After the midterms: the pro-Israel senior official resigned

Hermit Dillon, head of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, resigned today from her position, two days after the midterm elections in which Republicans lost control of Congress. Dillon led the legal fight against antisemitism at universities, including a $200 million settlement with Columbia.

Hermit Dillon, head of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, resigned today (Thursday) from her position, two days after the midterm elections in which Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress. Dillon, who took office in April 2025, was one of the prominent figures in the Trump administration's fight against antisemitism, and led legal pressure on universities suspected of abandoning Jewish and Israeli students and faculty. According to Bloomberg, Dillon told her associates beforehand that she intended to leave after the elections, and previously expressed an intention to return to her law firm in California. The circumstances of the decision have not yet been clarified publicly. In September, in a speech before the Israeli-American Community Organization (IAC), Dillon defined the rise in antisemitism as a "national crisis" and noted that the Justice Department had investigated more than 100 educational institutions. Settlements with universities including Columbia, Northwestern, Cornell, and Brown totaled nearly half a billion dollars. In February of this year, the department filed a lawsuit against the University of California, alleging it allowed a hostile work environment for Jews and Israelis on the UCLA campus.