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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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Campus Frontlines: Professors and Students Continue to Fuel Antisemitism
A pro-Hamas group splattered red paint, symbolizing spilled blood, on an administrative building at Princeton University. Photo: Screenshot
There may be a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but on university campuses globally, antisemitism has yet to end. The encampments that took up space both on the lawns of universities and on the front pages of newspapers may be gone, but the new form of antisemitism, one that student leaders and professors are driving, is not.
The top global universities are expected to train students to become the next leaders in society. That requires complex courses to be taught with accuracy and objectivity.
This is not the case at Princeton, however. One course, entitled Gender, Reproduction, and Genocide, is scheduled for the spring 2025-2026 semester.
Taught by Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, the course is said to explore “genocide through the analytic of gender” and specifically will focus on the “ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
In the course, students will “engage reproductive justice frameworks,” suggesting that Israel is committing genocide by deliberately targeting institutions that would prevent women from becoming pregnant. However, this claim, spread by the UN, has no factual basis.
UN’s fake “genocide report” accuses Israel of intentionally striking Gaza Al-Basma IVF clinic to destroy embryos to “prevent births” and “destroy future of Palestinians.” This claimed attack is a key aspect of the claim. But there is ZERO evidence for any of it. Analysis: 1/ pic.twitter.com/t6n855r5an
— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) September 17, 2025
The UN report relies on a 2024 ABC News story that claimed an IDF shell was deliberately fired at an IVF clinic in December 2023, allegedly destroying more than 4,000 embryos with the intention to “prevent births.”
But even ABC News and its sole source, who was not present at the time, could not verify that an IDF shell caused the damage. In fact, a wide-angle photo of the scene shows a nearby high-rise building visibly damaged, while the IVF clinic itself appears fully intact.
If the course’s entire framework being held up by falsified information wasn’t enough, it also seeks to compare the history of the “genocide” in Gaza to other genocides, including the Holocaust. There is no lack of moral clarity more evident than flattening the Holocaust into a political talking point. No comparison can be made between a war of defense and the industrialization of murder that the Nazis waged against the Jewish people.
Yet, this vile comparison does not come as much of a surprise, considering the professor herself has, in the past, denied the murder and assault of Jews.
Antisemitism from faculty is not limited to academic courses. A Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at University College London hosted Samar Maqusi as part of a series titled “Palestine: From Existence to Resistance.” Although the lecture was advertised as a discussion on the origins of Zionism, Maqusi instead promoted classic antisemitic tropes, including that Jews require the blood of gentiles for making their “special pancakes,” referring to a medieval blood libel in which Jews use the blood of gentiles for making matzah.
Antisemitism at UCL Event With University Research Fellow
A StandWithUs UK student shared this recording with us, exposing awful comments made by a UCL academic during a lecture at University College London.
During a lecture titled “The Birth of Zionism”, delivered by Dr… pic.twitter.com/0RF9Ooz3d6
— StandWithUsUK (@StandWithUsUK) November 13, 2025
Unfortunately, many discussions of Zionism on university campuses come from those with hostile and thus inaccurate beliefs on what it truly means to be a Zionist.
Even in an interfaith discussion at the City College of New York, a Hillel director was told he was “responsible for the murder” of Gazans and caused “disgust” in other participants because he was a Zionist. Activist and student groups further condemned the interfaith discussion. Not in favor of defending the Hillel director whose sole wrongdoing was being a Jew, but because interfaith efforts were causing the “normalization of Zionism.”
In warping the definitions to fit the narrative of the speaker or lecturer, lectures and campus spaces have become breeding grounds for bias and thinly veiled antisemitism.
Antisemitic Student Voices
Student leaders and activists have also frequently isolated their Jewish peers.
At The Harvard Crimson, one column suggests that there are some “visions of Zionism more morally objectionable” and therefore one might “feel wary of staying friends with Zionists.” It should then be no wonder to the author why Jewish students feel isolated on campuses.
