The historic rise of antisemitism brought on by the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks has posed a unique set of challenges to lawyers litigating incidents targeting Jewish students and employees.  

More than 60 attorneys and heads of Jewish legal organizations gathered on Monday for an inaugural legal summit in Manhattan, hosted by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, to discuss questions including: how to effectively present a case to a judge that may not have experience with antisemitism or anti-Israel issues; how to determine when free speech turns into harmful conduct; and how lawsuits might change now that the Israel-Hamas war has ended.  

Panels focused on legal strategies for litigation in antisemitism cases involving K-12 schools, college campuses, Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights investigations, labor and employment and investigations into organizations that coordinate and fund antisemitic events. 

Speakers included James Pasch, vice president of litigation at the Anti-Defamation League; Gadi Dotz, assistant director of StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice; and Erik Jaffe, partner at Schaerr Jaffe LLP, who has been involved in more than 150 Supreme Court cases.

“It was an honor to be invited to speak by Brandeis Center, and to share the space with fellow non-profit practitioners, law firm leaders and academics throughout the country,” Pasch, who participated in a panel concerning the persistence of antisemitism on college campuses, and legal remedies to better protect Jewish students, told Jewish Insider. “It is crucial for the betterment of the Jewish community that we come together to share ideas and best practices so that we can collectively advance our mission in the fight against antisemitism.”

Law firms represented at the summit included Greenberg Traurig, LLP; Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller; Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinsky & Josefiak PLLC; Kasowitz Law Firm; Mazie Slater Katz Freeman; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; White & Case LLP; Torridon Law; Cooley LLP; Arnold & Porter; Covington & Burling; Stein Mitchell Beato & Missner LLP; Akin Gump; Burford Capital; Latham & Watkins LLP; Consovoy McCarthy PLLC; Cohen Williams LLP; Kagan Stern Marinello & Beard, LLC; Lewin & Lewin LLP and Gibson Dunn. 

Many law firms continue to primarily focus on antisemitism at universities, Karen Paikin Barall, chief policy officer at the Brandeis Center, told JI. But the event also highlighted “more cases we’re starting to see in the K-12 space, as well as union and employment issues that were not as prevalent before Oct. 7,” she said.   

“There was significant discussion about what’s emerging across the country,” said Barall. “People are increasingly focused on the connections between various antisemitic actors on campus — how they are funded, how they coordinate, and how these networks operate. Some of that becomes visible through the discovery process in active litigation.”

“By convening everyone and sharing information, it becomes clear that these incidents are not isolated,” she continued. “The encampments look the same, the messaging and posters are nearly identical. There is a broader, organized effort behind many of these situations.”

Amid the ongoing ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, “antisemitism is not going away,” Barall said. “We are seeing it spread into new spaces, including healthcare. A major focus of the summit was ensuring that we are prepared and equipped to confront what comes next.”

The Brandeis Center plans to host similar summits twice a year. “One of the clearest takeaways is that while there are many ways to combat antisemitism, the legal process is extraordinarily effective,” Barall told JI. “The collaboration in the room was remarkable. People often assume different law firms or Jewish organizations are competitive, but there was none of that. The shared purpose was unmistakable.”

The official reason that more than 100 college students from across Washington gathered in a ballroom at George Washington University last week was for a formal dinner billed as an opportunity to build bridges between the Black and Jewish communities.

But what really got the students — undergrads from GWU, American, George Mason, Georgetown, Howard and the University of the District of Columbia — talking at this event, which was meant to highlight commonalities and spark deep connections between students from different backgrounds, was a breezy icebreaker: Is a hot dog a sandwich?

That was one of several lighthearted prompts for the students to discuss as they settled into dinner and got to know each other at tables of 10. Later, after they had introduced themselves and playfully debated topics like who would play them in a movie and their least favorite internet trends, the students turned to more personal questions about identity, community and belonging. It was an exercise carefully calibrated to build connection free from rancor, where the students could speak about themselves and their identities as racial and religious minorities without fear of judgment. 

“Every single time, I am amazed at the discussion and how vulnerable people will be,” said Arielle Levy, vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion at Hillel International. Levy shepherded the students through the increasingly more serious questions during last week’s dinner program. “I just really hope it leads to action, because that’s really what we’re hoping for.”

Formally dubbed the “Unity Dinner,” the event was sponsored by Robert Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance, Hillel International and the United Negro College Fund. The Washington event was one of 14 such events taking place in cities across the country this academic year. It is an expansion on a pilot project, which began last year with the core belief that rebuilding the storied — but strained — Black-Jewish alliance of the Civil Rights Movement must start at a grassroots, interpersonal level. After seven unity dinners last year connecting Black and Jewish students, the funders became convinced that supporting dialogue in intimate settings like this is one of the best ways to fight hate. 

“You see this micro-connection that starts to build understanding and awareness,” Tara Levine, Blue Square Alliance’s chief partnership officer, told Jewish Insider at the dinner. “Then over time, that builds empathy, and that becomes something that students share with one another, within their communities, across communities. It is ultimately how we address the underlying divide and start to overcome some of the hate that we’re seeing.”

The students all had different reasons for coming. Some wanted to meet new people. Others were excited by the prospect of putting off homework for a few hours. Several learned of it from professors who piqued their curiosity.

“I actually take a class on the Holocaust and modern-day politics at Howard University, and my professor is Jewish, and he told us about the specific event that we could come out to,” said Joy Baker, a freshman at the historically Black university. “We were automatically interested.”

The whole idea of bringing Black and Jewish students together over dinner, with no agenda beyond getting to know one another, began in Atlanta with John Eaves, a professor at Spelman College who is both Black and Jewish. He is well-versed in the history of Black and Jewish activists working together during the Civil Rights Movement; his own synagogue, The Temple, was bombed for its support of civil rights in 1958 — but now, Eaves sees that knowledge has lapsed among younger generations in both communities.

“One day, I heard a Baptist preacher tell me that he felt that Jews were unlikely allies. What?” said Eaves, who is also the program director of the Tikkun Olam Initiative and Social Innovation Fund at the United Negro College Fund, an organization that provides financial support to historically Black colleges and universities. “That spoke to the possibility, but it also spoke to the challenge. They’re allies, but he did not think of Jews as allies. I see this as planting the seed.” 

The discussions don’t directly touch on Israel, but the dinner organizers said that the events happening in the Middle East have not kept people away from the events. The main impact Eaves has seen is on American Jews’ wariness toward once-allied communities who they felt had abandoned them after the Oct. 7 attacks two years ago. He encouraged Jews, even those who still feel raw, to not yet write off their wayward allies, and to follow the lead of the college students.

