American campuses are now even more toxic for Jews

One by one, the fig leaves have fallen away. Anti-Israel rants have given way to raging against “Zionists” and “Zionist” institutions on American campuses. In particular, protesters have made Hillel, the centre for Jewish life at hundreds of American universities, a target. In the ten months following October 7, the Anti-Defamation League recorded more than 100 such incidents, including vandalism of Hillel buildings, protests at Hillel events, threats aimed at students and Hillel employees and calls to expel Hillel from campus.

This campaign to cancel Hillel is about stigmatising, silencing and banishing campus Jews. According to Miriam Elman, the executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, “Calls to shut down Hillel chapters are intolerable attacks on organised Jewish campus life.” For example, the University of California Santa Cruz’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter made waves in May by posting demands including that the University of California system “cut ties… with all zionist [sic] institutions – including… Hillel International”. The Drexel Palestine Coalition insisted administrators “immediately terminate” the Philadelphia campus’ Hillel, claiming it is “a global zionist [sic] campus organisation, whose primary purpose, funding and operations are to facilitate birthright [sic] trips to Occupied Palestine”.

In June, Pitt Apartheid Divest demanded the University of Pittsburgh “immediately terminate Pitt’s Chapter of Hillel”, “immediately terminate the Student Coalition for Israel at Pitt” and “remove the IHRA definition of antisemitism from the DEI website to avoid the false and defamatory conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism”. In September, the JC reported masked protesters responding to Baruch College SJP’s call to “Cut ties with Hillel!” by standing outside the New York City Hillel and shouting, “We don’t want no Zionists here”, “Dogs off campus”, “all Zionists are terrorists”, “Baruch Hillel, go to hell” and “you’re from Brooklyn, not the Middle East”.

At an October 9 SJP rally at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a student speaker was cheered for saying, “No more Hillel”, the school newspaper reported. SJP told the newspaper that Hillel is “a fundamentally Zionist network masquerading as a Jewish campus organisation”. They also explained to the paper: “The abolition of Hillel has always been integral to their demands.”

And Columbia’s student newspaper reported that “dozens” responded to Columbia University Apartheid Divest’s insistence that Columbia “sever all ties with Hillel” by chanting and drumming outside the Manhattan centre for Jewish life during an event last month.

Who are these groups and activists? Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, told me: “The Drop Hillel campaign is, as one might have suspected, affiliated with National SJP, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestinian Youth Movement, CodePink and other notoriously bad actors.” Goldfeder continued: “It is a wildly antisemitic movement, openly targeting a Jewish collective community that has become one of the last few safe spaces for Jewish people on many campuses. It is yet another attempt by antisemites to try and define what Jewish identity means, so that they can carve out exceptions for their own hatred and bigotry.

“Faculty for Justice in Palestine have supported this campaign as well,” Goldfeder added, “and if it was any other minority they were openly discriminating against, they would all have been fired immediately.”

Miriam Elman says that “university leaders should unequivocally denounce the targeted attacks on campus Hillel chapters”.

Will leaders listen, though? Do calls to cancel Hillel cross a red line that finally dispels many administrators’ complacency? Thankfully, change is coming regardless.

Kenneth Marcus, chairman of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, told Jewish Insider he expects the Department of Education under President Trump will “take much more seriously the prospect of denying federal funds to colleges and universities that violate the rights of Jewish and other college students” and the Department of Justice will stop being “oddly silent in the face of antisemitism”.

Campus antisemitism, including the campaign against Hillel, is toxic. It’s time for strong pushback.

Melissa Langsam Braunstein is a writer based in the Washington DC area

@slowhoneybee