Antisemitism watchdog offers alternative to Trump's campus crackdown

The big picture: The Trump administration has cast pro-Palestinian protesters as Hamas supporters and used anti-terror and immigration laws to quiet campus demonstrations.

• The arrests of Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk are part of the administration's push to quickly scoop up, detain and deport college students with pro-Palestinian views under the guise of fighting antisemitism.
• President Trump has also threatened to pull university funding over antisemitism allegations.

Zoom in: Trump exploits "legitimate concerns of antisemitism by pursuing a political and ideological project," according to the alternative plan shared with Axios first and dubbed "Fighting Antisemitism, Protecting Democracy: A Strategy for the Trump Era."

• The Nexus Project's plan calls for preventing antisemitism from being used as a pretext to deport people engaging in free assembly or free speech.
• It also calls for resisting "the weaponization of antisemitism by using tools that distinguish between antisemitic speech and behavior and legitimate criticism."
• It seeks to oppose efforts to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion or restrict how racism and antisemitism are taught.

What they're saying: "While the Trump Administration exploits the rise of antisemitism to target democratic freedoms and political opponents, too many Jewish establishment groups are either backing their efforts or remaining silent," Jonathan Jacoby, national director of the Nexus Project, said.

• "We need to boldly resist these efforts to use our community as a pawn while harming our safety."

The other side: Harrison Fields, the White House's principal deputy press secretary, tells Axios it's been a core principle of Trump to support Israel and "revoke visas of foreign nationals who support terrorism and jihadism."

• "President Trump and his DOJ will hold accountable those who perpetrate violence against Jewish people."

The intrigue: The authors of the Nexus Project's plan include liberal and moderate Jewish experts.

• Among the authors are Hannah Rosenthal, former U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism; David N. Myers, chair in Jewish History at UCLA and Judith Lichtman, a human and civil rights advocate.

Zoom out: The Nexus Project's strategy is a response to the conservative Heritage Foundation's Project Esther, which calls for rebranding pro-Palestinian protesters as Hamas supporters.

• Project Esther also calls for firing pro-Palestinian professors on campuses and using anti-racketeering laws to break up pro-Palestinian or liberal-leaning groups.
• Many of Project Esther's proposals, based on months of chatter among some GOP leaders, have been adopted by the Trump administration despite criticism by progressives that it's a tool of Christian nationalism.

The conservative-leaning Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), which supports many of the ideas in Project Esther, held a summit earlier this month in New York on battling antisemitism on college campuses.

• EJ Kimball, the group's interfaith outreach and engagement director, tells Axios that the group is generally pleased by the Trump administration's actions to combat antisemitism.
• "Those (who) are violating the laws, the terms of their green cards, or student visas for providing potential support to terrorist groups... should be deported," he said.