“I think the Jewish community felt sucker punched by Oct. 7, and felt like there’s very few people who have been there for us. There’s a degree of sensitivity right now, in terms of ‘nobody’s really there for us,’” said Eaves.

“This type of thing is doable. The Jewish community has to understand the power of the ask, not minimize our ability to make the ask. People respond in a positive way. That’s the piece that I think is missing, the limited number of asks that are made,” Eaves added. “Make the ask. All people can say is no.”

At tables throughout the room, over soda and parve desserts, students spoke from the heart: What brings them pride in their community? What gives them a sense of belonging? When have they felt fully free? And were there any commonalities in the answers of students from different backgrounds? 

Baker, the Howard student, said she learned things that surprised her, “like how much the Jewish community and the Black community are low key kind of the same.” 

By the end of the night, the room was abuzz with the excited chatter of new friends, who had already set up group chats and followed each other on Instagram. Most said they planned to attend a Passover Seder at Howard in the spring, but many hope to meet up sooner — made easier by grants available from Hillel International to encourage continued dialogue. 

The students smiled and laughed as they walked out the door, talking with people they did not know two hours ago. They each were carrying something that is sure to excite all college students, regardless of race, religion or university: a free T-shirt from the event.

A BDS resolution that accuses Jewish students of “weaponizing antisemitism” and blames labor disputes on “Zionist interests” is advancing in the Cornell University Graduate Student Union — where unlike many other unions, dues are mandatory. 

The draft resolution, which was published earlier this month and obtained by Jewish Insider, states that “the dismantling of unions in higher education based on Zionist interests is not only to the detriment of graduate worker unions — it threatens the working class and labor unions nationwide.”

The resolution also says that a September Senate Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Committee subcommittee hearing focused on antisemitism within unions “succinctly crystallizes how autocrats are weaponizing antisemitism charges against unions in higher education to undermine labor unions nationwide.”  

“The House Republicans and representatives of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation repeatedly drew connections [at the hearing] between the collective interests of labor unions and imperial investments in the dispossession and genocide of the Palestinian people,” the draft states. “Under the guise of antisemitism, they denounced graduate worker unions’ interest in protecting their rights to engage in political protest in support of Palestinian liberation.”

Jewish students who have applied for an exemption to the dues requirement over the union’s anti-Israel behavior say they face monthslong waits, intimidation over unpaid fees and even professional consequences.

According to two Jewish students, the union has removed “most Jewish students” from the listserv, making them unaware of when the resolution will be submitted and what the voting process will be.  

David Rubinstein, a sixth year history Ph.D. candidate at Cornell, told JI that the “resolution is merely the latest chapter in CGSU’s yearslong campaign to make Jewish students feel unwelcome.”

“By endlessly attacking Israel and ‘Zionists’ — while ignoring every other conflict in the world — the union has created a hostile work environment that has impacted many students’ academic careers,” continued Rubinstein. “Depicting ‘Zionist interests’ as undercutting the working class has nothing to do with wages or benefits — rather, it reveals a conspiracy-tinged worldview.”

Another Jewish graduate student, who spoke to JI on the condition of anonymity over fears of being doxxed or harassed by the union, said the draft “is full of libelous comparisons and makes no mention of the harm BDS would do to Jewish students on campus.” 

“It’s completely denying antisemitism as a very real and present problem on campus,” the student said. 

In tandem with the resolution, the union has made threats to fire Ph.D. students who refuse to pay them, according to Rubinstein. 

“Cornell could have denied the union’s demand for mandatory dues — as many other universities have done,” he said. “Instead, objectors must undergo a burdensome exemption process requiring the disclosure of highly personal information. It is wrong that antisemites have been granted authority to determine whether I am Jewish enough not to fund their union.”

Cornell did not respond to a request for comment from JI about the resolution and the union’s requirement that all graduate students pay dues. 

Cornell’s graduate school came under scrutiny last month when Eric Cheyfitz, a professor with a history of anti-Israel activism, attempted to exclude an Israeli graduate student from participating in his course on Gaza. Cheyfitz was placed on leave, and retired weeks later. The school’s student newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, published a graphic during the week of the second anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks depicting a bloodied Star of David and Nazi “SS” symbol on the back of a Palestinian person.

The first day of the new school year on Tuesday at Columbia University was met with a wary sense of relief from Jewish students and faculty, who returned to campus unsure whether recent reforms aimed at combating campus antisemitism would make any difference. 

Scenes that have become commonplace on Columbia’s campus over the past two years — masked anti-Israel demonstrators barging into classrooms and the library banging on drums and chanting “Free Palestine” or hourslong demonstrations in the center of campus of more than 100 students calling for an “intifada revolution” — were nowhere to be seen. 

Still, in quieter ways, there were moments behind the tall iron entrance gates reminiscent of the antisemitic turbulence that grew commonplace on the Morningside Heights campus since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. 

Three members of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of over 80 university student groups that Instagram banned earlier this year for promoting violence, protested Columbia Hillel’s club fair, distributing fliers urging Jewish students to “drop Hillel” because it “supports genocide.” 

Elsewhere on campus, an organizer of the 2024 anti-Israel encampment movement, Cameron Jones, paraded a sign that read, “some of your classmates were IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] criminals committing genocide in Palestine.” 

Within hours, Columbia announced it had “initiated investigations into incidents that involve potential violations of the University’s Student Anti-Discrimination and Discriminatory Harassment Policies and University Rules.”

“The individuals involved are being notified that the University will immediately pursue its process for disciplinary action regarding their conduct,” the school said.

Jewish students and faculty praised Columbia’s swift response, which some attributed to the recent reforms, part of a deal made in July between the university and the Trump administration to restore the school’s federal funding that was slashed over the school’s alleged failure to address antisemitism. 

Tal Zussman, a third year PhD student in computer science, called the quick investigation a “significant change from a year ago.” 

“Last year’s first day of classes was marked by a protest that completely blocked the campus entrance and vandalism of [the sculpture] Alma Mater,” Zussman told Jewish Insider. “There were a few isolated instances [on Tuesday] that the university seems to be handling, but they were minor compared to last year’s drama. Hopefully things remain calm, but the university’s clear communication and quick response is a significant change from a year ago.” He said he felt that the change was “absolutely” due to the reforms. 