This becomes all the more problematic when the students elected to represent the entire student union are not neutral nor representative on complex issues, particularly regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at large.
At the University of Oxford, the Oxford Student Union elected Arwa Elrayess as the incoming president. She has been part of a no-budget documentary on the pro-Palestine protests that erupted after October 7. In one post promoting the film, Elrayess makes the moral equivalence between the Holocaust and the war against Hamas in Gaza by comparing the deaths of Anne Frank and Hind Rajab, a Gazan civilian.
Elrayess is meant to represent all students equally. Still, her posts suggest otherwise and are part of a worrying trend of using Jewish trauma to uncritically discuss Israel’s war.
As the current academic year continues, it remains clear that the issue of antisemitism on campus has not gone away, nor can it be afforded to be swept aside and ignored. When courses are built on debunked claims and student leaders use Holocaust inversion to further their anti-Israel narratives, it becomes evident that this issue is not isolated but rather is systemic, requiring urgent and sustained action.
Jewish students on campuses worldwide deserve the same safety and respect as any other student, and all students deserve an education grounded in truth and accuracy. The moral and intellectual integrity of higher education depends on confronting antisemitism directly, rather than allowing it to fester under the guise of activism or academic freedom.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Social Media Algorithms and Design Spread Antisemitism — Not Foreign Actors
A 3D-printed miniature model of Elon Musk and the X logo are seen in this illustration taken Jan. 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Recently, as Jewish Insider reported, bipartisan lawmakers in Congress hailed what they saw as a major advance in fighting online antisemitism — X’s new location feature.
The new tool, showing which country an account operates from — had started revealing that some accounts spreading antisemitic content in US political discussions were based overseas. For legislators on both sides, this represented a digital unmasking.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) remarked that the feature exposed “foreign interests trying to spread antisemitic poison” while “masquerading as Americans.”
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) insisted Americans “deserve to know which accounts are run from abroad, so we know the true source of these narratives.” Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) took a geopolitical view: “Beijing, Moscow and Tehran know they cannot defeat us economically or militarily, so they exploit controversial issues, like Israel and antisemitism, and try to divide.” Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley declared the feature “a huge win for transparency and American security.”
The story is appealing: foreign enemies weaponize antisemitism to fracture American unity, and transparency about account origins helps us counter these external threats. There’s truth here — bad actors do exploit divisive topics.
But this celebration reveals a dangerous misdiagnosis.
As the lead of the Decoding Antisemitism project — which has examined over 300,000 items of digital content across multiple crises — I’ve identified three distinct but connected drivers of online antisemitic radicalization: coordinated malicious actors (foreign and domestic), algorithmic amplification through platform design, and homegrown participatory dynamics enabled by online communication itself — anonymity, mutual reinforcement, and the normalization of extremism through constant exposure.
The issue isn’t that foreign influence exists — it does. The problem is treating it as the primary driver while overlooking the structural and domestic conditions that allow antisemitic narratives to take root and spread.
How we diagnose problems determines how we design solutions — and misdiagnosis doesn’t just limit our response, it actively redirects resources, attention, and political will away from factors we can actually control.
Comprehending online antisemitism demands a virological approach: examining not just where accounts originate, but how hate narratives evolve, which platform features enable transmission, and what conditions allow them to thrive. Yet social media platforms remain essentially black boxes — we lack systematic tools to understand dynamics unfolding within these digital spaces.
Lawmakers celebrate a feature revealing account geography while leaving the actual black box — algorithmic recommendations, engagement optimization, and content amplification — completely unexamined.
The Conflation Problem
The Jewish Insider article and quoted lawmakers collapse “foreign,” “adversarial,” and “antisemitic” into one category. This conflation obscures more than it reveals.
It treats geographic origin as definitive of intent and impact. An account in South Asia or Eastern Europe engaging with US politics isn’t necessarily a state-directed operation. It may simply be someone with opinions about American affairs. Account location reveals nothing about whether content is coordinated, conspiratorial, state-driven, or simply individual opinion.
