’t ask employees or students about their religion…but the case is about coughing up a list of “members” of student organizations that are considered to be “jewish”.
Still stupid and evil. Maybe ALL of UPenn should sign up for those organizations.
It shouldn’t be up to a judge to do this. If the plaintiffs or the defense want to bring witnesses/anecdotes that they feel are reflective of the “general feeling” or anonymous survey results, they can do so.
A judge deciding to go gather a list and then arbitrarily act on that list (in some currently unspecified way) is utterly wrong. It isn’t the judge’s role to gather evidence other than perhaps researching what is already there through news reports and other published or existing government documents, and often their direction in such things is because of references in the materials presented by the two sides and amicus filings.
This judge should be dismissed.
@hemidactylus
Yes, freedom of religion, freedom of association and free speech fall under the first amendment. However the privacy that they mentioned in the same sentence is covered by the fourth amendment.
I don’t know that Penn has civil rights, but its students and faculty certainly do regardless of their religion or ethnicity. Demanding a list of names of specifically Jewish people isn’t possible unless Penn was violating their civil rights by making such a list in the first place.
You’ll also be wanting to know about Gleichschaltung – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung
Both the Trump administration and progressives use Jews as a catspaw this way — Trump wants to prune the influence of universities, and he uses antisemitism in academia as a pretext to intervene. Progressive media outlets want to incite outrage against Trump, so they pretend to believe that measures like this are a prelude to some sort of antisemitic massacre. Of the two, arguably progressives are the more hypocritical, as they’ve spent the past two years repeating every imaginable libel against Jews.
The argument that Miller can’t be antisemitic because he’s Jewish falls flat given the number of homophobic gay Republicans and racist (against black people) black Republicans there are.
@13: Citation Needed
I’m sure that it’s Trumpublicans who just lost in the fascist attempt to redefine birthright citizenship at SCOTUS, in addition to harassing colleges because this corrupt administration thinks higher education is woke leftist ideology. It’s a play straight out of Nazi Germany.
Bothsides clearly aren’t the same. Especially since a majority of the American Jewish population has always been on the liberal left side of politics. They are not identical with Israel, who is obviously guilty of genocide and now has escalated to starting another war with Iran.
Which happens constantly everywhere.
The Nazis were painting swastikas on campus buildings and sidewalks when I was a university student in the 1970s.
Here it is 2026 and…the Nazis are still painting swastikas on buildings and sidewalks. I saw one a few months ago, overpainting a commercial sign on a main road.
One guy with a spray can doesn’t tell you all that much about what is going on in a community.
Oh look the Coyne-bot is back @13:
Sounds a bit like a BS caricature to me. Sure progressives are quite often critical of the atrocities committed by Israel’s military against Gazans and the settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank
Judea and Samaria. And not fans of Bibi and the post-Revisionists. Is that antisemitism? Progressives are quite often horrified at violence against synagogues and other actual instances of antisemitism.If your mentor were consistent in his kneejerk labeling of people he disagrees with as antisemites, he’d be labeling Christopher Hitchens as such for his own anti-Zionist streak.
Also note your mentor is far less tolerant of dissent or criticism aimed at him on his blog than PZ is here…so far. You’re still around to annoy the shit out of us. You’d have been disappeared already on the other blog. You should thank him.
Antisemitism in the US has risen sharply since Oct. 7. According to the FBI, there were more hate crimes against Jews in 2024 than in any other year since they began tracking in 1991. Antisemitism is especially dramatic on college campuses. Over 40% of Jews avoid publicly wearing, carrying, or displaying things that might identify them as Jewish, according to the AJC. If you think this is all a consequence of people being justly “quite critical” of Israeli policy, you’re dreaming.
In my own community, people aren’t afraid of being attacked by Trump supporters or neo-Nazis, they’re afraid of being attacked by keffiyeh-wearing progressives or Islamists.
I don’t know what any of this refers to.
sinuousrills @19:
And in my community it’s the other way around. So?
I am an Israeli/USian dual citizen. I read Hebrew books in public (on the bus) on a regular basis. The only people who remark about it are other Jewish/Israeli people. I regularly march beside kafiah-wearing protesters.
I agree there has been an increase in anti-Jewish hate crimes in the last few years, but also that before then hate crimes against Jews have always been higher than hate crimes against any religious group. And most of that comes from the right.
“In my own community (editors note: of Trump supporters and and neo-Nazis, probably), people aren’t afraid of being attacked by Trump supporters or neo-Nazis, they’re afraid of being attacked by keffiyeh-wearing progressives or Islamists.”
No doubt. The difference is that one fear is based in reality. The other is a fever dream pushed by a racist bigoted political party president and media cheered on by window licking racists and bigots. Who want to be thought of as persecuted so bad they can taste it, but run screaming away from any actual consequence ever.
“keffiyeh-wearing progressives” forsooth.
Sinuousrills is a troll who lies about everything.
I don’t believe him.
