Attacks against Jews in the US continued in April, including the arson attack against the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion on the first night of Passover. The suspect, Cody Balmer, was apparently motivated by Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro’s “plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people” and stated Shapiro “needs to stop having my friends killed” and “our people have been put through too much by that monster.”

Balmer stated further to police that he planned to attack Shapiro with a hammer.

Elsewhere, an arrest was finally made in the case of two Jewish students at DePaul University who were brutally attacked in November 2024. Three Pittsburgh residents were also indicted for vandalizing a Jewish facility and lying to Federal investigators. One self declared “Hamas operative” was also charged with building pipe bombs.

Despite the appearance of protests having slowed, pro-Hamas demonstrations continued in April on campuses and elsewhere:

• Seventeen students were arrested at Michigan State University protest organized by the local SJP chapter and other anti-Israel groups. Protestors had occupied the lobby of an administration building;
• Protestors at Princeton University disrupted a talk by former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, eventually pulling a fire alarm that emptied the hall. Protestors yelled “Go back to Europe,” “They’re all f***ing inbred!” and “inbred swine!” at attendees.
• Pro-Hamas protestors chased and harassed another University of Michigan regent, Sarah Hubbard, at her home, yelling “Your money has gone to kill Palestinian children. Your money has killed our families. We are your students, you answer to us.”
• In response to the Hubbard incident and others, local police and FBI raided the homes of TAHRIR members and supporters. Electronic devices were confiscated but no arrests were made;
• The Occidental College SJP disrupted the presidential inauguration, vandalized an administration building, and then launched a hunger strike, “consuming only water with zero-calorie electrolyte powder”;
• A building at Dartmouth College was vandalized with red paint during prospective student visits. The perpetrators stated “Let the blood that drips from Dartmouth Hall remind you of the price of silence”;
• A talk by Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir at Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn resulted in violent protests which resulted in several arrests;
• Protestors waved Hamas flags outside of Auschwitz on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Predictably, news accounts have focused on alleged wrongdoing by Jewish counter-protestors:

• In the aftermath of the Brooklyn protests, media coverage focused on the alleged harassment of an individual by Jewish counter-protestors rather than the attempted “flood” of a Jewish neighborhood by an antisemitic mob organized by the Bronx Palestine Solidarity Committee and led by a BLM operative to “rise up against” the “racist Zionist Chabad-Lubavitch”;
• In the aftermath of the violent encampment that occurred in May 2024 on the campus of UCLA, the Los Angeles City Attorney has charged two Jewish counter-protestors and referred only one of the 300 pro-Hamas protestors for a diversionary hearing. The remainder of charges were dropped “due to a university’s failure or inability to assist in identification or other information needed for prosecution;”
• Two Harvard students facing assault charges for beating an Israeli student in 2023 will not face trial but “complete anger management programming, a Harvard course on negotiation, and 80 hours of community service — without the court-mandated apology that the District Attorney’s office had requested.”

Reports indicate universities have formed informal collectives to coordinate responses to the Trump administration but many, including Harvard and George Washington University, have hired well-connected Washington lobbying firms in order to aid with their messaging and restore relations with both Congress and the White House.  

A statement released by the American Association of Colleges and Universities and signed by over 150 institutional leaders decried “unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education,” but claimed, “We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses.” Antisemitism was not mentioned.

Reductions in Federal funding have prompted universities to seek alternatives including commercial loans and both taxable and tax exempt municipal bonds in addition to tapping endowments, most of which are comprised of investment vehicles with donor restrictions.

Brown University announced it was negotiating loans while Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Northwestern announced they would be issuing bonds. In the past universities have typically issued bonds for capital projects. Unconfirmed reports suggest Yale University has begun to sell holdings in order to avoid potential capital gains should its tax exempt status be revoked.

Georgetown University, however, renewed its agreement with the Qatar Foundation regarding the university’s Qatari campus for another 10 years. The university also awarded the President’s Medal to an outspoken Hamas supporter. A new study indicates that Qatar and China remain the largest donors to US universities. Overall, $29 billion in foreign donations were made to American universities from 2021 to 2024, a tremendous increase over previous years.

Faculty members have been outspoken in opposition to new Trump administration policies, and in some cases, their own institutions’ responses. This has primarily taken the form of public letters demanding resistance and depictions of the dire effects of budget cuts on medicine and science. Little mention has been made of the specific antisemitism or DEI concerns that motivated the administration’s moves. One notable example came from Columbia medical faculty and staff demanding the trustees oppose the Trump administration, support foreign students, reimplement DEI, and provide backup funding for research. In the case of Dartmouth College, faculty have condemned the president’s decision not to sign an industry-wide letter attacking the Trump administration.

