Groups representing a vast range of colleges and universities joined one of the country’s foremost Jewish groups on Tuesday to urge the Trump administration to change how it is trying to combat campus antisemitism.
The federal government has abruptly withdrawn billions of dollars in research funding from a handful of elite universities and threatened to go after others that it contends may not have done enough to punish discrimination. But a coalition including the American Jewish Committee argued in a joint statement on Tuesday that the government needed to follow federal law carefully and avoid hasty actions that could imperil research breakthroughs.
Federal civil rights law allows the government to cut off money on the basis of discrimination. The law, though, also demands a detailed process of investigation and notification — a protocol that higher education leaders believe the Trump administration has defied.
Alarmed university leaders have struggled to persuade the White House to rethink its approach, and the joint statement represented an effort to gain leverage through a public alliance that reached beyond higher education.
“The proper and essential role for the U.S. government in addressing antisemitism is through the nation’s powerful anti-discrimination laws,” the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy organization, said in the statement, which was also signed by an array of higher education groups, including the Association of American Universities and the American Council on Education.
The groups said that federal law allowed for “vigorous enforcement” while preserving fairness for individuals and schools.
The American Jewish Committee, in particular, warned that “overly broad” cuts to research funding “imperil science and innovation, and ultimately detract from the necessary fight against antisemitism while threatening the global pre-eminence of America’s research universities.”
The association and the council said that their schools “pledge continuing consequential reform and transparent action to root out antisemitism and all other forms of hate and prejudice from our campuses.”
The White House and the Education Department did not immediately comment.
The Trump administration has previously rebuffed complaints after it withdrew, or threatened to pull, more than $12 billion in research funding designated to flow to a roster of schools that includes Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard and Northwestern.
So far, Harvard is the only university to have challenged its school-specific funding freeze in court. Afterward, Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, accused the university of “showboating” and said that Harvard knew “more than anyone that not playing ball is going to hurt their team.”
Higher education officials, though, say they are looking for the administration to follow established standards.
“It’s really an important time to be holding firm to the principle of due process and that the rule of law works here,” Barbara Snyder, the president of the Association of American Universities, said in an interview.
Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, said in a statement that “efforts to stamp out hate should address real concerns and problems, not cause damage to cutting-edge and often lifesaving research.”
Mr. Mitchell suggested that the Trump administration’s methods were not “actually working to protect Jewish and any other students subject to discrimination and harassment.”
But defenders of the White House’s approach note that Columbia agreed to a list of demands after the government stripped it of about $400 million in grants and contracts.
Columbia’s deal with the government set off revelry among conservative critics of academia, and Ms. Snyder acknowledged that she was unsure whether the joint statement would lead the Trump administration to alter its strategy.
“We do not have any idea whether the White House or anybody else will care,” she said, noting the long ties between her group and the American Jewish Committee.
“It’s just the right thing to do,” she said.
Former Representative Ted Deutch of Florida, a Democrat who is the chief executive of the Jewish organization, said the statement was intended to signal that fighting antisemitism and standing up for due process were not mutually exclusive.
“Both of these things matter,” he said.
The American Association of State Colleges and Universities also signed the joint statement, as did the American Association of Community Colleges, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.
