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December Was Filled with Outrage on Campus and Elsewhere; Here’s What Happened
Throughout December, campus BDS and antisemitism remained shaped by the ongoing war in Gaza.
The main event of the month was the appearance of the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before a House committee investigating antisemitism on campus.
Most controversially, the presidents were asked if calls for genocide against Jews would be protected speech.
Then-UPenn president Liz Magill stated that “If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment, yes,” adding that “It is a context dependent decision.” The answer was echoed by Harvard president Claudine Gay, who stated that “it depends on the context,” and MIT president Sally Kornbluth, who noted the school would act “if the speech turns into conduct.” Gay added that calls for intifada were “evil,” and “personally abhorrent,”and “at odds with the values of Harvard,” but declined to say whether they violated university policies.
The presidents’ inept responses provoked a firestorm of criticism from the White House, the public, lawmakers, and alums, and resulted in Magill’s and Gay’s resignations, along with the head of Penn’s board of trustees.
The donor revolt against academia that began in October when universities faltered in issuing statements condemning Hamas widened in December. Several elite institutions, especially Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, reported losing major gifts, missing fundraising targets, lowering the “donor door” for special consideration, and expressing the need to reestablish relationships with alumni.
At the same time, the Hamas attack and the BDS-inspired campus responses have made the larger problem of academia’s intellectual and political monoculture more broadly understood.
This situation has long been cast in terms of political parties, such as the near absolute dominance of Democratic voters and donors within the humanities and social sciences. But the intellectual aspect was fully revealed by support for Hamas’ atrocities from students and professors defending “decolonization” and violence.
In response to the donor revolt at the University of Pennsylvania, some 900 faculty members signed a letter expressing opposition to what was described as “attempts by trustees, donors, and other external actors to interfere with our academic policies and to undermine academic freedom.”
Donor objections to specific presidents and policies, above all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and their powerful bureaucracies, have been in the open since October. Reports from Princeton and elsewhere have shown that concerns from Jewish students are dismissed and even ridiculed by DEI bureaucrats. As calls to dismantle DEI bureaucracies have increased, Jewish organizations have sought to integrate Jewish concerns within existing DEI initiatives. These run counter to the emerging political wave against DEI as a whole.
Faculty members remain at the forefront of “pro-Palestine” activities on campus. “Faculty for Justice in Palestine” chapters continue to be formed, including at Rutgers University, Princeton University, the University of Michigan, the University of Massachusetts, the University of Hawaii, and elsewhere. The groups are formed under the aegis of the leading BDS organization, the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
Faculty groups in December also shifted to issuing statements affirming their right to “academic freedom.” This was cast exclusively terms of “Israel/Palestine” and demands that faculty be given absolute impunity to explicitly politicize pedagogy.
UCLA faculty demanded the university, “Publicly reject the deliberately mendacious and misleading conflation of criticism of the Israeli state with antisemitism,” and “Offer resources, services and accommodations to students, faculty, and staff affected by the genocide in Palestine and mounting repression campaigns.”
University of Wisconsin faculty stated that, “using stereotypes about Jewish people in criticism of Israel would indeed be antisemitic, but simple critique (or even condemnation) of the state of Israel must be protected as part of a healthy educational discourse.”
Swarthmore College faculty claimed that, “The suggestion that the classroom is not a political space or that the College is a neutral institution that is in some way hermetically sealed from our broader geopolitical context contradicts the College’s commitment to rigorous scholarship that engages with the most pressing contemporary issues. This fantasy also obscures the College’s ongoing complicity with U.S. militarism.”
The notion that faculty are among the real victims in campus politics is also widespread. Middle East studies faculty continue to complain that they are being “silenced” and that “academic repression” surrounding “Israel-Palestine” is “widespread.”
Revelations also continue to emerge regarding the antisemitic content forced into K-12 education through ethnic studies curricula, which cast Israelis and Jews as oppressors.
Despite a stream of revelations regarding teachers effectively preaching jihad in the classroom, few have been removed, particularly in systems such as New York City, where union regulations make it nearly impossible. Reports also note the widespread presence of Democratic Socialists of America’ members in schools and on school boards providing protection for anti-Israel and anti-capitalist propaganda. Statements such as that from the Massachusetts Teachers Union accusing the US of complicity in “genocide” confirms the far left and anti-Israel orientation of these groups.
Fortunately in California, the epicenter of ethnic studies, a University of California committee narrowly decided to drop ethnic studies as an admission requirement for the state university system. This would have forced high schools across the state to present such courses, which are have been developed by anti-Israel faculty.
