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University presidents last week finally said aloud what many Americans suspected: the pro-Palestinian uprisings that swept across campuses after Hamas’s October 7 attack were not spontaneous acts of youthful conscience but were well-coordinated and funded. “It’s more than a social contagion,” said Vanderbilt’s chancellor. “They’re organized networks as well.” Syracuse’s chancellor went further: “I really believe [the demonstrations] were encouraged by Iran. It did not have the involvement of very many, if any, of our own students.”

America has a powerful legal weapon—the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871—that the Department of Justice should use to stop the rise of coordinated, foreign-influenced and financed antisemitic hate groups operating under the guise of political activism.

American administrations have not hesitated to dust off centuries-old laws when it serves their purpose. The Alien Enemies Act of 1798, the 1807 Insurrection Act, even an 1873 obscenity law banning the mailing of ‘indecent’ material have all been revived in recent years.

Congress enacted the Klan Act in the aftermath of Reconstruction, when white-supremacist militias terrorized freedmen and Black voters while state officials looked away. The law empowered federal prosecutors to target private conspiracies that deprived citizens of their civil rights through violence or intimidation.

Over 150 years later, that same legal tool might be more useful than ever. Its central provision—18 U.S.C. § 241—remains one of the most powerful civil-rights tools on the books. President Biden’s Justice Department used it in 2023 to indict Donald Trump for allegedly conspiring to subvert the 2020 election. Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged over the death of George Floyd, pleaded guilty in 2021 to violating § 242, another section of the same act that covers abuses of authority “under color of law.”

In January, President Trump’s own executive order, “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism,” explicitly cited § 241 and encouraged the attorney general to employ it against antisemitic threats. But the DOJ is not using the statute for its full powers when it comes to dealing with online threats. One of the most important aspects of § 241 is that it does not require an overt act to prove a conspiracy. And § 1985(3) of the Klan Act makes it unlawful for “two or more persons” to conspire to deprive any citizen of “equal protection of the laws” or “equal privileges and immunities.”

All the KKK statutes require is an agreement to threaten or intimidate someone in their federal rights. It is important that courts allow conspiracies under this law to be proved by circumstantial evidence. That is key when it comes to online coordination with pro-Hamas/anti-Israel demonstrators who plan their actions over the internet. Online threats are not just speech—they can constitute evidence of conspiracy to deprive Jews of their right to education, association, or religious practice. In recent years, the DOJ has used § 241 against online campaigns that intimidated voters and abortion patients as well as white supremacists and violent anti-Black conspiracies. That precedent should be extended to antisemitic intimidation campaigns.

When campus groups coordinate online to harass Jewish students, blockade events, or pressure universities to exclude Jews from campus life, they are engaged in a civil-rights conspiracy—no less than the hooded KKK members who once burned crosses to keep Black Americans from voting.

A legal brief filed by the Zachor Legal Institute with DOJ earlier this year documented Jewish students at UCLA literally hunted across campus by masked Students for Justice for Palestine activists, some carrying knives. At Cornell, Jewish students received online threats of rape and beheading. At Cooper Union in New York, Jewish students barricaded themselves in a library while mobs pounded on the doors. These are not theoretical concerns—they are the modern equivalent of Klan night-riders, adapted to 21st-century campuses. The Zachor lawyers called them “Klansmen in Keffiyehs.”

Another element of the KKK statutes that the DOJ should deploy is § 242. It applies to public officials who abuse their positions “under color of law” to deprive others of their rights. Public university faculty or administrators who advise, fund, or exclude Jewish students from classes while supporting antisemitic groups can be held liable under this provision

When mobs physically block Jewish students from entering a classroom or religious or secular event, as documented above, that squarely falls under § 245, which protects the right to attend public education or federally funded programs free of intimidation or violence.

The Department of Justice enforcement is critical since Jewish students can’t bring these prosecutions themselves. The KKK statutes were designed for precisely this kind of situation: when mobs, sometimes aided by local officials, conspire to deny a minority group its place in public life. Congress wrote the KKK statutes for federal prosecutors to step in when citizens couldn’t defend themselves. That was true in 1871, and it’s true on campuses today.

The KKK statutes once dismantled segregationist terror networks. They can do the same to the Hamas-inspired, foreign-funded agitators targeting Jewish students today.

Antisemitism in America is no longer confined to the fringes of the internet or neo-Nazi rallies. It has infiltrated elite universities and corporate boardrooms, often financed by foreign money and legitimized by academic doublespeak. The myth of “consequence-free hate” has taken root.

Just this month, Federal Election Commission filings revealed that Rep. Ilhan Omar’s campaign paid more than a thousand dollars to a Washington D.C. nonprofit, the Palestine House of Freedom, whose website celebrates the “liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.” The group partners with a Palestinian university accused of terror ties and vows to “embark on an aggressive educational campaign” targeting U.S. lawmakers and the media.

