Chandler Thornton is the chairman of the College Republican National Committee. Follow him on Twitter @chandlerUSA. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles on CNN.

(CNN) On Wednesday President Donald Trump signed an executive order taking aim at anti-Semitism on campus by underscoring that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects Jews who face discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin.

In accordance with the executive order, the Department of Education may withhold funding under Title VI to institutions that turn a blind eye to anti-Jewish bias. At the center of the need for this action is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, a movement to delegitimize Israel.

Chandler Thornton

In theory, an economic and cultural boycott of a country as a form of punishment or protest does not necessarily present issues of prejudice. In the case of the BDS campaign, however, it does and to understand why, we need to look at context and content -- both the longstanding patterns of discrimination and animosity against Jews, as well as the language and effects of the BDS campaign.

The context is straightforward: the persecution of Jews has been a defining feature of history, from Roman oppression and expulsion, through the blood libels, forced conversion, and massacres of the European Middle Ages, to the nightmarish Holocaust of Hitler's Germany in the 20th Century.

Israel was created in the aftermath of the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II. When attempts are made to cause the nation of Israel to collapse, the result is that Jews are denied a right to self-determination in the only safe haven they have ever known.