As the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks approached earlier this month, Jewish students at American universities waited with trepidation — would their memorial events be targeted by anti-Israel demonstrators? Memories of encampments and chants of “intifada” from last spring lingered in the back of their minds as they came together to mourn and reflect with campus Jewish communities.

But if the early weeks of the academic year before Oct. 7 provided tentative cause for optimism at some schools that had faced major disruptions earlier this year, that day and the week that followed reminded Jewish students that the anti-Zionist and antisemitic rhetoric they came to fear last year are still present at many schools. In many cases, the activity has become more extreme and the language more violent, even if it is not as widespread as it was in the spring. 

At the University of California, Berkeley, more than 1,000 students staged a walkout from their classes and gathered at the main campus quad, where flyers with the words “Long Live Al-Aqsa Flood” — Hamas’ name for their Oct. 7 attacks — were distributed. A banner reading “Glory to the Resistance” was hung from a famed tower on campus. At Swarthmore College, outside Philadelphia, the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine wrote on Instagram: “Happy October 7th!” and asked followers to donate money “in honor of this glorious day and all our martyred revolutionaries.” 

Some protesters more directly targeted Jewish students and institutions. Fifteen to 20 people demonstrated outside of the University of Minnesota Hillel on Oct. 7 during a “One year of Genocide” walkout sponsored by the campus pro-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions group. A group of protesters at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill chanted slogans condemning Hillel. 

“There has been a lot of justification of violence, and not even just justification, but glorification,” said Julia Jassey, CEO of Jewish on Campus. “You see this coming from a number of universities where you’re having student groups saying that the violence of Oct. 7 was OK, that it was justified, that it was moralized in some way.” 

As the war in the Middle East enters its second year, the story of life for Jewish students is not one clear-cut narrative.

Hillel International CEO Adam Lehman told Jewish Insider he sees a few key differences between the spasm of hate that erupted last week and what occurred on many of the same campuses during the spring semester.

“These activities are becoming more extreme while they’re attracting fewer total students,” Lehman said. 

Hillel International, which provides support to hundreds of university Hillel houses, has also observed a change in response from university administrators: “Many more administrations adopted stronger policies, and even this week, we have seen several administrations respond more forcefully in trying to address over-the-top protest and agitation disruptions,” Lehman explained.

For instance, after anti-Israel activists at Pomona College in Southern California blockaded a campus university building — prompting some students to resort to climbing out of windows to leave — the university suspended 12 students for their role in the takeover. At other universities, such as Stanford, administrators started the school year by revamping their policies governing protest and freedom of expression, as well as their handling of discrimination complaints. 

Some students, too, appear to have tired of the divisive anti-Israel politics promoted by vocal activists on campus. Last week, the University of Michigan student government voted to restore funding to student organizations after anti-Israel activists succeeded in putting the funding on pause, in a move they said was meant to protest the war in Gaza. Upstate New York’s Binghamton University’s student government voted to overturn a resolution passed last year that expressed support for BDS. Yet at American University in Washington, D.C., 65% of students who participated in a campus referendum voted to divest from Israel. 

One constant amid the whiplash from campus to campus — and from week to week — is that Jewish students have been forced to acknowledge that their universities could at any point become Ground Zero for Israeli-Palestinian politics to erupt in chaos. Even when that doesn’t happen, a sense of anticipation lurks in the background.

“Most students came into this academic year aware that some of their peers and many people from outside of campus would be continuing to try to hijack their campus environment to advance specific political goals and objectives. With that awareness, they are less surprised by the protest activities and disruptions they’ve seen,” said Lehman. 

The other constant is that Jewish students continue to engage with the Jewish community. Oct. 7 memorials happened at universities across the country, generally without incident and with large attendance. Students report bustling Shabbat dinners and active Hillel and Chabad houses.

“Being a Jew at Columbia now is infinitely better than it was last year. I publicize antisemitism [because] the lack of loudness shouldn’t let us become complacent,” Eliana Goldin, a senior at Columbia, wrote on X last week. “The Jewish community at Columbia is thriving. We’ve just become desensitized.”