Civil engineering professor Jacob Fish similarly described a “situation in and around campus [that] is much better compared to previous fall and spring.” Fish, the director of Kalaniyot, the university’s new initiative to bring Israeli researchers to the Columbia campus, lauded the program as a way to further “make a difference on campus,” he told JI. 

“More than 200 first-year students participated in joyful and welcoming on campus activities,” Columbia’s Hillel director Brian Cohen told JI. “Three students disrupted these activities. We will continue to work with Columbia University’s rules process and hope that students who violate University rules continue to be held accountable.”

Columbia’s settlement with the federal government to restore some $400 million in federal funding that was slashed in March was met at the time with cautious optimism from Jewish leaders. 

Some expressed hope that the settlement could lead to a safer environment for Jewish students following nearly two years of antisemitic protests and disruptions on campus in the aftermath of Oct. 7. Others, however, raised concerns that the settlement did not include key structural reforms to protect Jewish students. 

Lishi Baker, a senior studying Middle East history and co-chair of the pro-Israel campus group Aryeh, told JI he is “optimistic” that Columbia’s recent changes, “particularly around discipline and policymaking, will make a big difference in improving life on campus for Jewish students and in preventing campus chaos.” 

Harvard University’s recent decision to cover security costs for Harvard Hillel was celebrated by many Jewish students as a way to alleviate growing security costs amid a surge in campus antisemitism. But for others, it raised questions about why the agreement did not extend to other Jewish groups affiliated with the school, such as Harvard Chabad. 

“Of course, there is a sense that there should be a responsibility” to cover Chabad’s security as well, Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi told Jewish Insider, although he said that he has never directly asked the administration to do so.   

Alex Bernat, Harvard Chabad’s outgoing undergraduate student president who graduated in the spring, said it’s “crucial” that Chabad receive the same funding. “If you want to make claims about protecting the Jewish community, you have to protect the whole Jewish community,” he told JI. 

“As an incoming student planning to be active in Chabad, I’m concerned that only funding security for Hillel overlooks the safety needs of the entire Jewish community,” Stella Hiltzik, who is slated to begin her freshman year at Harvard in the fall, told JI. “In today’s climate, all Jewish spaces deserve equal protection.”

While Hillel owns its building structure, that building sits on university property. It also contains a Harvard dining facility and other spaces that are accessible to all students, faculty and staff using Harvard’s ID swipe system. Chabad’s building is located on private property in a Cambridge, Mass. neighborhood. The latter has been guarded by armed security — funded by donors — every day since the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks and subsequent rise of antisemitism on college campuses. 

A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment to JI regarding the reason Hillel received university-funded security, but Chabad didn’t. 

Since Oct. 7, Harvard Chabad has been a centerpoint of campus security concerns. In a December 2023 speech made on campus during a Hanukkah menorah lighting, Zarchi described an atmosphere of fear for Jewish students and for his own family, who he said had been advised by Harvard’s police department to obtain private security after Harvard Chabad became the first university to screen IDF footage from the Hamas terror attacks in Israel. “Twenty-six years I gave my life to this community. I’ve never felt more alone,” Zarchi said at the time. 

On July 31, following years of lobbying by Harvard Hillel officials and advocates, Harvard agreed to cover all security costs for the university’s Hillel through the rest of Harvard President Alan Garber’s tenure, which is set to conclude at the end of the 2026-27 academic year. The move comes as Harvard faces billions of dollars in federal funding cuts from the Trump administration over its alleged failure to address antisemitism on campus.

“By taking on responsibility for security at Hillel, Harvard University is making a powerful statement: Harvard is committed to the safety of Jewish students,” Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel, told JI when the announcement was made. 

Zarchi called it “misleading” to claim that the university is protecting Jewish students broadly if Chabad is not included. Since last week’s announcement, Zarchi said he has received “floods” of calls and emails from students, parents and alumni who are “deeply concerned” about the university limiting security funding to Hillel. Chabad, according to Zarchi, is attended by nearly 500 students per week. 

“It’s this public misrepresentation and abandonment of the safety of so many that we need to address,” said Zarchi.

 “All Jewish students at Harvard, whether it’s Chabad or Hillel, should have safety and security.” 

Harvard University, in a move long sought-after by advocates for Jewish college students, agreed on Thursday to cover all security costs for the university’s Hillel ahead of the upcoming academic year, Jewish Insider has learned. 

“By taking on responsibility for security at Hillel, Harvard University is making a powerful statement: Harvard is committed to the safety of Jewish students,” Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel, told JI. 

Security costs “represent a significant part of our annual budget,” Rubenstein said, declining to provide figures. The agreement is slated to run through the rest of Harvard President Alan Garber’s tenure, which is set to conclude at the end of the 2026-27 academic year.   

“We should take this moment to appreciate the efficacy of Hillel’s advocacy and President Garber’s principled leadership. While more work remains to be done, tangible results like these are encouraging signs of the will and capacity for real and significant institutional change at Harvard,” Rubenstein continued, noting that advocacy efforts for Harvard to take on Hillel’s security have been in the works for several years, predating the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks.  

Harvard has faced billions of dollars in federal funding cuts for research from the Trump administration over its alleged failure to address antisemitism on campus. The university’s decision to fund Hillel security comes as it has signaled a willingness to settle with the government to restore its funds, The New York Times reported this week — a deal which could see the school agree to the Trump administration’s demand for as much as $500 million to end its clash. 

The Ivy League school has made several recent attempts to appeal to the Jewish community as it gears up for a settlement. On Monday, the university expanded its ties to Israel, announcing a new undergraduate study abroad program with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and a postdoctoral fellowship for Israeli scientists at Harvard Medical School.  

“Harvard University’s commitment to the safety and well-being of members of our Jewish community is paramount,” a Harvard spokesperson told JI. “Recent tragic events in communities across the country are evidence of the growth in antisemitism and further Harvard’s resolve in our efforts to combat antisemitism on our campus.”

The university did not respond to a follow-up inquiry from JI asking why Chabad is not receiving security funding as well. Harvard Hillel’s dining facility and other spaces are generally more easily accessible, with Harvard students, faculty and staff being able to enter by swiping their university ID.  

The decision for universities to take on Hillel security costs has been in flux in recent years. Yale University, for example, announced in December 2023 — as a response to Oct. 7 and subsequent rise of antisemitism on campus — that it would expand a pilot program launched the year prior and fully fund the cost of day-to-day security service for the Slifka Center, the university’s Hillel, for at least three years.

