President Donald Trump has taken his fight against antisemitism to American college campuses, and he said that there will be "no more lip service," and when Jewish students go to school, they will be protected, Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., said on Newsmax, Thursday.
"He's going after the schools that other schools look up to," Fine said on Newsmax's "National Report" while commenting on the $221 million settlement reached this week with Columbia University.
On Wednesday, Columbia announced it had settled with the Trump administration, agreeing to pay a total of $221 million, including $200 million to the U.S. government and $21 million into a claims fund for Jewish employees.
Trump said the settlement was a victory, and that more action is coming against other U.S. colleges.
Fine agreed that the $221 million settlement will "sting," even for a university the size of Columbia, but noted that the settlement will also implement policy changes at the Ivy League campus.
"They're implementing the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which will say that many of these protests they had on campus were antisemitic," said Fine. "They're also going to ban masks on campus, which is a big deal, because a lot of these people want to hide themselves because they know that what they're doing is wrong."
He added that he is "incredibly grateful" to Trump for "taking these steps for fighting and saying Muslim terror on college campuses is just not acceptable."
And even with Columbia's wording in the settlement, in which it did not admit to wrongdoing, Fine said that moving forward is what matters.
"Adopting the IHRA definition is a huge deal," he said, explaining that means that anti-Zionism equates to antisemitism, which will have a "big impact" on protester groups.
"I'm hopeful, as a guy who went to an Ivy League school and a Jewish student myself many years ago, that this will have a big impact on my kids as they go to college and every other Jewish student, and frankly, every other American student," said Fine. "They're also going to be taking a look at foreign students as part of this agreement because our elite universities are spending too much time and too much of our money educating foreigners."
Fine added that the settlement will help to end the woke culture in many universities and get them back to educating students for the workforce of the future.
"Universities are now dedicating too many resources to teaching degrees in a job where all you can do is work at Starbucks or the government," he said. "These are all huge deals to get our higher education back on track to preparing our kids to join the workforce, which is what it's supposed to be. It's not to become a community organizer."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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