The Education Department on Monday sent a letter to 60 colleges, including the Johns Hopkins University, warning they could lose federal money if they fail to make campuses safe for Jewish students. Institutions on the list include Harvard, Cornell and many others where pro-Palestinian protests led to accusations of anti-Jewish bias.

A memo Friday from the chief of the department’s Office for Civil Rights announced antisemitism cases are now the top priority. That followed a decision to cut $400 million in federal money going to Columbia University, where on Saturday immigration officials arrested a Palestinian activist who was involved in leading student protests.

Like many other colleges across the country last spring, Hopkins grappled with balancing free speech and campus safety after students organized a pro-Palestinian demonstration, camping overnight on “The Beach,” one of the most popular quads on campus. The encampment ended after two weeks, with the university agreeing to accelerate a review of its investments, including with fund managers and defense contractors supporting Israeli military actions in Gaza.

The university ultimately decided not to cut financial ties with Israel.

Months after the encampment, the school installed towering new security cameras in various outdoor spaces on campus, alarming student activists who believe they are used to intimidate and suppress potential protests.

“Discrimination of any kind, including anti-Semitism, is at odds with our most fundamental values and against long established university policy,” a Johns Hopkins spokesperson said in a statement. “We take all complaints of anti-Semitism or other forms of discrimination or harassment seriously.”

In January, Hopkins entered a resolution agreement with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights after the government agency published a lengthy report detailing almost 100 complaints about both antisemitism and Islamophobia made by Johns Hopkins community members from October 2023 through May 2024.

The Office of Civil Rights wrote in its report that it was “concerned that the university did not employ the correct legal standard” in assessing whether incidents created a hostile environment, and that “records generally do not reflect university consideration of whether these and other incidents individually and cumulatively created a hostile environment for its students.”

When university officials signed the resolution, it agreed to conduct trainings for faculty, staff and students as well as a campus climate assessment.

“We are rigorously complying with the terms of the resolution agreement we reached with the Department of Education earlier this year,” the Johns Hopkins spokesperson said. “We will continue to support a safe and respectful campus environment for all members of our community.”

The university is facing the potential loss of more than $200 million a year in federal research grants if a controversial rule change under President Donald Trump’s administration to cap grant funding for indirect costs goes through, according to school officials.