Faculty senates have emerged as centers of “resistance.” Some continue to condemn disciplinary procedures for pro-Hamas demonstrators, such as at the University of Wisconsin. A faculty authored report at Columbia University also condemned the university for not deescalating the May 2024 building takeover by allowing the perpetrators to simply leave without the police becoming involved.

Jewish faculty members at a variety of institutions have also issued letters decrying the administration’s move and in support of students. These are complemented by explicit claims that higher education is indeed being destroyed in the name of the Jews. These and similar statements are designed to position progressive Jews as defenders of the status quo and to evade blame for unwanted changes. 

Students have continued their opposition to Israel by supporting a variety of pseudo-academic presentations, such as that at the University of Massachusetts on “Resisting the New McCarythism & Complicity.” Another covert intervention was documented at Harvard Law School where a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon targeted the web pages of major law firms that were critical of student protests.

A typical example was changing the term “antisemitic incidents” to “pro-Palestinian protests.” At the same time, reports indicate that dozens of students have requested the removal of op-eds or their names from pro-Palestinian opinion pieces published in student newspapers.

Disciplinary actions against pro-Hamas protestors continued in April: 

• The Bryn Mawr College chapters of SJP and JVP were placed on interim suspension after disrupting an admitted student event. They then protested a trustee meeting;
• The Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee was suspended and its events canceled until July after it violated regulations on campus demonstrations;
• McMaster University suspended the Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights pending an investigation into the group’s misconduct;
• McGill University revoked a memorandum of understanding with the school’s student society after the group orchestrated a three day strike in support of Palestinian rights that involved blocking campus access and vandalizing an administration building.

Maintenance staff at Columbia University have filed a lawsuit against pro-Hamas students and organizations alleging they were held hostage and both physically and verbally abused in the May 2024 building takeover. Named in the suit are a number of professional organizers as well as organizations including The People’s Forum, WESPAC, National SJP, and American Muslims for Palestine.   

Pro-Hamas organizing in the K-12 sector remains at crisis levels. But in what might be a sign that universities are responding to both Trump administration financial pressure and unwelcome publicity, Brown University announced it was discontinuing a curriculum development program that had been severely criticized for its anti-Israel content.

At the same time, however, the Rhode Island General Assembly is considering legislation that would mandate Ethnic Studies in the state’s public high schools.

Teachers unions and educational consultants continue to center anti-Israel and antisemitic curricula. The American Educational Research Association’s annual conference, for example, will feature 23 round tables which include “Palestine” with numerous individual presentations emphasizing “decolonization,” “liberation,” the “right to resist,” as well as “occupation, genocide, and settler-colonial and imperial violence.”

Similarly, the Oregon Educators for Palestine has announced plans to hold a “community teach-in” on “Teaching Palestine” alongside “Rethinking Schools” and the Portland Association of Teachers’ Social Justice and Community Outreach Committee.

In a recent local example, the Pajaro Valley Unified School District (CA) Board of Trustees voted unanimously to continue a contract with the ethnic studies curriculum provider Community Responsive Education, whose product includes endorsements of boycotting Israel. The debate over the curriculum was also notable for the overt antisemitic comments from at least one trustee, who accused Jews of being “segregationists” with “economic power.”

Meanwhile, the California Department of Education has found that the Campbell Union High School District used biased content and systematically discriminated against Jewish students.

New York City School Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos was also forced to apologize after the monthly Office of Student Pathways Newsletter, sent to select teachers and parents, included a bullet point entitled “Guidelines for teaching about genocide” and which linked to a US Campaign for Palestinian Rights document titled “STOP GAZA GENOCIDE TOOLKIT.” Aviles-Ramos has ordered a “thorough investigation.”

The University of California Academic Senate voted down a proposal to make Ethnic Studies an admission requirement for the state’s universities. The core of the proposal demanded that students study “dominant cultures, institutions, and structures that perpetuate racial violence, white supremacy, and other forms of oppression.”

The working group which made the proposal is comprised of academics from the system’s Ethnic Studies Council, which has made repeated efforts to implant its anti-Israel bias in various parts of the university and K-12 enterprises.

The author is a contributor to SPME, where a different version of this article was first published.

The post Attacks on College Campuses Continued in April; But Universities Are Beginning to Fight Back first appeared on Algemeiner.com.