The impacts of anti-Israel sentiment in academia after October 7 has also been felt in informal boycotts of Israeli faculty and institutions. Publications, invitations, collaborations, and requests for sharing of materials and data have reportedly been slowed. These boycotts have the potential for harming Israel’s economic and academic standings, and may have an impact on global science, given Israel’s outsized contributions.
Campus protests continued during December. Sit-ins were undertaken at Swarthmore College, the University of Massachusetts, Vassar College, Stanford University, Harvard University, Occidental College, and New York University, among others.
Many protests were aimed at disrupting university operations. University trustees, presidents, and Jewish events were particular targets:
BDS supporters also undertook a variety of illegal activities. A student referendum on BDS at the University of Michigan was canceled by the administration after pro-Palestinian students illegally accessed a campus wide email system to send messages. At George Washington University, students illegally recorded the university president and edited the audio to make it appear she had expressed “anti-Palestinian” views.
Consistent with the explicit calls to “Globalize the intifada,” public protests and riots ostensibly in support of the “Palestinian cause” were widespread in December. Transportation was specifically targeted. Traffic was stopped on bridges in the New York City area, the 110 freeway in Los Angeles, and the Bay Bridge in Oakland, access roads to JFK Airport, O’Hare Airport, and countless other locations. Grand Central Station, Penn Station, and other rail links were also targeted. Numerous sites including the Lincoln Memorial were vandalized with Free Gaza graffiti.
Christmas and festive celebrations and shopping were disrupted in parks, malls, stores and public venues ,such as midtown Manhattan and London, by protestors declaring “Christmas is canceled.” Assaults and arrests were reported. Protests were also held on Christmas morning outside the homes of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and national Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Efforts to shut down New Year’s celebrations were made in major cities.
The situation in Gaza was the ostensible motive but the actions were undertaken by pro-Palestinian groups as well as a wide array of communist and social groups including The People’s Forum and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. The support for “Palestine” given by climate change personality Greta Thunberg demonstrated the unity of these and other far left causes.
Another direct reflection of “Globalize the Intifada” protests were hundreds of bomb threats and swatting threats called in to Jewish institutions, apparently from outside the US. Violent protests were held outside of Jewish owned business in cities including Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. Property crimes directed against Jewish owned businesses and other sites in New York City also rose 85% in December. S
Shabbat services at Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles were relocated for the first time in history after a pro-Hamas demonstration was scheduled in a park across the street.
The House of Representatives also passed a resolution condemning the October 7 attack and stating that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism. The measure passed 311-14 but 92 Democrats voted “present.” The pro-BDS “Squad” comprised the no votes along with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY).
The increasingly wide distribution of Muslim communities in the US and their growing political action around the single issue of opposing Israel is a growing factor in future electoral calculations, particularly in states such as Michigan, Virginia, and New Jersey.
At the same time pro-Hamas activists have continued to target Democrats. In one incident a Michigan Democratic Party holiday event was disrupted when members of the Palestinian Youth Movement and Party for Socialism and Liberation entered the venue to harass Congresswoman Shri Thanedar (D-MI). The resulting fight sent several individuals to the hospital. Congressman Ritchie Torres (D-NY) was harassed by pro-Hamas protestors at the 92nd Street Y who shouted “Ritchie Torres, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.” Pro-Hamas protestors also vandalized the offices of several Democratic Congressmen. as well as the home of Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA). The willingness to attack politicians is a grave escalation in the war against Israel in the US.
The author is a contributor to SPME, where a version of this article was first published.
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‘The Jewish Spirit’: Holocaust Survivors, Freed Israeli Hostages Gather at Auschwitz for ‘March of the Living’
Holocaust survivors, relatives of Israeli hostages, and survivors of Hamas captivity marched together at Auschwitz for the annual March of the Living on April 24, 2025. Photo: Chen Schimmel
Oswiecim, Poland — Holocaust survivors, relatives of Israeli hostages, and survivors of Hamas captivity marched together at Auschwitz, the infamous former Nazi concentration camp in Poland, for the first time on Thursday, joining Israeli President Isaac Herzog in the annual March of the Living.
The march from Auschwitz I to Auschwitz II-Birkenau — the Nazis’ largest death camp where 1 million Jews were murdered during World War II — took place on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day and included 80 Holocaust survivors, many of whom were also death march survivors, to mark 80 years since the liberation of the camps.
March of the Living president Phyllis Greenberg Heideman addressed the survivors, who were seated next to the gate bearing the notorious inscription, “Work sets you free.”
