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Why Antisemitism, Anger and Intolerance Have Infected America’s Ivy League Colleges — Part Two
We recently examined the alarming escalation in antisemitism seen on US college campuses — specifically at the Ivy League universities of Harvard, Yale, Cornell, and Columbia — since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7.
In this second part, we will look at the remaining four Ivy Leagues, charting how America’s most elite educational establishments have become havens of intolerance, and why so many of their students harbor such hatred toward both Jews and the State of Israel.
University of Pennsylvania
Two weeks before Hamas’ barbaric rampage through southern Israeli communities resulted in the biggest loss of Jewish life in a day since the Holocaust, the University of Pennsylvania was embroiled in an antisemitism scandal when notorious Jew-hating musician Roger Waters was invited to speak on campus during an anti-Israel festival.
Waters, who is best known as a founding member of the rock band Pink Floyd and for goose-stepping on-stage while dressed as a Nazi, was asked to address attendees at the “Palestine Writes Literature Festival” before he was banned from campus following a backlash by critics who had noted that the event was scheduled to coincide with the Jewish High Holiday period, thus reducing the likelihood of Jewish students protesting antisemitic speakers.
In the lead-up to the festival, which went ahead as scheduled with Waters speaking remotely, numerous incidents of antisemitism were recorded on campus, including a swastika that was drawn inside the school’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design, and the arrest of a man who entered the Penn Hillel and screamed statements such as, “F—k the Jews” and “They killed JC,” a reference to the myth that Jews are responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.
In light of the Waters controversy, UPenn President Liz Magill belatedly announced her personal commitment to addressing antisemitism at the college, adding: “The University of Pennsylvania has a long and proud history of being a place for people of all backgrounds and faiths, and acts of antisemitism have no place at Penn.”
How utterly hollow those words were.
In the days and weeks after Hamas terrorists murdered and kidnapped more than 1,200 Israeli civilians, UPenn has again allowed antisemitism to rear its head on campus.
The university administration’s first statement to condemn the Hamas atrocity was more than a week after the massacre took place. On Sunday, October 15, Magill sent an email to the university community. “I want to leave no doubt about where I stand,” it said. “I, and this university, are horrified by and condemn Hamas’s terrorist assault on Israel and their violent atrocities against civilians. There is no justification — none — for these heinous attacks…”
However, the email apparently only came after Jon Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah and former US ambassador to China, Russia, and Singapore, told Magill that his charitable organization, the Huntsman Foundation, would be pulling donations from the university over the issue of antisemitism.
For some UPenn students, though, the email’s failure to mention Palestinians was akin to not recognizing their “existence,” and they organized a mass walkout of classes in response.
Videos and photos taken of the protest show students chanting slogans such as, “Intifada, Intifada,” “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “Israel, Israel, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.” A handful of students reportedly harassed a rabbi who was manning a tefillin stand on the route marchers took.
Other wealthy UPenn donors have since followed Huntsman’s lead and pulled funding from the college, including Marc Rowan, who contributed more than $50 million in 2018, and Steve Eisman, who demanded his name be removed from a university scholarship.
NEW Canary Mission profile. Tara Tarawneh, a student at @Penn & writer for Penn’s student newspaper, glorified the massacre of Jews at a pro-Hamas rally: “I remember feeling so empowered and happy…I want all of you to hold that feeling in your hearts.” https://t.co/38Lj7qBtQ5 pic.twitter.com/MxDrYMLGWx
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) November 5, 2023
Princeton University
In August of this year, Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli wrote a letter to Princeton University’s senior leadership about a book that was approved to go on the syllabus of the Near Eastern Studies Department’s “Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global South” course.
The book, “The Healing Humanities: The Right to Maim,” written by Jasbir Puar, falsely claims that Israel harvests the organs of Palestinians and that the country has a policy of trying to maim Palestinians.
Despite the text promoting a modern-day blood libel, Princeton’s President Christopher L. Eisgruber refused to remove the text from the syllabus on the grounds that it would be “censoring” the curriculum.
“Those who disagree with a book, or a syllabus, are free to criticize it but not to censor it,” he wrote. “Such arguments are the lifeblood of a great university, where controversies must be addressed through deliberation and debate, not administrative fiat.”
