Who Is on Trump’s Antisemitism Task Force?

President Trump has made it clear that he intends to crack down on alleged antisemitism in higher education, and he’s using the newly formed Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism to do so.

In its first two months, the multi-agency conglomerate has pulled millions in federal funding from Columbia University. Additionally, the group is planning to visit 10 college campuses and four cities accused of permitting antisemitism; filed a statement of interest on a lawsuit led by Jewish students against the University of California, Los Angeles; and launched other investigations into the University of California system and Harvard University.

And the task force doesn’t plan to take its foot off the gas any time soon, recent public statements suggest.

“The Task Force remains committed to awarding federal funds responsibly and holding institutions accountable for taking decisive action against anti-Semitic harassment,” a March 31 news release said. The panel will “continue its efforts to root out anti-Semitism and to refocus our institutions of higher learning on the core values that undergird a liberal education,” a member added.

The Department of Justice convened the task force Feb. 3 in response to the president’s executive order aimed at combating antisemitism, though Trump’s directive never explicitly calls for the establishment of such a panel.

Attorney General Pam Bondi oversees and coordinates the group, which also includes Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Justice Department has said the task force will include “other agencies as it develops,” though none aside from the General Services Administration have since been publicly identified.)

To date, the task force’s most notable action has centered around Columbia University. The panel conducted a four-day review into Columbia before it punitively retracted $400 million in grants and contracts. The group then gave Columbia just over a week to comply with a lengthy list of demands. Critics said the demands violated academic freedom, but the Ivy League institution capitulated, agreeing to all but one item on the list. The task force has yet to restore the funding, however.

And now the task force is moving its target toward Harvard, where nearly $9 billion in grants and contracts are on the line. The task force announced Monday that it will review the Cambridge-based university’s funding to “ensure the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities.”

Neither the Justice nor Education Departments have explicitly said who is serving on the task force, but news releases, letters and lawsuits offer some hints. Beyond Trump’s cabinet members, Course Strat has identified five members of the group. Their experience in college and university oversight is limited, and only some have direct personal ties to Judaism and antisemitic discrimination, a review of their backgrounds shows.

Here’s what we know about the publicly identified task force members who aren’t secretaries.

Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights

Terrell is the head of the task force. An attorney, Terrell was originally known for hosting a talk radio show and his vocal support of O.J. Simpson in the 1990s.

A former member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, he began to shift toward the Republican Party in the early 2000s, when he endorsed a GOP-nominated appeals court judge. Over the years, he was a regular on Fox News, and in January 2020, he appeared as a “liberal foil” on the channel, blaming President Trump for the rise in antisemitism, according to The Forward, a Jewish news organization. Then, just 10 months later, he posted on what is now X that no Jewish American voter should support then–presidential candidate Joe Biden due to his alleged failure to denounce antisemitic remarks. (Fox put Terrell on the payroll as a contributor in January 2021.)

Since then, the attorney’s political affiliation with the MAGA Republicans has been rather clear, as has his fixation on addressing the alleged antisemitism caused by pro-Palestinian protests, particularly after the Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent war in Gaza. He has even called himself “Terrell 2.0.”

Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service

Gruenbaum has been a vocal member of the task force, and he told Jewish news media that his career shift, from high-profile investment firms to a little-known federal agency that serves as a procurement hub for the federal government, was intentional.

Gruenbaum, who has a J.D. and an M.B.A., developed a specialization in mergers, acquisitions and corporate governance through his time at global investment firms like KKR & Co. and Moelis & Co. He was not originally set to be a member of the task force but told Jewish Insider he reached out to offer assistance shortly after the group was announced.

“It struck me as very obvious that FAS is sitting in the center … the task force is multi-agency, and GSA almost embodies the idea of being interagency itself,” Gruenbaum told Insider. “It was well-received immediately by the DOJ, HHS and ED. So it’s been a very embracing and collaborative relationship.”

Having grown up in an Orthodox Jewish community in New Jersey as the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, Gruenbaum believes it is “a privilege to do business with the federal government,” according to Insider. Under the Trump administration, he said that a key standard will be ensuring partner companies do “not tolerate hate in the form of antisemitism.”

Thomas Wheeler, acting general counsel of the Department of Education

Wheeler first became involved with the Trump administration during the president’s first term. Wheeler served in the DOJ as acting assistant attorney general for civil rights throughout 2017 and as a senior adviser in the Department of Education in 2018.

The acting general counsel was one of three task force members who signed a letter to Columbia University, outlining the set of demands that the university had to meet in order to regain access to federal funding.

Before working under Trump, Wheeler had been a counsel to former vice president Mike Pence during his time as governor of Indiana. He earned both his J.D. and bachelor’s degrees at Indiana University.

Sean Keveney, acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services

Keveney worked in the Department of Justice for nearly 16 years before taking on his latest role in the Trump administration. His most recent role was as a senior counsel to the assistant attorney general in the civil rights division.

Before entering the DOJ, Keveney worked as a judicial law clerk for William Garwood, a judge appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit by former president Ronald Reagan. Keveney earned his J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and has a master’s degree from Oxford University.

Stephen Ehikian, acting GSA administrator

Ehikian was previously a vice president for AI products at Salesforce, a business software company. In the news release announcing his most recent appointment, he described himself as a “serial entrepreneur” and said, much like Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, his core focus will be “making government work smarter and faster.”

Ehikian graduated from Yale with a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering and economics and later earned an M.B.A. from Stanford University. He has yet to be quoted in any task force news releases or formally named as a member of the task force. However, he was named as a defendant in the American Association of University Professors’ lawsuit challenging the task force’s Columbia actions.