Adam Lehman, president and CEO of Hillel International, called for “other universities to follow Harvard’s example in this decision.”

“Harvard’s decision to fund these essential security measures reflects the understanding that Jewish students, like all students, deserve to be safe and welcome on campus,” Lehman told JI. 

The University of California, Los Angeles settled a federal lawsuit this week with Jewish students who alleged that the university permitted antisemitic conduct during the spring 2024 anti-Israel encampments on the campus, according to a settlement agreement shared by the university on Tuesday.

Yitzchok Frankel, then a second-year law student at UCLA, filed suit against the university in June 2024, claiming that he was “harassed and blocked from approaching the encampment by antisemitic activists, all with the assistance of UCLA security.” Two other Jewish UCLA students and a UCLA medical school professor later joined the suit. 

According to the settlement agreement, the university will be prohibited from “knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students, faculty and/or staff” from any UCLA programs or campus areas. Notably, the judgment stated that the prohibition also applies to the exclusion of Jewish UCLA affiliates “based on religious beliefs concerning the Jewish state of Israel.” 

The agreement will remain in effect for 15 years. It follows a preliminary ruling last August stating that the university must allow Jewish students equal access to campus spaces and events.

“Today’s settlement reflects a critically important goal that we share with the plaintiffs: to foster a safe, secure and inclusive environment for all members of our community and ensure that there is no room for antisemitism anywhere on campus,” University of California Board of Regents Chair Janet Reilly said in a statement.

UCLA also agreed to pay each of the plaintiffs $50,000, and will cover $3.6 million of their legal fees. 

UCLA will contribute $2.33 million to several organizations fighting antisemitism on college campuses. Recipients include Hillel at UCLA, the Academic Engagement Network, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles’ Campus Impact Network, Chabad of UCLA, the Jewish Graduate Organization, the Orthodox Union’s Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus and The Film Collaborative, Inc., which will produce a short film about a former UCLA employee who is a Holocaust survivor.

The university also pledged to give $320,000 to UCLA’s Initiative to Combat Antisemitism, which was created by UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk in March. 

“It seems like it will be a signal to everyone, to not just the Jewish community but to everyone, that what happened and was allowed to happen to Jewish students was wrong, and the university understands it was wrong, and is acknowledging that it wants to fix what was wrong,” UCLA Hillel Executive Director Dan Gold said about the settlement. 

In March, the Justice Department filed a statement of interest in the case supporting Frankel, the other Jewish students and a Jewish professor who joined him in the suit. 

“The president, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the Task Force know that every student must be free to attend school without being discriminated against on the basis of their race, religion or national origin,” DOJ senior counsel Leo Terrell, the chair of the federal antisemitism task force, said in March. 

The agreement comes as Frenk, who started at the university in January, has stated that countering antisemitism will be a priority of his tenure. 

“My position has been that, with all transparency and humility, we need to acknowledge that we have an antisemitism problem in universities. Denying it would be dishonest,” Frenk told Jewish Insider in May. 

As Jewish students and alumni at Columbia University await the final details of the university’s prospective deal with the Trump administration, some are expressing skepticism that a list of commitments announced by the school this week to address antisemitism on campus would have a significant impact on protecting Jewish students.

The steps were publicized Tuesday by Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, as the school works to reach a deal with the Trump administration to restore some $400 million in federal funding that was cut by the government in March due to the university’s record dealing with antisemitism since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in Israel. 

On Thursday, The New York Times reported that about 10 Columbia and Trump administration officials, including Shipman, met in Washington for roughly an hour. The White House confirmed that President Donald Trump has been fully briefed on the meeting but that negotiations were not finalized. According to a draft deal, Columbia would be required to pay a $200 million fine and commit to releasing admissions and staffing data to the federal government. 

“The deal as it stands now lets Columbia off the hook relatively without a scratch,” Inbar Brand, who graduated in the spring from Columbia’s dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University, told Jewish Insider. “The school gets its money back without resolving the core issues in its governance and administrative structure that allowed for antisemitism to fester openly for so long on campus.” 

“It’s disheartening that after all the pressure placed on Columbia by the Trump administration, they are pulling back exactly when it matters most,” Brand said.  

The commitments already agreed upon by the university include further incorporating the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism by requiring its Office of Institutional Equity to embrace the definition; appointing a Title VI coordinator to review alleged violations of the Civil Rights Act; requiring antisemitism training for all students, faculty and staff; and refusing to recognize or meet with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of over 80 university student groups that Instagram banned earlier this year for promoting violence. 

These diverge from a list of reforms that were demanded in the Trump administration’s letter to Columbia in March, which were initially agreed upon by the university but never finalized. These included putting the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies department and the Center for Palestine Studies under the purview of a senior vice provost, who would be appointed by the university to supervise course material and non-tenure faculty hiring; changes to the University Senate, which critics say has blocked discipline against anti-Israel protesters and removed protest regulations aimed at protecting Jewish students; and the formation of a presidential search committee to replace Shipman.

“An immense disappointment” is how Noa Fay, a graduate student entering her last year in Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, described the university’s latest commitments and prospective deal.

“Adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism is the only satisfactory aspect, and even that does not solve what has been the paramount issue at school since Oct. 7 — adherence to and enforcement of our own policies, rules and codes of conduct,” said Fay, a student member of the Columbia-SIPA Anti-Hate Task Force who last year received the Anti-Defamation League’s Levenson Family’s Defender of Democracy Award for her work to combat campus antisemitism.

Fay sees the outlines of a Trump administration deal as “largely symbolic” because it “establishes new policies and bureaucratic measures for reporting antisemitism without requiring Columbia to enact institutional reforms that would guarantee their effectuation,” she told JI.  

The only measures that will accomplish a safe climate for Jewish students, Fay suggested, are those that were outlined in the Trump administration’s letter earlier this year, including “discipline [including expulsion] of culpable students and faculty; admissions reform; education and [changes to] the University Senate, as it has served most reliably and forcefully to protect those guilty of antisemitic racism at school.” 

Lishi Baker, a rising senior at Columbia studying Middle East history and co-chair of the pro-Israel campus group Aryeh, echoed a call for the University Senate to be stripped of some of its power. “It’s the primary reason our governance is so bad and cannot continue to exist in its current form,” he told JI. 

Baker said he’d like to see “a strong deal to restore federal funding in exchange for deep institutional reforms.”