However, one must question the sincerity of Eisgruber’s view about fighting censorship, considering the fact that under his tenure, Princeton scrubbed the name of America’s 28th President, Woodrow Wilson, from its public policy school on the basis that Wilson’s “racist thinking and policies make him an inappropriate namesake for a school or college whose scholars, students and alumni must stand firmly against racism in all its forms.”
Incidentally, as Michael Goldstein pointed out in the Jewish Journal, the inclusion of Puar’s antisemitic tome in the curriculum actually marked the second time the “Israelis harvest Palestinian organs” blood libel had been legitimized on campus. Just months before the Puar controversy, professional Palestinian activist Mohammed El-Kurd, who has accused Israelis of eating Palestinian organs and lusting after their blood, was paid to give the Edward Said lecture at the university’s English Department.
Many in Princeton’s undergraduate student body have also been gunning to pass a resolution in support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which seeks to isolate and eventually dismantle the Jewish state.
What followed a March 2022 vote on BDS was reminiscent of something out of a banana republic. In total, 44 percent of students voted in favor, 40 percent voted against, and 16 percent abstained, which was supposed to mean the resolution immediately failed, because abstentions prevented a majority.
However, a dispute ensued about how abstentions would be counted, with Eric Periman, then-president of the Princeton Committee on Palestine (PCP), which sponsored the resolution, arguing the pro-BDS camp had won.
Around the same time that PCP was pushing for Princeton to support BDS, the group made crystal clear its real target when it held a protest outside the campus Center for Jewish Life (CJL), in which protestors held signs with phrases commonly used by Hamas such as, “from the river to the sea” and during which PCP President Periman suggested Princeton’s Jewish students were complicit in human rights violations.
Dartmouth College
Two pro-Palestinian students were arrested at Dartmouth last month after they allegedly trespassed on the grounds of the university’s Parkhurst Hall late at night and threatened to “escalate” and take “physical action” against college administrators in a document titled the “Dartmouth New Deal,” which demands the school divest from “Israeli apartheid.”
“You have until the first day of the winter term to publicly address our demands and outline a plan to meet them. If you fail to do so, we will escalate and take further action,” the document reportedly warned.
The arrests followed at least one pro-Palestinian rally in which attendees reportedly chanted, “Israel is a terror state.”
Breaking News:
Around 1AM today, Hanover Police arrested two pro-Palestinian protesters who were camped on Parkhurst Hall’s front lawn, charging them with a misdemeanor for criminal trespassing. The two students were released on bail later in the morning. pic.twitter.com/PSNBncJ0SC
— The Dartmouth Review (@DartmouthReview) October 28, 2023
However, while Dartmouth has grappled with more isolated incidents of anti-Jewish hatred on campus, including a swastika being carved on the college green and a public menorah being shot at with pellets, it should be noted that the general response by the university leadership to the Israel-Hamas war last month has been commendable.
Spearheaded by a group of Middle Eastern academics at the college, two public forums were set up on October 9 that featured professors from Israel, Lebanon, and Egypt discussing the conflict, which were attended by hundreds of students in-person and online.
Encouraging students to attend the forums, the university’s President Sian Leah said: “I watched with growing horror the Hamas attack on Israel this weekend, the escalating violence, and the devastating loss of life, especially among civilians… In every conflict, one of the most important roles a university can play is to help us understand it, and to make a space for dialogue and community.”
Leah’s dither-free response to the attacks, which was in stark contrast to the leaders of so many other colleges, was a welcome change from her predecessor Philip Hanlon, whose role in attempting to hire BDS-supporting Professor N. Bruce Duthu as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences had been criticized as another “chapter in the school’s history of anti-Semitism.”
Brown University
Brown’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), an organization that has a well-documented history of disseminating vicious anti-Israel propaganda and vilifying Jewish students, was already organizing pro-Palestinian campus protests as Hamas terrorists were still cutting their bloodsoaked path through southern Israel.
In addition to organizing several student walkouts, the group posted on October 12 a statement to its Instagram account in which it claimed Israel was responsible for the Hamas massacre, and stated that it stands in “solidarity with the Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation.”
At one such campus rally, an SJP member was captured on film telling the crowd: “Palestinians will die for justice and will die to return to our land. Glory to our martyrs from the river to the sea … Palestine is the hope of the world.”
