03-08-2025
A Tiny Conservative News Outlet Pioneered the Attack on Higher Education
Around the height of the pro-Palestinian campus protests last year, a conservative journalist sent an email to the federal government complaining about Princeton University.
'Jewish students have felt increasingly unwelcome and unsafe at Princeton,' the journalist, Zachary Marschall, wrote. He cited a series of news reports about pro-Palestinian activism on campus, including a student group demanding 'the full dismantling of the Zionist apartheid state.' He wanted a full investigation.
Dr. Marschall was not a student himself. In fact, he had never stepped foot on the Princeton campus. Nevertheless, the complaint resulted in a federal investigation.
Dr. Marschall, who is Jewish, may be the most prolific filer of antisemitism civil rights complaints to the federal government. He says he has filed 33 against colleges around the country, leading to 16 investigations.
The Trump administration has made fighting antisemitism a central plank in its education agenda and vowed to punish institutions that it says have allowed antisemitism to proliferate. Many of Dr. Marschall's targets have landed on a list of 60 schools that officials have said they are investigating. (Princeton did not comment on the complaint or the investigation.)
Dr. Marschall considers the government's attention to his complaints another victory for the conservative newspaper he edits, Campus Reform, and its longtime mission to expose what he calls leftist bias and abuse on college campuses around the country.
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