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Universities Must Be Forced to Address Antisemitism
University of California, Santa Barbara student body president Tessa Veksler on Feb. 26, 2024. Photo: Instagram
JNS.org – “Never would I have imagined that I’d need to fight for my right to exist on campus,” laments Shabbos Kestenbaum, a student at Harvard University who is suing the school because “antisemitism is out of control.”
Jewish students have suffered an unrelenting explosion of hate on American higher education campuses—so far with little relief. They have endured antisemitic rhetoric, intimidation, cancellation and violence. But those charged with keeping campuses safe—whether administrators who govern student and faculty behavior or federal agencies responsible for ensuring that schools adhere to civil rights protections—are failing in their jobs.
Many Jewish students have complained to their colleges’ administrators about the injustices. But instead of responding with measures to ensure Jewish students’ safety—like stopping pro-Hamas protestors from hijacking campuses or expelling militants who incite Jew-hatred— administrators have largely shown indifference. In some cases, college authorities have made things worse for Jewish students by appeasing the riotous, pro-Hamas mobs who have been primary perpetrators of Jew-hatred on campus.
Snubbed by college administrators, Jewish students and their supporters have appealed for federal protection, filing Title VI complaints with the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), the body tasked with enforcing protections under the Civil Rights Act. Unfortunately, the OCR, which has the power to levy severe financial punishments against colleges that neglect students’ Title VI rights, has so far rewarded negligent universities with little more than slaps on the wrist.
Until college and university boards of trustees begin hiring administrators committed to Jewish students’ safety—and until the OCR begins seriously punishing antisemitic perpetrators—we can expect no respite. Safe to say, colleges and universities run by arrogant, apathetic administrators will not change until their jobs and schools’ survival are threatened.
College/university administrators don’t take antisemitism seriously. Their reactions to Jewish students raising concerns about Jew-hatred range from indifference to outright hostility. For example, when Mohammed Al-Kurd, who the Anti-Defamation League says has a record of “unvarnished, vicious antisemitism,” came to speak at Harvard, Shabbos Kestenbaum and other Jewish students complained to administrators.
Rather than cancel Al-Kurd’s appearance, which would have been the appropriate action, the administrators ignored the students’ complaints. “Harvard’s silence was deafening,” Kestenbaum wrote in Newsweek. Kestenbaum said he “repeatedly” expressed concerns to administrators about the antisemitism he experienced, but as his lawsuit alleges, “evidence of uncontrolled discrimination and harassment fell on deaf ears.”
Administrators at Columbia University reacted to Jewish students’ complaints about antisemitism even more cynically. In fact, during an alumni event, several administrators exchanged text messages mocking Jewish students, calling them “privileged” and “difficult to listen to.”
When Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) asked the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania if calling for genocide against Jews violated their schools’ codes of conduct, none could say “yes.” The presidents of Harvard and UPenn have since resigned. Good riddance.
Some college/university administrators have outrageously granted concessions to pro-Hamas students. For instance, Northwestern University agreed to contact potential employers of students who caused campus disruptions to insist they be hired, create a segregated dormitory hall exclusively for Middle Eastern, North African and Muslim students, and form a new investment committee in which anti-Zionists could wield undue influence. Brown University agreed to hold a referendum on divestment from Israel in October.
Similar appeasements were announced at other colleges and universities, including Rutgers, Johns Hopkins, the University of Minnesota and the University of California Riverside.
So far, OCR has failed to take concrete action against antisemitism on campus. This is evident in recent decisions involving the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Michigan. CUNY was ordered to conduct more investigations into Title VI complaints and report further developments to Washington, provide more employee and campus security officer training, and issue “climate surveys” to students.
The University of Michigan also committed to a “climate survey,” as well as to reviewing its case files for each report of discrimination covered by Title VI during the 2023-2024 school year and reporting to the OCR on its responses to reports of discrimination for the next two school years.
Neither institution was penalized financially, even though the Department of Education has the power to withhold federal funds, which most colleges and universities depend on. There are now 149 pending investigations into campus antisemitism at OCR. If these investigations yield toothless results similar to those of CUNY and Michigan, it is highly unlikely that colleges and universities will improve how they deal with antisemitism.
Putting an end to skyrocketing antisemitism on campus involves three things.
First, donors and governments at every level should withhold funds from colleges that fail to hire administrators who will take antisemitism as seriously as they take pronoun offenses or racism directed at people of color.
Second, the OCR must mete out serious consequences to Title VI violators in the form of funding cuts. This may require legislation that specifically mandates withdrawing funding from offending parties. A bill recently introduced by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.)—the University Accountability Act—may be ideal, as it is designed to financially penalize institutions that don’t crack down on antisemitism.