“It’s a strange thing to say, but we welcome you to Auschwitz,” she said. “You are the true heroes. We will treasure your legacy forever.”
Almog Meir Jan and his mother Orit. Almog was rescued by the IDF on June 5 during the Arnon Mission. Photo: Chen Schimmel
Standing outside the crematoria and gas chambers at Auschwitz I, recently released hostage Eli Sharabi said, “The Holocaust was unlike anything else — we will never forget and never forgive.”
“But our presence here is the triumph of the Jewish spirit. The Jewish people sanctify life, not death. I endured horrors in enemy captivity, but I chose life. That gives me hope to get up each morning and begin rebuilding,” he added.
Sharabi, whose wife and daughters were murdered during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, was released in February after nearly 500 days in captivity. His emaciated appearance as he was paraded through Gaza on his release led to comparisons with concentration camp survivors.
Pro-Israel influencer Shiraz Shukran broke down after seeing Sharabi. The two embraced for several minutes. “Seeing him in real life, in this place, just made it all suddenly seem very close. This is no longer something that happened 80 years ago; it’s continuing until this day,” Shukran told The Algemeiner.
Pro-Israel influencer Shiraz Shukran embracing former hostage Eli Sharabi. Photo: Debbie Weiss / The Algemeiner
In remarks to reporters prior to the march, Herzog called the return of the hostages a “universal human imperative.”
“With a broken heart, I remind us all that although after the Holocaust we vowed, ‘Never again,’ today, even as we stand here, the souls of dozens of Jews again ‘yearn within a cage,’ ‘thirsting for water and for freedom,’ as 59 of our brothers and sisters are held by terrorist murderers in Gaza, in a horrific crime against humanity,” Herzog said, referring to the hostages kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion who remain in captivity.
His Polish counterpart, President Andrzej Duda, said the march was “a dramatic call of ‘never again.’ No more hatred, no more discrimination, no more antisemitism.”
He called for “all wars in the Middle East to end,” and for a two-state solution, which he said was the “most rational solution [to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] that gives hope for achieving stable and lasting peace.”
The two leaders signed the visitors’ book and laid a wreath at Auschwitz’s Black Wall, where the Nazis executed prisoners.
At the march’s opening ceremony, the head of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Matt Brooks, lit one of six candles — representing the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis — and addressed rising antisemitism in the world.
“Jews all over the world fear walking streets with a kippah and it’s unacceptable. College students are being attacked verbally and physically,” he told The Algemeiner.
He praised US President Donald Trump for “combating this scourge.”
“There’s a new sheriff in town. It’s my hope the rest of the world can look to him to see how to support and defend the Jewish community against these vile attacks,” he said.
Matt Brooks, chief executive officer of the Republican Jewish Coalition, with Malcolm Hoenlein, vice chairman emeritus of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Photo: Debbie Weiss / The Algemeiner
In Block 5, where thousands of victims’ eyeglasses are displayed behind glass, Laly Dery told a delegation of Israeli teenagers from the national civil service about her son, Sgt. First Class (res.) Saadia, who fell in battle in Gaza in June.
“Just like my son, who served the country with every fiber of his being, you have earned the enormous privilege of serving the state of Israel,” Dery said.
Derai’s words resonated with Sara Bisan, the only member of the national service delegation not wearing an Israeli flag. Instead, Bisan wore the distinctive multi-colored flag of the Druze community to which she belongs.
“I feel her pain, and it hurts,” Bisan said, reflecting on the death of her own friend from the northern Druze village of Kfar Yarka, who was also killed in Gaza.
“But our people, the Druze and the Jews, share a lot, including a love of Israel. I also feel that serving the state of Israel is a privilege,” she added.
Sara Bisan. Photo: Debbie Weiss / The Algemeiner
Twelve thousand participants marched the 1.7 miles from Auschwitz to Birkenau for the main ceremony, which was cut short this year due to heavy rain.
As thunder echoed overhead, released hostage Agam Berger played the theme from “Schindler’s List” on a 150-year-old violin rescued during the Holocaust. Daniel Weiss, a survivor from Kibbutz Be’eri whose father was murdered on Oct. 7 and whose mother was abducted and later killed in Gaza, performed a musical rendition of the psalm Shir Lamaalot alongside her.
“The Lord will guard you from all evil; He will guard your soul,” Weiss sang, his voice quavering.