“If we want to change our culture, we need the right structures in place to do so. For example, revealing hiring and admissions data is good but it doesn’t fundamentally change culture. We need to actually hire better, more responsible people, and this might require changing the hiring process,” Baker continued. “We need better policies, better accountability measures and stronger moral leadership. Adding antisemitism to a list of micro aggressions doesn’t do it for me — we have to fix the culture of excluding and litmus testing Jews for their connection to Israel.” 

Eden Yadegar, a former president of the Columbia chapter of Students Supporting Israel who graduated in the spring with Middle East studies and modern Jewish studies degrees, told JI that “a deal that abandons reforming the institutions that have fostered antisemitism would be tantamount to abandoning Jewish students.”

“President Trump should not sign a deal of this framework,” Yadegar told JI. She wrote on X that the commitments are “good first steps” but believes her alma mater is “once again vying for a PR win.”

“The strategy?” Yadegar continued, “Elicit praise for quick fixes to pave the way for a deal that abandons the need for structural reform …  I’m sick of being expected to praise the bare minimum from Columbia.”

Eliana Goldin, who graduated in the spring as a political science major with a dual degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary, expressed concern that if the steps are “taken as a win, it will distract from actually dealing with Columbia’s deep-rooted issues and can possibly lead to more antisemitism rather than less,” she told JI. 

Goldin continued, “Essentially, if you don’t treat a problem at its roots, you might never treat the problem.” 

The commitments received praise from Brian Cohen, the executive director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel – the Kraft Center for Jewish Life, as well as Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL.

Cohen welcomed the steps taken by the university, “including the unequivocal recognition that there is an antisemitism problem on campus and that it has had a tangible impact on Jewish students’ sense of safety and belonging,” he wrote on X. “I hope this announcement marks the beginning of meaningful and sustained change,” said Cohen. 

ADL chief Greenblatt wrote on X, “I applaud these commitments made by @Columbia, which will help restore the university as a welcoming place for Jewish and Israeli students and faculty.” 

“Our hope is that Columbia can go from being an example of the worst of antisemitism on campus to being a model for what other colleges can do to combat antisemitism,” Greenblatt said. 

While Trump has not yet responded to Columbia’s latest commitments, last week he told CNN that a deal was likely to happen. “We’re going to probably settle with Columbia. They want to settle very badly. There’s no rush,” Trump said. 

Earlier this year at a symposium in New York City, Jewish scholars gathered to analyze the recent surge of antisemitism on college campuses and debate whether Jewish students still belong at the country’s elite bastions of higher education. 

“I certainly don’t think that we should abandon great citadels of learning or be chased out of them, although to be there takes fortitude that I don’t think should be asked of every student,” Rabbi David Wolpe, a former visiting scholar at Harvard University Divinity School, said during the event’s opening address. “So I’m going to give a selective answer: it depends who.” 

Over the next two months, college freshmen will embark on new chapters at universities around the country. Many Jewish students have found appeal in other top schools, such as Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tenn., and Washington University in St. Louis, where administrators were quick to enforce university rules amid rising antisemitism in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, and therefore avoided much of the chaos that played out on other campuses. 

But some Jewish students are still seeking admission to the country’s most prestigious schools. 

Who are these students making the choice to display the fortitude that Wolpe referenced by attending Columbia and Harvard —- two Ivy League campuses that have been beset by nearly two years of controversy over anti-Israel encampments and classroom disruptions, physical assaults of Jewish students and battles with the federal government, including potential loss of accreditation — over an alleged failure to address antisemitism? 

Leah Kreisler, a recent graduate of Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Md., decided in ninth grade that she wanted to attend Columbia. Kreisler plans to enroll in Columbia’s dual-degree program with the Jewish Theological Seminary and will begin next year, following a gap year in Israel. 

Recent events have only reinforced Kreisler’s dream of attending the storied institution. “Columbia has always had a politically charged environment and I honestly think that fits a part of who I am,” she told Jewish Insider. “I like having those kinds of discussions and engaging with people I disagree with. That spirit drew me to the school.” 

She’s also hopeful that by the time she arrives at Columbia for the 2026-27 school year, “things will get figured out.” The university is in talks with the federal government to restore the institution’s federal funding, which was slashed in March due to the antisemitic demonstrations that have roiled the campus since Oct. 7.

Still, Kreisler admitted she’s “a little bit scared” to face antisemitism, which she hasn’t directly encountered in her tight-knit D.C. suburb with a sizable Jewish community. “There will probably be people in the streets doing antisemitic things,” she said, noting that she often gets “weird looks from Jewish members of the community” when she shares her plans to attend Columbia.

Laura Hosid runs a private business in Potomac guiding high school students through the college admissions process. She works with many students like Kreisler who are “often willing to overlook [antisemitism] at schools like Harvard and Columbia, if they can get in,” Hosid, who is Jewish, told JI.  

“At slightly less selective schools, though, it’s more of a factor,” she said. “Students are willing to look away if there’s too much anti-Israel stuff.” 

“Jewish life at Columbia is Dickens-esque: the best of times and the worst of times,” said a Jewish Columbia alum who requested to remain anonymous. “There are real challenges, but at the same time, you can go to Columbia Hillel, the Kraft Center for Jewish Life, and access the most interesting people in the world. Bob Kraft shows up for events,” he said, referencing the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots for whom the center is named.

“I’m certainly not discouraging students if they are interested in schools like Columbia and Harvard,” Hosid continued. “I’m just making sure that they are well aware of what’s going on there and how it compares to what the climate is like at other schools.”

A Jewish Columbia alum who requested to remain anonymous told JI that he still sees his alma mater as “an amazing New York City school with an incredible alumni network.” So he was supportive when his daughter, an incoming Columbia freshman, committed to the university. 

“Jewish life at Columbia is Dickens-esque: the best of times and the worst of times,” he said. “There are real challenges, but at the same time, you can go to Columbia Hillel, the Kraft Center for Jewish Life, and access the most interesting people in the world. Bob Kraft shows up for events,” he said, referencing the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots for whom the center is named.

In 1967, Columbia’s student body was 40% Jewish, according to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report at the time. But even as Jewish enrollment at Columbia has declined since then, it still has one of the highest percentages of Jewish undergraduates in the Ivy League, at an estimated 22%. “The numbers for this year’s incoming class are quite strong,” Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia Hillel, told JI. 

Cohen said that the center’s “top priority is to make sure that every Jewish student feels seen and supported and part of a vibrant Jewish community from the moment they arrive at Columbia University.”

“Everything we hear anecdotally is that the number of applications of Jewishly involved students to Harvard were stable — if not increased — from last year to this year,” said Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, the director of Harvard Hillel.