More crucially, emphasizing foreign accounts distracts from what we know empirically about domestic antisemitic content production.
Following the October 7 attacks, antisemitic discourse surged to 36-38% of comments on major UK news outlet YouTube channels — nearly double the pre-crisis baseline. After the Washington museum shooting in May 2025, antisemitic content averaged 43% across major English-language news channels, with some reaching 66%.
These aren’t fringe platforms infiltrated by foreign bots — they’re mainstream digital spaces where domestic audiences actively produce and amplify antisemitic narratives.
Research on antisemitic discourse spread reveals a three-phase domestic process: elite figures make strategically ambiguous statements, digital intermediaries (podcasters, YouTubers, influencers) reframe and sharpen this messaging, and comment sections collapse ambiguity into explicit hate speech.
This “cascading radicalization” is primarily homegrown, driven by domestic actors and platform dynamics — not solely foreign infiltration.
Our analysis cannot definitively establish every anonymous commenter’s geographic origin. What we observe are linguistic and cultural markers — idiom, references, political framings — indicating domestic participation, combined with the absence of coordination patterns typical of bot networks. The antisemitic discourse we documented emerges through “dialogical warfare”: organic exchanges between users presenting as ordinary Americans who deploy antisemitism as an explanatory framework for complex issues.
When a US Congressmember amplifies antisemitic tropes, when popular podcasts platform guests trafficking in conspiracy theories about Jewish power, when partisan media deploy dual loyalty accusations — these aren’t foreign operations. They’re homegrown productions embedded in American political discourse and amplified through domestic networks.
The Missing Architecture
Most striking about celebrating X’s location feature is what remains unexamined: the platform itself.
There’s virtually no discussion about platform design, algorithmic amplification, recommendation systems, the attention economy, or structural dynamics allowing hateful content to scale. The feature is treated as inherently truth-revealing, exposing hidden foreign manipulation.
But this framing evades more important questions: why do certain narratives spread, how do platform architectures enable amplification, and how do online communication conditions — anonymity, mutual reinforcement, constant exposure to extremity — create environments where antisemitic ideas mutate and take hold?
The answer has little to do with account location and everything to do with how platforms are built. Engagement-based algorithms reward emotionally provocative content — outrage, fear, tribal solidarity. Recommendation systems create filter bubbles and radicalization pathways. Virality architecture privileges simplification, moral clarity, and villain identification. The attention economy systematically rewards polarizing, enraging content. These are design choices, not inevitable features.
Meanwhile, online communication conditions themselves — anonymity removing social accountability, mutual confirmation among like-minded voices, omnipresent hate speech normalizing extremity — create participatory environments where ordinary users become active radicalization contributors.
Contemporary antisemitism increasingly operates through coded expressions, memes, and multimodal signals evading simple keyword detection. The watermelon emoji, the paraglider symbol — these function as in-group markers regardless of geographic location. Strategic ambiguity, not foreign origin, enables antisemitic narratives to spread while maintaining plausible deniability.
The Political Convenience
The “foreign adversaries spreading antisemitism” narrative aligns with a bipartisan preference: attributing social breakdown to hostile external actors. This framing is politically convenient across the spectrum.
For Republicans, it allows condemning antisemitism without confronting how right-wing media has mainstreamed antisemitic conspiracy theories — “great replacement” narratives, George Soros accusations, “globalist” rhetoric. For Democrats, it enables criticizing online hate without reckoning with how segments of progressive activism have normalized anti-Zionist rhetoric often sliding into antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and loyalty.
The foreign influence frame permits symbolic accountability –the appearance of action without institutional change. Lawmakers can call for location transparency, celebrate platform implementations, and position themselves as defenders against external threats. What they needn’t do is examine how American political rhetoric contributes to normalizing antisemitism, push for regulatory interventions altering platform incentives, or confront how online communication creates radicalization pathways.