The post ‘The Jewish Spirit’: Holocaust Survivors, Freed Israeli Hostages Gather at Auschwitz for ‘March of the Living’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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French Far-Left Party Calls for Ban on Israeli Pop Star Eyal Golan’s Paris Concert
Eyal Golan. Photo: Screenshot
France’s leading far-left party has called for the cancellation of Israeli pop star Eyal Golan’s upcoming concert in Paris, describing him as “a true mouthpiece for supporters of genocide” in Gaza.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the La France Insoumise party (LFI — “France Unbowed”), led by leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, urged the National Assembly — the lower house of the French Parliament — to ban Golan’s upcoming concert, claiming that he “should not come to sing the praises of genocide in Paris.”
“We call for a broad mobilization to prevent this event from taking place,” LFI lawmakers wrote in the statement, referring to Golan’s concert scheduled for May 20. “We ask the prefect to ban it immediately.”
“No one should come to Paris to sing hymns to the genocide of the Palestinian people,” the statement continued.
According to the party, the 54-year-old singer called for “the extermination of the Palestinian people” in a social media post the day after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which he wrote, “Leave no soul alive.”
LFI also said that Golan “repeated the statement a week later, before receiving support from far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir,” who serves as Israel’s national security minister.
In their statement, LFI lawmakers claimed that Golan’s concert, expected to gather more than 4,500 people, “constitutes a real voice for genocide supporters.”
“France cannot tolerate such an unnecessary insult to the thousands of Gaza victims and their loved ones,” the statement read.
In response to these accusations, Liam Productions, the event organizer, denounced the push to cancel Golan’s concert as antisemitic and expressed their eagerness to meet the Jewish community in France, promising a “unifying and special evening.”
“On Holocaust Remembrance Day, as we remember the consequences of staying silent in the face of hate, far-left parties in France seek to boycott an Israeli artist simply because he is Israeli,” the statement read.
“This is not freedom of expression — it is antisemitism disguised as morality. The people of Israel will not be silent, will not apologize, and will not stop singing.”
Mélenchon and his party have a long history of pushing anti-Israel policies and, according to Jewish leaders, of making antisemitic comments — such as suggesting that Jews killed Jesus, echoing a false claim that was used to justify antisemitic violence and discrimination throughout the Middle Ages in Europe.
The French diplomat has been criticized by French Jews as a threat to their community, as well as to those who support Israel.
Mélenchon has previously described the French Jewish community as “an arrogant minority that lectures to the rest.” He has also urged the French government to recognize a “Palestinian state.”
In the wake of the Hamas onslaught on Israel, Mélenchon and his party issued a statement calling the attacks “an armed offensive by Palestinian forces” in response to the ongoing Israeli “occupation.”
Last year, Mélenchon openly expressed support for Hezbollah on social media, as the Iran-backed terrorist organization based in Lebanon continued to clash with Israel.
“Mass killing in Lebanon by Netanyahu’s invading army,” Melenchon wrote in a post on X, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The toll is getting worse by the hour. Full support for the national resistance of the Lebanese.”
France has experienced a disturbing surge in antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7 atrocities, with 1,570 anti-Jewish hate crimes recorded last year.
The total number of antisemitic outrages last year was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022, according to a report by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) — the main representative body of French Jews.
“LFI has given antisemitism a political endorsement,” CRIF president Yonathan Arfi told the French publication Le Point last year. “We observe this toxic porosity between criticism of Israel and the ostracization of French Jews. The Palestinian cause becomes a license to hate.”
In late May and early June, antisemitic acts rose by more than 140 percent in France, far surpassing the weekly average of slightly more than 30 incidents.
The report also found that 65.2 percent of antisemitic acts last year targeted individuals, with more than 10 percent of these offenses involving physical violence.
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Trump Signs Seismic Executive Order on Foreign Funding in Higher Education
US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon shakes hands with Annette Albright next to US President Donald Trump during an event to sign executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 23, 2025. Photo: Leah Millis via Reuters Connect.
US President Donald Trump has signed a seismic executive order to strengthen federal law which colleges and universities have long circumvented to avoid reporting donations they receive from illiberal foreign governments and individuals.
“Protecting American educational, cultural, and national security interests requires transparency regarding foreign funds flowing to American higher education and research institutions,” Trump said in the order, which was signed in the Oval Office in the presence of the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon on Wednesday. “It is the policy of my administration to end the secrecy surrounding foreign funds in American educational institutions, protect the marketplace of ideas from propaganda sponsored by foreign governments, and safeguard America’s students and research from foreign exploitation.”
