A Muslim advocacy group that pressures universities to disinvite speakers it deems offensive is now claiming that President Donald Trump threatens “free speech” for anti-Israel protesters.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) spoke out Wednesday against Trump’s executive order that directs officials to investigate those responsible for “anti-Semitic harassment and violence” on college campuses. The order follows Trump’s promise to deport foreigners on visas who support terrorist groups or “bear hostile attitudes toward” America — an effort CAIR calls “dishonest.”
“Like the college students who once protested segregation, the Vietnam war, and apartheid South Africa, the diverse collection of college students who protested against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza deserve our country’s thanks,” CAIR said in a statement. “The Trump administration’s attempt to smear the many Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian and other college students who protested the Israeli government’s genocide in overwhelmingly peaceful ways represents a dishonest, overbroad and unenforceable attack on both free speech and the humanity of Palestinians, all for the sake of a foreign government.”
The Trump administration’s attempt to smear the many Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian and other college students who protested the Israeli government’s genocide in overwhelmingly peaceful ways represents a dishonest, overbroad and unenforceable attack on both free speech and the… pic.twitter.com/U5P033m4Zx
— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) January 30, 2025
The executive order, unveiled Wednesday, was issued in response to anti-Israel campus protests, which the order claims subjected Jewish students to “denial of access to campus common areas and facilities, including libraries and classrooms; and intimidation, harassment, and physical threats and assault.” It requires agencies to submit reports detailing incidents of antisemitism and any lawful strategies to combat it.
A separate order Trump signed on Inauguration Day tells the government to revoke foreigners’ visas if they “bear hostile attitudes toward [American] citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.” Federal law contains similar language allowing the deportation of any foreigner who “endorses” terrorists or “terrorist activity.”
CAIR did not immediately respond to multiple inquiries from the Daily Caller News Foundation on how it defines free speech on college campuses.
CAIR calls itself “America’s largest Muslim civil liberties organization” and fights “Islamophobia” through strategies such as targeting events it deems harmful to Muslims, including at public institutions.
The group celebrated earlier this month when the University of Maryland School of Medicine postponed a lecture set to be given by an Israeli military doctor in response to its demands. CAIR boasted that its “letter campaign” against the event “led to over 6,000 emails delivered in a matter of hours to the University’s Surgery Department Chair and Dean urging them to rescind this speaker invitation.”
“Providing a platform to a representative of the Israeli Defense Forces – an entity directly responsible for the ongoing genocide and targeting of healthcare workers in Gaza – to speak on the topic of saving lives is egregious and fundamentally at odds with the principles of medical ethics and human rights,” CAIR’s Maryland chapter said.
In a statement shared with the DCNF, the University of Maryland School of Medicine said it postponed the event due to “potential safety concerns” that “could not be sufficiently addressed in such a short time frame to allow us to proceed.” The school said it invited the Israeli doctor to speak “at a future date,” though one has not yet been set.
An advocacy group tracking antisemitism and “hard left extremism” criticized CAIR’s sense of priorities.
“The very fact that CAIR frames the conflict in Gaza as a ‘genocide’ tells you everything you need to know about how they view the war and who they’re backing,” Gregory T. Angelo, president of the New Tolerance Campaign, told the DCNF. “It’s stunning that they’d invoke the ‘mostly peaceful’ trope to describe pro-Hamas demonstrations that saw Jews hunted at Cooper Union in New York, pepper sprayed at UCLA, and beaten at DePaul University in Chicago.”
“Instead of denouncing President Trump’s executive order, CAIR should be condemning anti-Jewish racism, vandalism, and violence,” Angelo said.
Besides claiming victory for speaker cancellations, CAIR also sued Arizona’s Maricopa County Community College District in 2020 over a world politics course with a module on “Islamic Terrorism.” CAIR said the material attacked Islam and was unconstitutional, but federal courts repeatedly ruled against its claims and permitted the material.
The organization followed its Wednesday statement with a condemnation of Harvard University’s new standards for identifying antisemitism on Thursday, saying they threaten “academic freedoms.”
The Justice Department named CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot to promote Hamas terrorists’ agenda in the U.S. via a network of advocacy groups, according to records stemming from a 2007 terror financing trial that the government won.
Editor’s note: This report has been updated to include a statement provided by the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
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