I Was Hillel President. Trump Claims His Funding Cuts Help Jews — He’s Wrong.

I served as Harvard Hillel president in 2023, the year antisemitism erupted on Harvard’s campus. I saw up close how reductive and simplistic, how vitriolic and bigoted, discourse around Israel became on campus, and during the toughest moments of my life, I led the fight against it.

For officials in Washington, the past year and a half justifies a review of Harvard’s federal funding. But as a student elected by my peers to represent Jewish interests — and who witnessed antisemitism on campus first-hand — I know that President Donald Trump’s review of University funding has the potential to appreciably damage higher education, and ironically, Harvard’s Jewish life too.

Tragically, I am no stranger to antisemitism and anti-Zionism here at Harvard. I disgustedly watched my peers’ flippant attitudes towards the heinous loss of life on October 7th, scrolled through Sidechat to read antisemitic screeds, and watched in dismay as my classmates posted an antisemitic cartoon so noxious it was displayed in a textbook on the subject.

I’ve also been on the front lines speaking out against bigoted beliefs while contesting my classmates’ naively anti-Zionist narratives about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I went on CNN, NBC, ABC, and Fox. I gave quotes to the New York Times, Boston Globe, and Jewish Insider. I spoke at vigils, worked with Jewish students, and talked to more administrators than I can count — from the Associate Dean of Students up to the University president.

For speaking out about antisemitism, I’ve been accused of spreading “violent lies,” faced calls for the boycott of Harvard Hillel, and received hate mail. Though I don’t speak for all Jews, I am profoundly aware of the difficulties Jewish and Zionist students face on our polarized campus.

Despite my deep disappointment with many of my peers’ recent behavior, blanket federal funding cuts will inevitably fail to solve our University’s problems. For one, antisemitism on campus is largely a cultural issue that is difficult to solve with administrative action; punishing the University for speech it cannot control is unfair.

Moreover, unless funding rollbacks are targeted, the impact of sweeping cuts will be felt throughout the University. Objectively important academic endeavors like cancer research, economic policy study, and artificial intelligence scholarship are almost surely threatened by these broad fiscal slashes.

The expansive nature of these billion-dollar cuts suggest Trump’s interest is not narrowly fighting antisemitism on campus, but rather neutering universities and their ability to conduct research. Institutions of higher learning are cornerstones of liberal democracies and act as bulwarks against authoritarianism. It is telling that Trump’s team wants them demolished.

Indeed, Vice President JD Vance gave a now-infamous speech three years ago entitled “The Universities are The Enemy” — long before October 7th brought antisemitism so prominently to the surface of many university campuses.

As the assault on higher education proceeds, politicians are seizing on Jews as their perfect political pawns. Let me be clear: I’ve had dozens of meetings with various University officials. Never once have I been approached by a current Trump official and never once, to my knowledge, has the Trump administration consulted Jewish student leadership in any formal way.

Anyone familiar with campus life knows funding cuts will have little effect on Jews’ experience at Harvard — besides degrading the quality of research and instruction. Worse, they could set back research significantly and destabilize the academy, one of the institutions in which Jews have historically thrived.

If fixing antisemitism were as simple as denying federal funding to institutions in which it spreads, the world could have solved this millenia-old hatred long ago. Unfortunately, the solution is not so simple.

It is easy to tear the University down under the guise of combating antisemitism. It is harder — but much more noble — to build it up.

Jacob M. Miller ’25, a former Crimson Editorial chair, is a double concentrator in Mathematics and Economics in Lowell House. He served as Harvard Hillel president in 2023.