The executive order noted that during Trump’s first term in office, the Education Department launched investigations of 19 higher education institutions suspected of concealing foreign donations and any undue influence the immense sums may have gained the country from which they originated — inquiries that led to the disclosure of $6.5 billion worth of unreported gifts. The Biden administration, he said, “undid” that work, “hindering public access to information on foreign gifts and contracts.”
The remainder of the order enumerates enforcement duties delegated to McMahon, which include reversing Biden-era policies which countenanced lax observance of the law — Section 117 of the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965 — updating the public on the department’s findings, and impounding federal funds appropriated to institutions that continue to shroud their foreign donations behind a veil of secrecy and corporate spin.
“Unfortunately, in the last four years, the Biden administration undermined the structures the president built to do this critical work, allowing nations like China and Qatar to funnel billions of dollars to US universities with little to no oversight,” McMahon said in a statement. “This financial infiltration enabled foreign governments to steal taxpayer-funded intellectual property and reshape how our elite campuses teach about Israel and the Middle East.”
Foreign money in higher education is an issue to which scholars and nonprofit groups have called attention for years, arguing that it is an instrument of hostile powers that aim to distort US foreign policy by exposing students to propaganda or other ideas which undermine faith in liberal values such as free markets, limited government, and freedom of the press. Some of it is used to rehabilitate the reputations of authoritarian governments, a tactic which, experts argue, effectively converts the openness of American society into a force of its own self-subversion.
For example, according to the 2017 National Association of Scholars (NAS) report “Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education,” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for years planted “Confucius Institutes” at universities across the US, teaching students that Taiwan is Chinese territory while censoring darker moments in the regime’s history, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre that killed thousands of Chinese citizens. The institutes, the report added, came with substantial financial benefits, such as extra funds for the University at Buffalo’s Asian studies department and “opera costumes and materials in the lobby of Binghamton University.”
At other times, the Confucius Institutes were allegedly used as bases from which to conduct espionage and theft of American research and intellectual property.
NAS president Peter Wood told The Algemeiner on Thursday that Trump’s executive order is the right move, but that higher education will “resist” complying with it.
“What is at stake here is not just compliance with a good accounting principle. What is really at stake is the contempt with which many college and university presidents regard America’s national interest,” Wood said. “Allowing our universities to become beholden to the Chinese Community Party endangers Americans. The National Association of Scholars has helped to track the theft of intellectual property, the duplicity of American researchers, and the diversion research programs all under the influence of Chinese funding. China is far from the only source of such subversive funding, but it is by far the largest source.”
He added, “President Trump’s forceful executive order will go a long way towards curing this problem. We can be under no illusion, however, that America’s colleges and universities will cheerfully comply. They have a long record of ignoring lawful requirements for such disclosure and they are now more eager than ever to demonstrate their defiance of America’s laws. In light of other executive orders against [diversity, equity, and inclusion] and other forms of academic malfeasance, dozens of prominent research universities are openly declaring that they intend to resist.”
NAS has recorded copious data on foreign funding of higher education, notably in the Foreign Donor Database it created in 2024 that led to the uncovering of vast sums the Qatari government had pumped into American universities — Cornell University received over $322 million, for example, from the Qatar National Research Fund between 2015 and 2018 — to promote pro-Hamas propaganda.
Alex Joffe, anthropologist and editor of BDS Monitor for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), told The Algemeiner that Qatar has “given billions to universities, including to share their Middle East studies program which then in turn develop and disseminate K-12 curriculums which are dramatically anti-Israel, antisemitic, and pro-Islamist.”
The donation of billions of unreported dollars to US institutions of higher education is strongly correlated with an erosion of liberal democratic norms and increased antisemitism on college campuses, according to a 2023 report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) titled, “The Corruption of the American Mind.”
From 2015-2020, the report noted, schools that accepted money from Middle Eastern donors had, on average, 300 percent more antisemitic incidents than schools that did not accept such donations. The largest donor it named is Qatar, which former US President Joe Biden described in 2022 as a “major non-NATO ally.” From 2014-2019, Qatar gave American universities a striking $2.7 billion in undocumented funds.
Additionally, students attending universities that received foreign funding witnessed antisemitism “significantly more often” than those attending schools that did not.
“A lack of transparency in funding reporting occurred in tandem with antidemocratic norms and antisemitism across American institutions of higher education,” the report said. “A massive influx of foreign, concealed donations to American institutions of higher learning, much of it from authoritarian regimes with notable support from Middle Eastern sources, reflects or supports heightened levels of intolerance towards Jews, open inquiry, and free expression.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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