Third, if OCR won’t act, Jewish students and their supporters should turn to the courts. Lori Lowenthal Marcus, the legal director of the Deborah Project, a public-interest Jewish law firm, argues that the CUNY settlement demonstrates the futility of going to OCR and that going to court is more likely to produce “a clearly delineated and productive result,” such as punitive and compensatory fines. As of late May, at least 14 colleges and universities are facing lawsuits over their handling of antisemitism on campus since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.
As long as college administrators are allowed to ignore antisemitism on campus and as long as OCR and other government institutions fall short in punishing Jew-hatred, antisemitism will continue to plague Jewish students.
The post Universities Must Be Forced to Address Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Antisemitism Exploding on the Far-Right: The Conspiracy Doesn’t Need an Event Anymore
Dan Bilzerian arrives at the Fashion Nova x Cardi B Collection Launch Party held at the Hollywood Palladium on May 8, 2019, in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States. Photo: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
In April 2026, Dan Bilzerian — a social media personality with 29.6 million Instagram followers — filed to run for the US Congress against incumbent Randy Fine (R-FL). Within 10 days, he had been interviewed across right-wing, left anti-imperialist, manosphere, and tabloid outlets, calling his Jewish opponent a “fat Jew” and naming “Jewish supremacy” as the greatest threat to America.
My team at NYU’s Center for the Study of Antisemitism collected and coded 3,000 YouTube comments under six of these video appearances. Across the six videos, 41 percent of comments were antisemitic. The lowest single video came in at 23.6 percent. Under TMZ, where the hosts pushed back on Bilzerian on camera, the figure reached 52 percent — the highest of the six.
These are not numbers consistent with the way online antisemitism has usually been studied — including in my own previous work.
Most digital antisemitism research, including the studies my team has run after the Capital Jewish Museum shooting, the Charlie Kirk assassination, the Bondi Beach attack, the Temple Israel Synagogue attack, and the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting, treats the discourse as event-driven. Something happens; comment sections respond. The highest antisemitism rate I have ever documented in those event studies sits in the 12 to 20 percent range.
Sadly, even Bilzerian’s quietest video outran the worst spike I have ever seen after a major attack. There is no event driving these numbers. There is just a candidate.
Online antisemitism is still being produced on the left, by Islamist actors, and by foreign malign-influence operations. None of that has gone away — and on the left in particular, the post-October-7 surge has not receded.
What has changed is that a second front has opened among right-wing influencers with mass audiences, and it is moving fast. Bilzerian comes from there. So did Candace Owens before him. So did Tucker Carlson.
Antisemitism and adjacent conspiracy narratives are now being normalized by these figures at an unprecedented pace, inside the broader Republican coalition, using platform infrastructures and institutional vehicles existing monitoring rarely even looks at.
Jewish institutions calibrated mainly to track the left or external state actors are now watching one front while a second one widens.
The pattern holds across audiences that have nothing else in common. Owen Shroyer is a former Infowars right-populist. George Galloway is a heterodox left anti-imperialist who was expelled from Labour in 2003 over his Iraq War statements. Sneako is a manosphere influencer and Muslim convert. Jimmy Dore is a left-populist commentator.
The antisemitism saturation is steady under all of them, because what is producing it is not the host or the audience but the speaker each is platforming. Under Galloway, a typical comment ran: “It is the Zionists in control of all our western governments that have promoted the illegal immigration issues we have all been experiencing for the past decade.” Under Sneako, where the title named “Jewish supremacy” directly, the wordplay register surfaced — “very Cohencidental,” “Cohencidence” — alongside lines like “anyone who shits on Jews is a legend.”
Under Jimmy Dore, where antisemitism reached 42 percent, the historical-authority register dominated: a Hitler quotation got 71 likes, with a reply reading, “Yes we owe that man AH a big apology.”
Bilzerian’s candidacy is more than a single bad actor. It is a convergence: manosphere reach built up over a decade — poker, weapons, wealth display — converted into a pre-loaded political audience; anti-establishment positioning that reads as left or right depending on the listener but is coherent only as anti-Jewish-power (anti-Trump, anti-AIPAC, anti-Iraq War, pro-Palestinian); eliminationist content visible across the comment sections, including Hadrian endorsements, death wishes referencing the Nova massacre directed at named Jewish commenters, and the line “FINISH THE JOB THIS TIME”; and a Republican primary as the institutional vehicle that cleared the FEC filing process without friction.
The TMZ result shows what happens when this baseline meets resistance. Hosts Harvey Levin and Charles Latibeaudiere did exactly what mainstream-media accountability journalism is supposed to do. They named “fat Jew” as antisemitic on camera. They challenged Bilzerian’s redirection toward Palestinians as the “real Semites.” They refused his pivot from his own rhetoric to attacks on Fine’s record. By the standards of on-camera adversarial framing, this was a textbook intervention. The replies came in at 52 percent antisemitic.