Apparently, explicitly supporting a proscribed terrorist organization that is sworn to the destruction of both Jews and Israel is not enough to get the group banned from Brown’s campus.
Although Brown University’s President Christina H. Paxson has opposed calls for the college to adopt a pro-BDS stance, the school’s response to antisemitism among the Brown community has been criticized, particularly after several high-profile incidents at the college over the past two years, including swastikas drawn around campus and antisemitic threats directed toward Brown Hillel.
It is not so difficult to explain why so many students — many of whom would proudly describe themselves as “anti-fascist” — are so intolerant toward Jews and Israel.
Wall Street Journal columnist Barton Swaim described the scenes on American campuses as a product of the Marxist theories that have been taught for decades in higher education establishments:
That’s why they particularly hate Israel—a wealthy nation among neighbors whose poverty is relieved only by oil revenue. Israel is the one country in the Middle East where ordinary people stand a good chance of creating prosperity for themselves and their families. For modern progressive academics, weaned on the Marxian concept that wealth is the result of exploitation, that is precisely the reason for Israel’s guilt. They can’t behold its prosperity without concluding that the Jews have stolen their wealth from their neighbors.”
And that is the crux of it: for American students, Israel and Jews are privileged, and privilege is the new original sin.
The post Why Antisemitism, Anger and Intolerance Have Infected America’s Ivy League Colleges — Part Two first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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New Poll: Majority of NYC Voters ‘Less Likely’ to Support Mamdani Over His Refusal to Condemn ‘Globalize the Intifada’
Zohran Mamdani. Photo: Ron Adar / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
In a warning sign for the campaign of Democratic nominee for mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani, a majority of city voters in a new poll say the candidate’s hardline anti-Israel stance makes them less likely to vote for him.
In the survey of likely city voters conducted by American Pulse, 52.5 percent said Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada” coupled with his backing of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement made them less likely to vote for him in November. Just 31% of city voters polled were more likely to support him because of these positions.
At the same time, a significant share of young New York City voters support Mamdani’s anti-Israel positioning, a striking sign of shifting generational views on Israel and the Palestinian cause.
Nearly half of voters aged 18 to 44 (46 percent) said the State Assembly member’s backing for BDS and “refusal to condemn the phrase ‘globalize the intifada’” made them more likely to support him.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist from Queens, has been under fire for defending “globalize the intifada,” a slogan many Jewish groups associate with incitement to violence against Israel and Jews. While critics argue it glorifies terrorism, supporters claim it’s a call for international solidarity with oppressed peoples, especially Palestinians. Mamdani has also voiced support for BDS, a movement widely condemned by mainstream Jewish organizations as antisemitic for singling out Israel.
The generational divide exposed by the poll comes amid a broader political realignment. Younger progressives across the country are increasingly critical of Israeli policies, especially in the wake of the Gaza war, and more receptive to Palestinian activism. But to many Jewish leaders, Mamdani’s rising support is alarming.
Rabbi David Wolpe, visiting scholar at Harvard University, condemned the phrase with a sarcastic analogy.
“‘Globalize the intifada’ is just a political slogan,” he said. “Like ‘The cockroaches must be exterminated’ was just a housing authority slogan in Rwanda.”
Jewish organizations have reported a surge in antisemitic incidents in New York and across the U.S. since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war last fall. The blending of anti-Zionist slogans with calls for “intifada,” historically linked to violent uprisings, has deepened fears among Jewish communities that traditional red lines are being crossed.
Whether this emerging coalition reshapes New York politics remains to be seen. However, the poll indicates that among younger voters, views that were once considered fringe are quickly moving into the mainstream.
The post New Poll: Majority of NYC Voters ‘Less Likely’ to Support Mamdani Over His Refusal to Condemn ‘Globalize the Intifada’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Report: Jews Targeted at June’s Pride Month Events
A Jewish gay pride flag. Photo: Twitter.
The research division of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) released a report on Wednesday detailing incidents of hate against Jews which took place last month during demonstrations in celebration of LGBTQ rights and identity.
Incidents reported by the group include:
- At a Pride march in Wales, the activists Cymru Queers for Palestine chose to block the path and show a sign that said “Profiting from genocide,” an attempt to link the event’s sponsors — such as Amazon — to the war in Gaza.