What community is that and why haven’t I heard of it?
In my area of the US west coast, people are definitely afraid of being attacked by Trump supporters, Nazis, and right wingnut thugs. Which are quite frequently the same thing.
The last time I personally saw it was 4 days ago at our No Kings III protest when some creepy Trump supporter tried to pick a fight with the protesters. The safety team isolated him and shortly after that, the police came and hauled him off.
The main problem though are the right wingnut thugs paid for by our defective government. That is ICE and the CBP. The amount of harm they have done in the USA is a lot and they routinely break our laws and quite often outright murder people. They are terrorists.
The number of people harmed by ICE/CBP is in the tens of thousands at least and they are always in court for breaking our laws and violating our constitutional civil rights.
I’ve been collecting reports of MAGA Trump supporters assaulting protesters at No Kings III events.
I’m on the local Safety/Security team so it is a good idea to keep track of the right wing terrorist threats.
The list is rapidly getting longer as reports come in. Here is one typical example.
This brave MAGAt managed to injure a protester by smashing into him with his pickup and then driving away.
They frequently use their cars and pickups to assault protesters.
The right wing and MAGA Trump supporters are based on pure hate.
Hate for women, hate for nonwhites, hate for Democrats, hater for nonxians, hate for science, scientists, and the educated, hate for the EU, hate that is ever expanding to more and more groups.
Where you find these levels of hate, you will always find hate fueled violence.
Does anyone believe the administration really cares about anti-semitism?
chesapeake, depends on what sense.
It obviously care about it as a useful tool; they can pervert the very concept.
So yeah, I truly believe they care about it. Just not for its sake, but for its utility.
cf. https://www.propublica.org/article/ucla-antisemitism-investigation-trump-doj
Or https://mronline.org/2025/04/18/how-the-trump-administration-is-using-civil-rights-complaints-over-antisemitism-to-end-dei-and-quash-dissent-on-palestine/
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How the Trump administration is using civil rights complaints over ‘antisemitism’ to end DEI and quash dissent on Palestine
And of course, when Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education, directed “the OCR to prioritize and address the disgraceful backlog of antisemitism cases that the Biden administration allowed to linger with no answer,” the office was simultaneously ignoring those complaints on file that list in great detail the harassment, including doxxing, violence, and discrimination that Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students have faced on campuses, including at six of the same universities now under investigation for antisemitism (U Mass Amherst, Harvard, Rutgers, Columbia University, UNC, and Portland State University). Likewise, the OCR’s claim to prioritize combating antisemitism is dubious at best considering that the administration’s sweeping cuts simultaneously slashed more than half of the investigative staff members of the OCR.
But perhaps most terrifyingly, the weaponization of Title VI has allowed a mechanism for the Trump administration, working together with far-right Zionist organizations who secretly create blacklists, to sanction individual students and act on deportation threats. This includes the case of Rumeysa Ozturk, whose name, photograph and work history were published by Canary Mission after she co-authored an Op-Ed calling for her university to recognize the genocide Tufts. It also includes Betar U.S., which even the ADL describes as extremist, an organization that has openly declared and even boasted about keeping a blacklist of students to be deported, and taken credit for Momodou Taal’s targeting by ICE. Betar openly admits to using the chilling surveillance tactics of “tips from students, faculty and staff on these campuses, along with social media research” that “includes facial-recognition based AI technology” to create its blacklist. Such secretive targeting is replicated in the case of Helyeh Doutaghi, who was suspended and then dismissed from her position at Yale after AI-generated allegations about her connection to Samidoun, recently designated as a “sham charity” by the U.S. and Canada. Her alleged affiliation with the organization were revealed by the secretive Jewish Onliner, a publication established Dec. 12, 2024 and its automated dragnet methods are aligned with the State Department’s own plans to use AI to revoke visas for students who “appear” to support Hamas.
Raven @22: Probably the community of old privileged white people who feel threatened when they see anyone with a skin color slightly darker than their own daring to have opinions in public. Or by women who have careers instead of staying barefoot and pregnant. Or anything that doesn’t conform to their archaic ideas of acceptable gender identity. My dad and my aunt both belong to that group.
The current administration consists of multiple different ideologies in a trench coat. Some want to get the deficit down at all costs, some want to cut spending at all costs but don’t seem to mind massive tax cuts for the rich, some are Christian Nationalists, some are old-school Nazis, some just want to grift.
Most seem to hate Muslims, and the pro-Palastine protest provide an excuse, but they hate Jews too. And whichever group wants a list of Jews, it’s quite likely for another group to get hold of the same list.
As for Stephen Miller being Jewish, that doesn’t prevent him from being a Nazi. I have vague memories of at least one Jewish Nazi quite highly placed in the Third Reich. Of course, eventually he ceased to be useful, and then they murdered him.
Does anyone know what proportion of anti-semitic attacks are from anti-Zionists, and what proportion are from the far right?
@Sheila the far right is always the biggest threat according to any statistics I’ve ever seen.