President Trump will sign an executive order on Wednesday designed to target anti-Semitism on college campuses, the New York Times reported on Tuesday evening.
The order will define Judaism as a nationality in addition to a religion, which would allow the Department of Education to withhold funding from colleges that are too accepting of anti-Israel movements.
Trump’s executive order will be based on the definition of anti-Semitism adopted by the State Department, which deems “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” anti-Semitic. While many Jews consider anti-Zionism to be a form of anti-Semitism, some critics claim that that definition makes it harder to criticize Israeli policies they disagree with.
The DOE has already reprimanded the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after a complaint of anti-Semitism on campus. In September, it ordered UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University to overhaul their joint Middle East Studies program, saying the program was biased and did not portray the historic discrimination against minorities in Islamic countries.
President Trump has implemented several pro-Israel policies over the course of his tenure that broke with past U.S. policy, including recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the U.S. embassy to the city.