This isn’t analytical sloppiness. It’s moral abdication.
What Accountability Would Actually Require
Genuine accountability for online antisemitism requires confronting all three drivers — not just one.
First, acknowledging that while malicious actors (foreign and domestic) exploit divisive issues, they operate within a larger ecosystem. We must recognize the United States as an active site where antisemitic ideas are produced, circulated, and normalized through domestic political culture, media ecosystems, and participatory online dynamics — not merely as an innocent target.
Second, confronting how platform architecture shapes what spreads, and demanding transparency not just about account locations but about algorithmic recommendations, content moderation, the attention economy’s incentives, and metrics driving platform design.
Third, recognizing that high-profile domestic actors — politicians, media figures, influencers with millions of followers — bear far more responsibility for mainstreaming antisemitic narratives than anonymous accounts. We must understand the three-phase process through which elite ambiguity cascades into radicalized discourse.
Fourth, examining how partisan political discourse traffics in antisemitic tropes through strategic ambiguity — and being willing to call this out when politically inconvenient.
Fifth, acknowledging online communication conditions themselves — anonymity, mutual reinforcement, constant exposure to extremity — are creating environments where ordinary users become radicalization participants.
X’s location feature may provide useful information about one factor among many. But treating this as revelatory, exposing the “true source” of antisemitic narratives, is a dangerous misdiagnosis.
If democracies want to confront antisemitism seriously, they must address all three drivers: monitor and counter malicious actors where they exist, examine platform architectures amplifying hate, and confront participatory dynamics and communication conditions enabling antisemitic narratives to flourish in mainstream spaces.
How we diagnose problems shapes how we conceptualize solutions. Focusing exclusively on foreign actors may be politically convenient. It will not protect the public sphere.
Dr. Matthias J. Becker is the AddressHate Research Scholar at NYU’s Center for the Study of Antisemitism, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Cambridge, and Lead of the “Decoding Antisemitism” project, which analyzes how antisemitic ideas spread and mutate in digital communication.
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‘Controversy’ Over Antisemitism List Misses the Point
Fox personality Tucker Carlson speaks at the 2017 Business Insider Ignition: Future of Media conference in New York, U.S., November 30, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
If you would have told me 20 years ago there would be a list of prominent antisemites of the year, with 10 people on it, and that one of the world’s most famous rappers would have a video called “Heil Hitler,” I would not have believed you.
If you told me that instead of focusing on antisemitism, people instead would complain about who is or isn’t on the list, that I would have believed.
I have heard some people ask what a list really achieves. That’s certainly one question. Here’s another question: what are other groups doing to fight antisemitism when it is the worst it’s been in many years?
As a writer, I have had more antisemitic comments to some of my articles than ever before, including asking if I was paid $7,000 a post. I am not an influencer, and judging by my outfits, one could surmise I was not paid $7,000 for anything — but that’s besides the point. It goes back to the idea that we’re focusing on the controversy surrounding antisemitism, rather than the antisemitism itself.
Tucker Carlson may win this year’s award — which is hosted by the site StopAntisemitism.org — but at least the contest is bringing awareness to the issue of antisemitism. Candace Owens was the winner last year.
While doing something is not always better than doing nothing — this list is an example of how it is better to do something. There are a lot of big talkers who claim to know the best way to fight antisemitism, but when I’ve asked them how to do it, I’ve gotten mostly crickets. Many are asleep at the wheel. They don’t counter blatant antisemitism, they let their friends and others get away with anti-Israel or anti-Jewish rhetoric, and when it comes to the media, many don’t push back at all on the biased claims of their guests.
So I think it’s important to have a list to call people out. While I might have chosen a different top 10 than those listed, that’s not the point. As the old joke goes, with two Jews, there are three opinions. So it is unsurprising that Jews will blame this organization with little ideas of their own to fight antisemitism. It is both sad and predictable. I, for one, am glad that people are finding creative ways to bring attention to this issue.
The author is a writer based in New York.