That’s been Hillel’s goal for years — even before antisemitism reached record highs on campus. But Cohen noted that for the past two academic years, “everything is ramped up.”

“We want to make sure that when we meet students and families face-to-face they already have some idea of who we are and the relationship isn’t starting from square one,” he said, outlining two priorities. “One is that students understand that they are entering into this thriving, diverse Jewish community on campus. [The second is] that, should any problems arise during their time at Columbia, they have trusted resources to go to that are easily accessible and can help support them in navigating the various university processes.” 

Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, the director of Harvard Hillel, is similarly spending the summer preparing for a new class of Jewish students. He’s hearing less concern around antisemitism from incoming students and their parents compared to last year. “I think that’s a combination of all of us adjusting our baselines and knowing what we’re getting into, and that last year was calmer on campus than the year before.” 

Like Columbia, Harvard has had billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts frozen by the Trump administration. The university filed suit against the government in April, claiming that the cuts violate the First Amendment. A 300-page antisemitism report released by the university in April described “severe problems” that Harvard’s Jewish students have faced in the classroom, on social media and through campus protests.

“Everything we hear anecdotally is that the number of applications of Jewishly involved students to Harvard were stable — if not increased — from last year to this year,” Rubenstein said. Ramaz, a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school in Manhattan, for instance, admitted five students to Harvard the past admissions cycle, with four planning to attend. “That’s the highest in living memory,” Rubenstein said.

One of the Ramaz graduates starting at Harvard this fall is Stella Hiltzik, who grew up hearing “incredible stories” from her mother’s time on the Boston campus. “But it wasn’t until I visited Harvard last year that I decided that was the place I wanted to be,” Hiltzik, whose major is undecided, told JI. She was drawn to Harvard “even despite all of the crazy things happening on campus” after seeing “how supportive, warm and comforting Jewish life on campus is — especially the Chabad. It feels like a sense of home,” Hiltzik said. 

“Despite everything going on, when I say I’m going to Harvard, most people are proud of me and supportive,” Hiltzik continued. “But there are some people who ask me, ‘What are you thinking?’ For me, it’s honestly a cool conversation to have, because I get to tell them how I’m excited to be a Jewish voice on campus during these hard times.” 

“Despite everything that has happened at Columbia,” Leah Kreisler, a recent graduate of Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Md., said, “I don’t think that the solution to antisemitism is to remove ourselves from these institutions. That’s been my mentality throughout the college [application] process.”  

“Jewish students are not being dissuaded,” Rubenstein said. “Which is a great thing because some people are chanting ‘Zionists are not welcome here’ and the one thing they most want is Jewish students to not come here.” 

Students like Hiltzik and Kreisler offer a quiet rebuke to the billionaire alums of the Ivies who have begun to withhold their considerable donations. One Israeli venture capitalist went as far as to try to lure Jewish students attending Ivy League schools to transfer to universities in Israel.

“Despite everything that has happened at Columbia,” Kreisler said, “I don’t think that the solution to antisemitism is to remove ourselves from these institutions. That’s been my mentality throughout the college [application] process.”  

“People shouldn’t be afraid to go to any of these schools,” echoed Hiltzik. “At the end of the day, you’re going to get a good education and you’re going to show everyone how cool it is to be a proud Jew. I feel, in a sense, that this is my version of fighting for my people.” 

Barnard College reached a settlement on Monday in a lawsuit brought by Jewish students which claimed that the school violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by failing to address antisemitism. 

Under the agreement reached, Barnard will adopt an anti-masking policy at demonstrations; refuse to meet with anti-Israel campus groups, including Columbia University Apartheid Divest; “consider” adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism; require students, faculty and staff to complete antisemitism training; and expand its discipline policy to include harassment that occurs off campus or online. 

Barnard will also hire a coordinator to review new allegations of Title VI violations and agreed not to divest from companies that have ties to Israel. 

The complaint, Students Against Antisemitism, Inc. et al v. The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, filed in district court in New York in February 2024 against Columbia University and Barnard, detailed several instances of antisemitism, including physical assaults of Jewish students. The complaint alleges that faculty members and students routinely referred to Hamas’ Oct.7, 2023 attacks as “awesome” and a “great feat.” 

Barnard also recently expanded its partnership with the Jewish Theological Seminary. Jewish studies courses at JTS — located near Barnard’s Morningside Heights campus — will now count toward Barnard degree requirements, with students able to participate with no additional tuition costs.

Laura Ann Rosenbury, president of Barnard, said in a statement that the settlement “reflects our ongoing commitment to maintaining a campus that is safe, welcoming, and inclusive for all members of our community.” 

Monday’s settlement comes as Barnard — which is closely affiliated with Columbia but has independent administration and affiliation — remains under investigation by the Trump administration for violating Title VI.

Barnard faced several major incidents of antisemitism on its campus during the last academic year. A staff member was assaulted and sent to the hospital in February by anti-Israel demonstrators who stormed the college’s main administrative building and remained there for several hours, chanting “resistance is justified when people are occupied” and “intifada revolution.” 

The demonstration was a response to the school’s decision just days earlier — in its most forceful response to anti-Israel activity on campus to date — to expel two second-semester seniors who disrupted a “History of Modern Israel” class on Columbia’s campus by storming in, banging on drums and distributing posters to students that read “CRUSH ZIONISM.” 

​​Marc Kasowitz of Kasowitz LLP, counsel for the plaintiffs, praised Barnard’s “commitment to take meaningful actions to combat antisemitism demonstrates its leadership in the fight against antisemitism and upholding the rights of Jewish and Israeli students.”

Kasowitz continued, “These commitments are not only the right thing to do, but are essential to creating a welcome and inclusive campus for all members of the Barnard community. I encourage other colleges and universities to do the right thing and follow Barnard’s lead.”

The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed suit in federal court in Massachusetts on Wednesday on behalf of two Jewish students, alleging that the university and a tenured professor violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including harassment on social media and in mass emails. 

“This is a textbook example of neglect and indifference,” Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Brandeis Center, said of the lawsuit, shared exclusively with Jewish Insider. “Not only were several antisemitic incidents conducted at the hands of a professor, but MIT’s administration refused to take action on every single occasion,” said Marcus, who served as U.S. assistant secretary of education in the Bush and Trump administrations. 

While the lawsuit, Sussman v. MIT, addresses several antisemitic incidents caused by students, a large portion of the 71-page complaint focuses on alleged antisemitic actions from Michel DeGraff, a tenured linguistics professor. 

