Trump Administration Demands List of Jewish Employees at UPenn

The Trump administration sued the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) on November 18, 2025, citing the university’s refusal to turn over personal information about its Jewish employees. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) had subpoenaed information such as “names, phone numbers and physical addresses” for Jewish employees at UPenn as part of an ongoing antisemitism investigation against the university. As reported by The New York Times on November 21, 2025, the requested information would have been used to identify Jewish employees who filed antisemitism complaints at the university, those who belong to Jewish groups at the university, and people that work at the university’s Jewish studies program. On December 2, 2025, the university notified the EEOC that it does not keep a record of the religion of its employees and stated that the EEOC’s request, is a blatant attempt to identify Jewish people employed by UPenn. The university has requested that the EEOC’s lawsuit against it be reassigned to Judge Mitchell Goldberg, a federal judge who had earlier ruled to dismiss an antisemitism lawsuit against UPenn filed by its students in 2023.

While the government remains adamant about receiving this information, UPenn’s refusal to handover a list of Jewish employees met with approval from the university community and others outside of the institution. An online petitionsupporting UPenn’s refusal to comply initiated by faculty received hundreds of signatures from faculty, students and staff. The UPenn chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) also supported the decision to not comply, underlining that efforts to combat antisemitism and other forms of discrimination must not come at the expense of “the safety, privacy, and academic freedom of any member of the Penn community.” UPenn has also received support from organizations that are otherwise supportive of federal antisemitism investigations. For example, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), in a November 20 statement, condemned efforts to create a list of Jewish faculty, students and staff, even if such efforts are “well-intentioned.” According to a recently published joint report by the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) the AAUP that shows how Title VI complaints and investigations are being weaponized to silence dissent across US campuses, the ADL is one of the civil society organizations that have filed several complaints. Organizations outside of UPenn also criticized the government’s subpoena. On November 21, 2025, PEN America’s Chief Legal Officer Eileen Hershenov condemned the government for “cynically using the very real threat of surging antisemitism as a cover to strip civil liberties from Americans” as well as to draw attention to the chilling impact this will have on campuses around the country.

Other universities also have been similarly targeted by the Trump administration’s Department of Education, and some have been much more cooperative. For example, in September 2025, U.C., Berkeley provided the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights with a list of 160 faculty, students and staff as part of a similar antisemitism investigation. Former Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers who were assigned to work on the Department of Education’s antisemitism investigations across the UC system told Los Angeles Times that they, as career bureaucrats, felt pressured by “political appointees” to find UC system universities guilty before the investigations were concluded or even started. Facing pressure to carry out “atypical” investigations, nine lawyers resigned from their positions at the DOJ.

Endangered Scholars Worldwide (ESW) condemns the Trump administration’s attempts to create a list of Jewish employees at University of Pennsylvania, a practice which has historically been used by fascist regimes and risks the well-being of Jewish campus members. We join the University of Pennsylvania’s faculty, students and staff as well as civil society organizations in supporting UPenn’s noncompliance to the request to produce such a list. We call on the Trump administration to immediately halt such attempts that continue to erode the institutional autonomy of universities, which is a central pillar of academic freedom. We invite the global community to join our call.