That money trail is a reminder that Hamas’s influence operations aren’t confined to foreign soil. They’re operating in America’s capital, on American campuses, and across American social networks.

The question is whether Washington will use the legal weapons it already has. The Ku Klux Klan Act once saved the Union’s promise of equal rights. One hundred and fifty years later, it can do so again—this time for Jewish Americans facing a new generation of hate.

https://www.justthefacts.media/p/klansmen-in-keffiyehs

One of those facing many questions was California-Berkeley chancellor Rich Lyons.

“Going forward, for example, there are certain things that we talk to students about all the time. They make demands. Let’s leave ourselves beyond the antisemitism question, as like, do we discuss improving the campus.”

Vanessa Hites is the legal director for education at Zachor Legal Institute. She shared her reactions with AFN.

“For me it’s basically three issues that I can see with his declaration. First, he seems to believe that the antisemitism that stems from campus and university life has to do with geopolitical events.”

She said this is very strange because she said it is one more way to justify antisemitism against students.

“We don’t see this with any other protected group. For example, no one is targeting Venezuelans for the actions of Maduro or Persians for the action of the Ayatollah. And even if they were, if that was the reason why, the Jewish students are uniquely scapegoated for a foreign war. It was very hard for him to unequivocally condemn antisemitism and hatred towards Jews in his university.”

She said she thinks these hearings are always productive because they bring to light the processes that are going on in universities and the thoughts of their leaders.

“We see for example when he was asked about some faculty members that work at Berkeley and with some problematic tweets and declarations, instead of condemning them, and far from establishing some kind of function, he defines them as ‘fine scholars,’” Hites said.

Hites said she thinks there needs to be a clear separation between protected political speech, which professors and students can have.

But she said these actions, especially coming from faculty, are creating a hostile educational environment and inciting violence inside universities.

SJP founder remains on staff at Cal
She continued, explaining the founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, Hatem Bastian, is in fact, a professor at UC Berkeley.

“What we’re seeing now on campus in Berkeley and nationwide is the fruit of Bastian’s labors, which he has been allowed to foment hate and discrimination, and has been paid by UC Berkeley.”

Hites, Vanessa (Zachor)Hites
Hites also cited denial of access to for Jewish students during the campus encampments of 2024.

That is not freedom of expression, she says.

“This is a clear case where you could apply KKK laws. The KKK laws are a federal criminal civil rights statue, which makes it a crime to interfere with educational access based on race, religion, or ethnicity, and this is a clear case of that.”

Finally, Lyon’s unwillingness to commit to transparency moving ahead created serious questions.

“The root of the broader issue in higher education in America is when he was asked if he could, could commit to transparency in foreign funding. He said he was not ready to do that, and it makes us wonder why.”

Lyons also took questions from House members from California. Kevin Kiley, a Republican represented the state’s third district, wanted to know why protesting students who blocked access to various campus points were not expelled.

“There’s just a lot of context and facts before somebody could say we need to jump to the point where somebody’s getting expelled, and we investigate those. We’re very rigorous about our investigations,” Lyons replied.

Sophia Witt is an executive vice president with Students Supporting Israel.

She referred to the Ivy League panel that questioned Harvard. She described this as a copy and paste of that session, saying that Lyons was tiptoeing around the real situation on campus.

“It’s almost like trying to hide it in a way, like there’s something great about Berkeley even though in despite of the antisemitic incidents that are occurring. It’s like saying Berkeley has this horrible situation, but it’s OK because we have such great academics.”

Lyons’ repeated protection of the school and its brand were unacceptable, she said.

“I mean that’s very evident in when they were asking him about the professor who was propping up October 7th, saying that he would have been one of the ones to storm through the border and take part in the October 7th terror attacks, and he called him a quote unquote ‘fine scholar,’” Witt said.

Unequal treatment at Cal, Witt says
Other minorities at Cal-Berkeley would be treated differently in similar circumstances, she said.

Witt, Sophia (new pic)
“If they said black students are not allowed to be entering certain buildings here, but we still have a really good program for economics … it doesn’t matter.”

Lyon’s days at Cal-Berkeley are numbered, Witt predicts.

“I would say the same thing that happened with Claudine Gay and the rest of the Ivy League deans are what is going to happen to Rich here. I think if there’s any type of accountability that needs to be had, it’s here, and I’ll wait for him to take accountability for his university and hope that he doesn’t lose his job for that fact.”

https://afn.net/israel-middle-east/2025/07/21/lyons-congressional-defense-of-actions-at-cal-berkeley-fails-to-impress-jewish-advocates/