The complaint states that through the spring and fall of 2024, DeGraff publicly harassed Lior Alon, an Israeli postdoctoral student, for serving in the Israel Defense Forces — posting Alon’s name and image on social media, and tagging Al Jazeera. The professor then published an article in European newspaper Le Monde in which he singled out the Alon by name, writing that the Israeli, “like many other Zionist counter-protesters, participate in well-rehearsed propaganda that erases the anti-Zionist Jewish students and misrepresents them.” 

As a result, Alon said he was confronted by strangers in various locations, including his child’s daycare and at the grocery store. Alon emailed MIT President Sally Kornbluth expressing fears for his safety and the safety of his family, and requested that the posts be taken down.

Kornbluth — who is the only one of the three college presidents who testified in a now-infamous December 2023 congressional hearing on campus antisemitism who remains in her position — never responded to Alon’s concerns, according to the lawsuit, and no action was taken.

In November 2024, the complaint states that DeGraff harassed another Jewish student by sending a series of mass emails to his entire department, copying Kornbluth and other administrators, accusing the student of having a Jewish “mind infection” and threatening to use him as a “real-life case study” in a class the professor was teaching. 

That same day, flyers were slipped under doors in a dormitory where this student previously lived, targeting him specifically in white lettering on a green band, styled after Hamas headbands, advocating for violence against Jews. 

As a result of the harassment, the student left MIT before completing his Ph.D. program.  

Other instances of antisemitic harassment detailed in the lawsuit include students occupying buildings and disrupting classes with antisemitic chants, students distributing “terror maps” promoting violence at campus locations deemed Jewish and an individual urinating on the Hillel building.

The Massachusetts school was among the 45 universities against which the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened Title VI investigations in March. 

Wednesday’s lawsuit comes at a time when many elite universities are acquiescing to the Trump administration’s demands to crack down on the rise of antisemitic activity on campus that began in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. MIT, however, joined a lawsuit last month challenging the federal government’s attempt to cut research funding from schools that the administration says have not adequately addressed antisemitism. 

Jewish student leaders from the City University of New York shared firsthand accounts of campus antisemitism with Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and New York City Mayor Eric Adams at a roundtable inside City Hall on Monday. 

The meeting came as a result of several antisemitic incidents CUNY students have faced just weeks into the new academic year. Many of the students in attendance said that antisemitism is more intense on campus than it was last year. They shared that they were met with loud protests outside of a recent event intending to welcome new Jewish students to campus.

On Sep. 3, some CUNY Jewish students were followed to a kosher restaurant in midtown Manhattan, where pro-Palestinian student demonstrators blockaded the entrance and shouted threats at Jewish customers. 

Also this month, CUNY’s Baruch College tried to cancel an annual campus Rosh Hashanah celebration over safety concerns. Baruch’s president, Szu-yung David Wu, initially told students that he could not “guarantee their security.” The decision was later reversed on the condition that Hillel’s name would not be on the Sept. 26 event due to fears of anti-Israel protests. 

“We’ve been fighting for almost a year now with all of the antisemitism going on both on campus and in the city,” Maya Gavriel, a third-year student studying accounting at Baruch, told Jewish Insider at the event. “Being able to speak with leaders who can actually make change, and they’re listening to what’s happening, feels like I’m finally getting an opportunity to be proud about being Jewish. I’m under the impression that [Adams and Torres] care about wanting to give us the resources to make a change, but it will only come with time and a lot of pressure.” 

Gavriel noted that she’s particularly appreciative of Torres for meeting with Baruch Jewish students immediately after the Rosh Hashanah event cancellation. “He set up the meeting with Mayor Adams and the NYPD,” she said. “He listened and gave us resources and that’s how I know things are happening. That’s why we keep showing up to tell our stories and we’re not stopping this fight.” 

Students expressed that the NYPD did not move fast enough last year to break up demonstrations. 

Adams told the group of about a dozen students that “we need action from you guys to ask them to go onto campus.” 

“Our lawyers made it clear you don’t have the authority to go on those college campuses without the permission of the individuals of the schools, the presidents and the faculties,” the mayor said after listening to students’ concerns and experiences.  

“Whatever the law allows me to do, I am going to do it to ensure New Yorkers are safe,” Adams said. 

“Free expression is vital to a free society,” said Torres. “But there is a difference between free expression and harassment [and] intimidation. What we’re seeing in our colleges and universities is the creation of a hostile environment in violation of Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964].” 

Several Jewish members of Adams’ team also addressed students’ concerns at the roundtable, including Menashe Shapiro, deputy chief of staff and senior advisor to the mayor; Richie Taylor, deputy chief of the NYPD and Fabien Levy, deputy mayor for communications.   

The recommendations handed down earlier this week from Columbia University’s task force on antisemitism painted a picture of Jewish students feeling “isolation and pain” in the wake of pro-Palestinian protests that have gripped the campus since Oct. 7. 

They also cited a lack of disciplinary response from the university regarding unauthorized protests of the Israel-Hamas war as contributing to Jewish students’ struggles on campus, and called for the university to more effectively investigate policy violations by creating an easier process for filing complaints.

But on the pivotal question of whether some of the slogans chanted at those rallies veer from legitimate political speech into antisemitism the task force’s recommendations are ambiguous.

The report states, “Obviously, the chants ‘gas the Jews’ and ‘Hitler was right’ are calls to genocide, but fortunately no one at Columbia has been shouting these phrases… Rather, many of the chants at recent Columbia protests are viewed differently by different members of the Columbia community: some feel strongly that these are calls to genocide, while others feel strongly that they are not.” 

The report does not, however, specifically address the slogan “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free,” which has frequently been chanted at protests on Columbia’s campus and is widely viewed by Jewish groups as a call for genocide of Israelis.

According to David Schizer, a professor of law and economics and dean emeritus of Columbia’s law school, who is one of the three co-chairs of the task force, the key issue that the 24-page report addresses is the thorny matter of campus free speech — emphasizing that “everyone needs to have a right to speak and to protest,” he said. 

“How can we make sure the people have the right to speak and protest, while at the same time ensuring that protests don’t interfere with the ability of other members of the community to teach classes, study for a test, to hear their professors,” Schizer, who is also the former CEO of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, continued. While the report emphasizes the right to peaceful demonstrations, it also condemns faculty for participating in unauthorized demonstrations.