The mechanism is the finding. The audience did not register the host pushback as journalistic accountability. It registered the pushback as further evidence of the conspiracy Bilzerian was naming. TMZ co-founder Harvey Levin’s documented appearance in the Epstein files — a real fact in the public record — became the activation trigger. One commenter, with 30 likes: “the owner of TMZ is in the Epstein files and plays the victim. These people support actual genocide. They are using words as a shield.” Another, with 73 likes: “He would win with ease but I don’t think the tiny hats would ever allow him to run.” A Goebbels quotation circulated through six different stations of one mega-thread, accumulating endorsements at each stop — “based,” “my daddy.” Latibeaudiere, the Black co-host, was recoded as a racial subordinate to a Jewish boss: “his boss and co-partner is a Jue,” “he figures it’s better to be in the house than in the fields.” A single counter-comment in the entire 500-comment sample, detailed and factually correct, arrived sixteen days late and received zero likes.
The dominant strategy that Jewish institutions, journalists, and platforms have for handling antisemitic public figures is on-camera adversarial framing: bring them on, push back, make them defend the indefensible. The assumption is that the audience will absorb the pushback as suppression. The TMZ case shows this assumption breaking. When the audience has already been primed — by years of speaker supply on other platforms — to read the host as part of the system being challenged, adversarial framing does not suppress the saturation. It feeds it.
Antisemitism in this material is not one hate register among several. It is the organizing logic for the others. Anti-Black framings, misogyny, anti-Muslim and anti-trans rhetoric all appear under the videos — but not as parallel categories. They appear under the conspiracy frame, organized by formulations like “the media is run by Jews and pushes X.” Monitoring systems that track hate categories separately measure each layer in isolation and miss the architecture connecting them.
Two things follow.
For Jewish institutions: a Congressional candidate with 29.6 million followers and a steady four-in-10 antisemitism saturation in his comment sections is not a fringe figure. The fact that he can be interviewed on TMZ and the replies come out at 52 percent is not a journalism problem. It is a structural condition. Strategies that depend on the host’s standing to push back will fail when the audience has already coded the host as compromised. And the threat is now coming from a direction the field has been slow to map: the Republican coalition, mass-audience right-wing creators, and the convergence of manosphere reach with anti-establishment populism.
For those tracking online antisemitism: the methodology to see this exists. The bottleneck is not detection. It is the analytical assumption that antisemitism is something that happens around events. When the speaker is the event, the existing framework cannot register what is in front of it.
The FEC filing was processed without friction. The primary ballot will list a candidate calling a sitting Jewish Congressman a “fat Jew” on national television. Both of those institutional doors opened on schedule. The architecture passing through them did not announce itself as extremism, because by the time it arrived it was wearing the credential of a federal Congressional campaign.
Matthias J. Becker, PhD, is AddressHate Research Scholar at NYU’s Center for the Study of Antisemitism. He is the founder and lead of Decoding Antisemitism — now its successor project, Decoding Hate — Research Advisor to AddressHate, and Editor-in-Chief of Digital Hate Review.
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Iranian Rapper Releases Persian Remix of Israeli Song, Calls for Revenge Against Regime
British-Iranian rapper 021Kid in the music video for his Persian remix of the song “Harbu Darbu” (feat. Stilla & Ness). Photo: Screenshot
British-Iranian rapper 021Kid has released a Persian remix of the song “Harbu Darbu” by Israeli rap duo Ness & Stilla, and in the lyrics, he calls for the death of the Iranian regime forces responsible for the killing and oppression of their own people.
The rapper, whose real name is Tony Mohraz, sings in both Farsi and English in “Harbu Darbu,” which was originally released by Ness and Stilla in 2023 in response to the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
In the Persian remix, 021Kid calls for the destruction of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an Iranian military force and internationally designated terrorist group, as well as the Basij parliamentary force that operates underneath it. The regime uses the Basij to violently suppress protests and crush political opposition across the country.
The rapper, who was born in Tehran but now lives in the United Kingdom, also sings about Iranian leaders and senior military figures who have been killed in US and Israel strikes. He mentions by name Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force Commander Qasem Soleimani, former Iranian Air Force Commander Aziz Nasirzadeh, and Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force.
021Ki further targets the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK), an Iranian opposition group that has been persecuted by the regime and seeks its overthrow but was a US-designated terrorist group from 1997 to 2012.
“We don’t want mullah, neither MEK. Smoke ’em on site, show no mercy,” 021Kid raps in English. He then sings in Farsi, “I’m standing with Iran till the end … We get our country back, just watch.”