- A Dublin Pride march saw the participation of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which labeled Israel a “genocidal entity.”
- In Toronto at a late June Pride march, demonstrators again attacked organizers with a sign declaring, “Pride partners with genocide.”
CAM also identified a recurring narrative deployed against Israel by some far-left activists: so-called “pinkwashing,” a term which the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement calls “an Israeli government propaganda strategy that cynically exploits LGBTQIA+ rights to project a progressive image while concealing Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies oppressing Palestinians.”
The report notes that at a Washington DC Pride event in early June Medea Benjamin, cofounder of activist group Code Pink and a regular of anti-war protests, wore a pair of goofy, oversized sunglasses and a shirt in her signature pink with the phrase “you can’t pinkwash genocide.”
Other incidents CAM recorded showed the injection of anti-Israel sentiment into Pride events.
A musical group canceled a performance at an interfaith service in Brooklyn, claiming the hosting synagogue had a “public alignment with pro-Israel political positions.” In San Francisco before the yearly Trans March, a Palestine group said in its announcement of its participation, “Stop the war on Iran and the genocide of Palestine, stop the war on immigrants and attacks on trans people.”
CAM notes that this “queers for Palestine” sentiment is not new, pointing to a 2017 event wherein “organizers of the Chicago Dyke March infamously removed participants who were waving a Pride flag adorned with a Star of David on the grounds that the symbol ‘made people feel unsafe.’”
In February, the Israel Defense Forces shared with the New York Post documents it had recovered demonstrating that Hamas had tortured and executed members it suspected of homosexuality and other moral offenses in conflict with Islamist ideology.
Amit Benjamin, who is gay and a first sergeant major in the IDF, said during a visit to New York City for Pride month that “All the ‘queers for Gaza’ need to open their eyes. Hamas kills gays … kills lesbians … queers cannot exist in Gaza.”
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IAEA pulls inspectors from Iran as standoff over access drags on
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria, June 23, 2025. REUTERS/Elisabeth Mandl/File Photo
The UN nuclear watchdog said on Friday it had pulled its last remaining inspectors from Iran as a standoff over their return to the country’s nuclear facilities bombed by the United States and Israel deepens.
Israel launched its first military strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in a 12-day war with the Islamic Republic three weeks ago. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors have not been able to inspect Iran’s facilities since then, even though IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has said that is his top priority.
Iran’s parliament has now passed a law to suspend cooperation with the IAEA until the safety of its nuclear facilities can be guaranteed. While the IAEA says Iran has not yet formally informed it of any suspension, it is unclear when the agency’s inspectors will be able to return to Iran.
“An IAEA team of inspectors today safely departed from Iran to return to the Agency headquarters in Vienna, after staying in Tehran throughout the recent military conflict,” the IAEA said on X.
Diplomats said the number of IAEA inspectors in Iran was reduced to a handful after the June 13 start of the war. Some have also expressed concern about the inspectors’ safety since the end of the conflict, given fierce criticism of the agency by Iranian officials and Iranian media.
Iran has accused the agency of effectively paving the way for the bombings by issuing a damning report on May 31 that led to a resolution by the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors declaring Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations.
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has said he stands by the report. He has denied it provided diplomatic cover for military action.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Thursday Iran remained committed to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“[Grossi] reiterated the crucial importance of the IAEA discussing with Iran modalities for resuming its indispensable monitoring and verification activities in Iran as soon as possible,” the IAEA said.
The US and Israeli military strikes either destroyed or badly damaged Iran’s three uranium enrichment sites. But it was less clear what has happened to much of Iran’s nine tonnes of enriched uranium, especially the more than 400 kg enriched to up to 60% purity, a short step from weapons grade.
That is enough, if enriched further, for nine nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick. Iran says its aims are entirely peaceful, but Western powers say there is no civil justification for enriching to such a high level, and the IAEA says no country has done so without developing the atom bomb.
As a party to the NPT, Iran must account for its enriched uranium, which normally is closely monitored by the IAEA, the body that enforces the NPT and verifies countries’ declarations. But the bombing of Iran’s facilities has now muddied the waters.
“We cannot afford that … the inspection regime is interrupted,” Grossi told a press conference in Vienna last week.
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