But some prominent leaders of the movement to fight antisemitism in higher education expressed skepticism that a set of recommendations could fix the raging antisemitism on Columbia’s campus — which has included repeated violations of the rules on protests and physical assault and other serious attacks on Jewish students. 

“The new recommendations have some technically good work which could provide incremental advances, but it’s certainly not the kind of thing that will solve Columbia’s problems,” Kenneth Marcus, founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, told JI. The Brandeis Center recently filed federal complaints against the University of California for antisemitism at UC Berkeley and American University, while the Department of Education is currently investigating Brandeis Center complaints filed against Wellesley, SUNY New Paltz, the University of Southern California, Brooklyn College and the University of Illinois for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and for discrimination against Jewish students.

The recommendations come as Columbia faces pressure from donors and investigations by Congress and the Biden administration over antisemitism. It also comes in the wake of scrutiny regarding a number of antisemitism task forces set up at elite universities as a response to the surge in antisemitism that erupted following the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel. Five months later, questions remain over the effectiveness and direction of such groups — with some experts claiming task forces have been all talk with minimal action so far. 

But Schizer said that in Columbia’s case, there have been months of ongoing research of university policies, including interviewing students. It aims to release a series of reports in the coming months with the goal of gaining a deeper understanding of the campus climate and providing further recommendations.

The report states that while it agrees with the university’s principle that calls for genocide, like other incitement to violence, violate the rules, “the application of it should be clarified.”

It goes on to encourage the university’s legal team to “provide more guidance on this issue,” and emphasizes that clearer guidance is needed, like the university has done with its rules on gender-based misconduct to include “scenarios,” “to provide greater clarity help to provide fair notice, so Columbia affiliates have more of a sense of what is permissible (even if offensive) and what is not.” 

Columbia administration plans to review the task force’s interim policy at the end of this semester. Minouche Shafik, the university’s president, said in a statement that the new recommendations —  the first set in a series — are welcomed by the university and “will continue across a number of fronts as the University works to address this ancient, but sadly persistent, form of hate.” 

Marcus said it’s “good that Columbia finally has good people asking serious questions about harassment and disruptive protests,” but he added, “What’s needed is not just a few recommendations regarding the rules on protest. The fact is that there’s been antisemitic bigotry [at] Columbia University for decades now.”

“It’s not as if a few changes to the protest policies are going to substantially change the institution as long as they continue business as usual,” he continued. “Much of what’s in this new set of recommendations could have been written on Oct. 6 given everything that’s happened since. What’s needed is not a series of incremental measures, but a rethinking of what Columbia is doing to cause harm, not just to Jewish students but also to the surrounding community. These recommendations may lead to technical and marginal changes in the ways that the university responds to specific incidents, and generally speaking that’s a good thing. 

But it’s certainly not a solution to the problem.” 

Marcus noted that the recommendations are “framed fairly narrow, with response to only one narrow piece of the problem.” 

“I know this is only one of the series of reports that we can anticipate, but if this is an indication of what’s to come, it may provide some useful professional iteration but not a truly substantial change,” he said. “It does not indicate a new mindset that is ready to deal with the problems Oct. 7 has revealed.” 

Mark Yudof, chair of the Academic Engagement Network, expressed a similar sentiment as Marcus, but added that he’s “hopeful” the report will bring change. Schizer, as well as the two other co-chairs of the task force, Ester Fuchs and Nicolas Lemann, are all longtime members of AEN. 

“We need adequate rules about speech and we need to put teeth into it and have reasonable procedures in which people are actually disciplined for violating the rules,” Yudof said, calling the report “complex.” 

While skeptical, Yudof also expressed praise for the recommendations — “I think Columbia’s report gets at the core problem of education and I applaud them,” he said. 

“I like the report and am hopeful… I would urge the Columbia administration to adopt the recommendations of the task force, but the proof will be in the pudding.”

For two hours on Wednesday, lawmakers heard from a parade of Jewish students, each delivering the same message: They do not feel safe on their college campuses.

Speaking to a roundtable organized by the House Committee on Education & the Workforce, Jewish students from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia, Rutgers, Stanford, Tulane, Cooper Union and University of California, Berkeley spoke about about the harassment, threats and violence they’ve faced on their campuses since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

The students’ accounts were all remarkably similar, despite coming from a range of locations and school types, including openly antisemitic taunts and harassment, angry mobs rampaging through campus and overtaking campus buildings, vandalism and in some cases threats of or actual incidents of violence, all going largely or completely unaddressed by university administrators and campus police, despite repeated and sustained pleas from the students for help and support. 

In some cases, the students said professors and administrators were complicit or actively involved in the antisemitic activity. Students said that they feared for their safety and even their lives.

The students, saying they felt abandoned by their universities and had no faith in them to act to protect them, pleaded for action from Congress. They said that they hoped their testimony could serve as a wakeup call to both Congress and the American public.

“As my friends from Harvard and UPenn can tell you, it doesn’t end simply because presidents are replaced. Systemic change is needed,” Kevin Feigelis, a Stanford student, said. “Universities have proven they have no intention of fixing themselves. It must be you, and it must be now.”

Shabbos Kestenbaum — a Harvard student who said he’d contacted the school’s antisemitism task force more than 40 times without a response and had been threatened in a video with a machete by a still-employed Harvard staff member — called Congress and the courts the students’ “last hope.”

Multiple students and lawmakers said that the current events on campus carry echoes of 1930s Germany or the pogroms in Russia.

Some suggested potential courses of action that Congress and other federal branches could take, including leveraging U.S. taxpayer funding or the schools’ tax-exempt statuses, placing third-party monitors on campus and enforcing diversity requirements in Middle East studies departments requiring them to include pro-Israel views.

Students from Harvard, Penn and MIT all said that little has changed on their campuses since last year’s blockbuster congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, which prompted the ouster of Harvard and Penn’s presidents.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the committee’s chair, vowed that she and her colleagues would not stop their efforts to tackle antisemitism on campus.

“I was very emotional,” Foxx told Jewish Insider, “I’m a mother and a grandmother. I have one grandchild who went to college and I’m not sure what I would have done if he had come home to say he felt threatened on his campus like these students feel threatened. No student on a college campus, in this country, in the year 2024, should feel threatened.”

Foxx said that the committee’s antisemitism investigation is proceeding deliberately, but that the schools will be held to account. The committee has already requested documents from Harvard, Penn and Columbia and has now subpoenaed Harvard. Foxx suggested that other schools whose students had appeared Thursday could be next.