The song includes some Hebrew phrases as well. “My Persian Jews, Irani Chai and that’s why Am Israeli Chai,” 021Kid raps in the song. “I pull up Tel Aviv, Ma Nishma? [How are you?].”
The music video also features clips from Ness and Stilla’s music video for the Hebrew version of “Harbu Darbu.”
021Kid explained the intention behind his new song in an Instagram post.
“After what happened in Golders Green, London a few days ago where a Jewish man was stabbed — it’s a reminder that hate doesn’t just live online, it shows up in real life,” he wrote, referring to the antisemitic stabbing attack in which two Jewish men were injured in late April.
“Since January, the people of Israel & the jewish [sic] community have shown strength, resilience, and unity and solidarity standing next to us Iranians. As Persians and sons of Cyrus the Great we see it we respect it,” 021Kid further wrote on social media. “In times like this, real allies don’t stay silent. We stand together against hate, against violence, and for something bigger than politics — humanity, strength, and loyalty … From Persians to Israelis — we stand with you, to the very end AM IRANI CHAI & AM ISRAEL CHAI.”
In the original “Harbu Darbu,” released after the Oct. 7 attack in 2023, Ness & Stilla call for revenge against Hamas and Hezbollah, and threaten celebrities who voiced support for the terrorist groups or condemned Israel. The rappers name Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and top Hamas officials Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh, saying “every dog’s day will come.” All three have since been killed by Israel.
In 2024, Ness & Stilla claimed that were denied visas to enter the United States because of the song. The track also received backlash from pro-Palestinian activists who called for it to be removed from YouTube, claiming that it violated the platform’s harassment policies, but YouTube ultimately decided to let the song remain on its website.
Watch the music video for 021Kid’s “Harbu Darbu [Persian Remix]” featuring Ness & Stilla below.
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California man pleads guilty in 2023 death of pro-Israel protester
The man accused in the 2023 death of a pro-Israel protester will avoid a prison sentence after pleading guilty this week to all charges against him.
Loay Alnaji, 53, was at a pro-Palestinian protest in Ventura, California, in November 2023 when he allegedly struck a pro-Israel counterprotester named Paul Kessler with a megaphone. Kessler, who was 69, then fell, hitting his head on the pavement. He died several hours later, with the death ruled a homicide by blunt-force trauma.
Trial proceedings had been set to begin next week, with Alnaji facing up to four years in prison. But Ventura County Superior Court judge Derek Malan offered Loay Alnaji, 53, a deal on Tuesday that allowed Alnaji up to one year in jail followed by three years on probation.
Alnaji accepted the offer. His attorney, Ron Bamieh, told the Ventura County Star that Malan had determined “two old guys had a dispute and an accident happened.”
Alnaji pleaded guilty to the two counts against him — felony involuntary manslaughter and felony battery causing serious bodily injury — and admitted aggravating factors, namely that he used a weapon and that the victim was particularly vulnerable.
He will be sentenced June 25.
The plea deal was too lenient in the eyes of Kessler’s family — which wanted the maximum sentence, according to the Star — as well as Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko.
“Alnaji should be sentenced to prison for his violent behavior, and our office strongly objects to any lesser sentence,” Nasarenko said in a statement. “While no amount of punishment will ever fully account for the Kessler family loss, a prison commitment underscores the severity of this crime and will deter others from committing similar acts of violence.”
The Kessler family could not be reached for comment.
The guilty plea brings a tragic saga that began in the early days of the Israel-Hamas war closer to an end. Kessler and Alnaji were among 75 to 100 people who descended upon a busy intersection in Thousand Oaks — about 25 miles north of Los Angeles — for dueling protests related to the Israel-Hamas war.
What happened during the altercation remains unclear. Bamieh said Kessler put his phone in Alnaji’s face; when Alnaji swatted the phone away, the megaphone inadvertently hit Kessler’s face. (He also said Kessler had previously been diagnosed with a brain tumor, though the coroner has stated the tumor was not a factor in his death.) After Kessler’s fall, he was bleeding from the head and mouth, but was responsive at the scene and evacuated to a hospital. His condition worsened overnight and he died there early the next day.
Alnaji, who at the time was a computer science professor at Moorpark College, was placed on administrative leave by the school after his arrest and subsequent release on $50,000 bail.
Rabbi Noah Farkas, chief executive of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, welcomed the guilty plea for what he called a “heinous crime.”
“While we would have liked a harsher sentence that better reflects the pain of the Kessler family, we respect the legal process,” Farkas said in a statement. “Our hope is that today’s news helps bring closure to his family and gives our community the ability to demonstrate safely.”
The post California man pleads guilty in 2023 death of pro-Israel protester appeared first on The Forward.