This past July, Leo Terrell stepped onto the stage at the Israel on Campus Coalition National Leadership Summit, the largest pro-Israel student gathering in the United States. As he stood before the crowd, he explained why he was wearing a red baseball cap. It was not the signature MAGA hat supporting his boss, President Donald Trump, but one with the words “Hadar Goldin” on them.
“He was a member of the IDF, and in 2014, during a ceasefire, he was murdered and kidnapped, and he has been in the possession of Hamas for 10 years,” he said. “I met his mother and his twin brother. Hadar Goldin should never be forgotten. We have an obligation to make sure he’s returned home. A mother has a right to bury her son.”
Whenever Terrell makes a public appearance, he wears the hat.
“I want people to know his name,” he declared in a social media post. “I want to tell his story – because he and the other hostages have to be returned.”
Terrell isn’t Jewish. He’s Black, practices the Baptist faith, and worked as a civil rights attorney and media commentator for more than three decades. However, after seeing the horrors of what happened on October 7, Terrell, who was a contributor at Fox News at the time, started to speak up.
“It was a loss of humanity,” he told the Journal. “You saw innocent people being murdered, raped, and brutalized because they were Israeli. Because they were Jews. For one day in this country, we were all united that this was wrong. But that changed on October 8, which I found to be very offensive. Never in my life had I seen hatred towards the Jewish people.”
Terrell kept speaking up, and this past January, President Trump nominated him as Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division and the chair of the Department of Justice’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.
“I love this country, and I think President Trump is the right president for the current time we’re in,” he said. “He gave me the opportunity to work here with a great Attorney General, Pam Bondi.”
Since taking on the role, Terrell said it’s been a 24/7 job. Along with posting nonstop on X and retweeting pro-Israel, pro-Jewish accounts, he was tasked with visiting and assessing 10 universities, including Columbia, Harvard, and UCLA, that have experienced a surge in antisemitism since October 7.
“There has been 20 years of indoctrination at the college and university level,” Terrell said. “You have foreign money coming into this country. These universities are well financed, and there are conditions to bring in antisemitic professors. What you see now is that these universities are a breeding ground for the hate and antisemitism.”
Now, the DOJ is also focusing on K-12 public schools.
“The curriculum is so offensive, and we have received so much information and documentation about what is being allowed in public schools,” said Terrell, a Los Angeles native. “The teachers unions are antisemitic in my opinion, and they control the public schools, including the ones in California. They turned their backs on Jewish students and allowed this type of hate to fester. It’s everywhere.”
The purpose of the task force is to examine what’s happening at schools and take away funding if necessary. Terrell could not disclose the DOJ’s specific plans for dealing with public schools, but he said, “these schools are on notice. They have been notified that they should be looking at the way they treat Jewish students. There will be investigations.”
Though many Jewish parents have chosen to take their children out of public school and put them into private Jewish schools, Terrell wants to ensure that they have a choice going forward. Simply leaving is not the solution.
“All parents should have the right to send their kids to public schools,” he said. “They should be able to send to their school of choice, public or private, without being fearful of hate speech or some type of retaliation because of protected class status.”
The same applies to universities.
“If you’re a Black student, I don’t think you’d be afraid of going on the Columbia University campus and seeing someone wearing a Ku Klux Klan robe,” he said. “But Jewish people have that fear. Black and brown people and women have no problem going to public schools – but Jews do. It’s now popular to hate Jewish people. It’s OK to be antisemitic. There needs to be swift justice legally and criminally.”
Taking away funding from institutions plagued by antisemitism has been one effective tactic. Another is to bring about hate crime charges against individuals when applicable.
“When I got my job here, fighting antisemitism by way of hate crime charges was not a priority, and I found that to be outrageous,” he said. “With all these things going on since October 7, how many hate crime charges were filed by the local DA in LA, Boston, Chicago, or New York? None. It wasn’t a priority. They kept calling it ‘freedom of speech.’ No. I know what freedom of speech is. Assaulting and intimidating citizens because of their ethnicity and religious beliefs? That is not freedom of speech.”
When Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, the two Israeli embassy staffers, were shot and killed in Washington, D.C. in May, the DOJ brought federal hate crime and first-degree murder charges against the alleged killer.
“That is a deterrent,” said Terrell. “Take money away, bring hate crime charges, put people in jail. Take away their liberty. That’s what you will see from President Trump and Attorney General Bondi.”
The Jewish community has been baffled by the amount of antisemitism, especially after October 7, the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. Terrell is equally as stunned.
“When you look at Canada, the UK, and France, it’s almost like, what in the hell is going on here?” he said. “A consensus of people are saying it’s OK to hate Jews and Israelis. And this is not just a Jewish issue: this is an American and Western civilization issue. As a civil rights attorney all my life, there is this obligation to stand up.”
Terrell acknowledged how Jews and Blacks marched together to end segregation and bring about equal rights for the Black community.
“I am glad to be the Black face of this task force because if anyone knows the history of this country, they’d know that Jews were at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement,” he said. “They were co-founders of the NAACP and walked with Black Americans in the ‘60s. Two Jewish activists (Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner) were murdered in 1964 because they were working on behalf of the movement.”
While Terrell has been bombarded with reports of antisemitism since starting – and witnessed the worst of humanity – he has also found inspiration within the Jewish community.
“I’ve gone to so many memorials and Jewish-related activities, and you can really see the cohesiveness of the community,” he said. “You can feel it at every event. They are all together. They are unified. I could feel the warmth inside my body when experiencing the closeness and love.”
Terrell, who has photos of hostages on the wall of his office, has not yet been to Israel.
“I’ve been invited so many times it’s unbelievable,” he said. “I plan to go. It warms my heart every day when I do this job, but there is so much work to be done. I thank President Trump and Pam Bondi for allowing me to do it.”
So, what gives Terrell hope in these challenging times?
“I can see the possibility of eradicating antisemitism and getting back to some sense of normalcy, where Jewish Americans will not have to fear hatred as they walk down the street.”
“I can see the possibility of eradicating antisemitism and getting back to some sense of normalcy, where Jewish Americans will not have to fear hatred as they walk down the street,” he said. “If I commit myself and this administration commits itself and puts those guardrails up, the Jewish community will be in the same situation afforded to all Americans. That’s the ultimate goal. We’re going for nothing short of that.”
Leo Terrell encourages anyone who has experienced or witnessed antisemitism to file a report with the DOJ by visiting civilrights.justice.gov.
