As close to 1,000 pro-Israel students from around the country gather in the nation’s capital for the Israel on Campus Coalition’s annual National Leadership Summit, they’ll do so against a backdrop of seemingly quieter campus antisemitism than in the years immediately following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel. But students are still seeking tools to navigate a campus climate they’ve come to see as permanently changed. 

“My main concern [on campus today] is every time I sit down with a classmate I have to wonder whether the person next to me was at the [anti-Israel] encampment,” Noah Lederman, an incoming senior at Columbia University majoring in philosophy and Jewish ethics, told Jewish Insider. In February 2024, Lederman said he was shoved and pinned against a wall by an anti-Israel protester as he donned a shirt with an Israeli flag on it during a pro-Israel demonstration right outside of the Morningside Heights campus.  

More than two years later, Lederman still feels wary on campus. “Did the person sitting next to me siege Hamilton Hall?” he said, referring to the April 2024 occupation of the academic building at Columbia by anti-Israel student demonstrators, who barricaded the doors. “Because those students have yet to receive consequences or be identified because they wore masks to cover their faces. Are they the person who pushed me up against a wall?” he said. 

“Campus is not better, it’s just different,” said Lederman. “The assumption is that it’s better by virtue of there being no encampments right now, there’s no buildings being sieged. But that being the bar is ridiculous. What we saw my freshman year was so beyond the pale that people are inclined to say campus is better just because we don’t have people storming buildings, disrupting classes and Jewish students being told to go home because campus isn’t safe.”

He views the ICC conference as a place to help “further my skills in having civil dialogue” before returning to Columbia in the coming weeks. 

The program spans a wide range of topics, from making sense of Middle East tensions to addressing antisemitism at home.

The summit opened Sunday with a moderated conversation featuring former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant about the future of the region. It was followed by a security update by IDF Col. (ret.) Miri Eisin; former Knesset member Ruth Wasserman Lande and Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. The panel was moderated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss. 

Last year’s conference came at the height of the Trump administration’s pressure campaign on universities to crack down on antisemitism, which has included federal funding cuts from dozens of schools. 

Monday’s opening session will address the implications of those cuts, when Noah Pollak, a senior advisor at the Education Department, and Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, debate whether the federal government’s campus crackdown is good for America.  

Other speakers scheduled to address the gathering throughout the three-day conference include Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin, parents of the late Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin; former hostage Omer Shem Tov; Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA); Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY); and Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice. 

“With respect to [campus] antisemitism, we’ve seen improvements over the last year,” Ken Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and a former Education Department official, told JI. “[That is] thanks, in part, to the efforts of many different organizations and government agencies.”

“But we’re still seeing a level of challenge that is near historic levels,” said Marcus. “In other words, we don’t have encampments and similar problems to the extent of previous semesters, but we are receiving intake calls that are significantly higher in number and severity than we had in all the worst of the last few years.” The Brandeis Center has filed numerous lawsuits and federal complaints against universities on behalf of Jewish students alleging a failure to address antisemitism since Oct. 7.   

“There’s no sugarcoating what Jewish students are living through,” Jacob Baime, CEO of ICC, told JI. “Campus life has grown more hostile, and the antisemitism more brazen, than at any point in memory: it’s on the quad, in the classroom, and online. But something profound is happening at the same time. This generation refuses to hide. They are prouder, better organized and more determined than any pro-Israel student cohort in history.” 

The goal of the conference, Baime said, is “to train them, connect them and send them back to school ready to stand tall and proud.”

One of the most profound changes since Oct. 7, Lederman said, is a shift in how professors behave. Before the attacks, he said, “antisemitism was subtle and professors were afraid.”

“Now they are brazenly antisemitic under the guise of anti-Zionism,” he continued. The biggest difference, Lederman added, is that professors “are no longer afraid to incite Jew hatred in their classes.”

Lederman said he expects the conference to give students tools to deal with that shift. “We are not going to run away and hide,” he said. “[ICC] teaches students to be unashamedly Zionist and Jewish. They teach them how to advocate for Israel, while also thinking for themselves.”