The largest global membership organization for social workers from around the world will vote next week on whether to expel Israel’s leading social work body, sparking a feverish advocacy campaign by Jewish and Israeli practitioners to urge members to vote against the measure. 

The vote by the International Federation of Social Workers is scheduled for Feb. 18, and it comes after several members in the IFSW complained that some Israeli social workers served in combat roles in the Israel Defense Forces during Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. The IFSW alleges that military service violates social workers’ professional and ethical commitments to nonviolence. 

The Israeli Union of Social Workers — and its allies in the United States and Canada — argue that such a request ignores Israel’s mandatory draft policy, holds Israel to a different standard from other member nations and singles out the only Jewish state. The leader of the Israeli body said it would be “entirely unimaginable” for Israeli social workers to ask not to serve in combat, noting that it would come across as “elitist” and “mark our union as illegitimate in the eyes of both the government and the public.” 

“If we believed that removing the [IUSW] from the IFSW would promote peace, guarantee the rights and security of both nations — we ourselves would vote in favor,” IUSW’s chair, Inbal Hermoni, wrote in a letter urging countries to vote against the measure. “This is a noble goal. However, this is not the case.” 

The IFSW comprises 141 country members — including Russia, Iran and China — representing more than 3 million people. The only other country to ever face a similar punishment from the IFSW was South Africa, which was suspended during the era of apartheid rule. 

Last year, the IFSW voted to formally censure Israel — the second time the body had done so.

“This position was grounded in our ethical mandate: social workers are called to uphold human dignity, promote peace, and work for social justice. Active participation in combat contradicts these principles,” IFSW President Joachim Mumba, who is from Zambia, said last year.

Social workers, psychologists, doctors and other practitioners in the so-called “helping professions” have complained about antisemitism that they say has become normalized since the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks in Israel — with double standards, anti-Zionist litmus tests and outright antisemitism now viewed as widespread and even acceptable among others working in those fields.

“This vote shouldn’t be seen in isolation. It’s a reflection of the systemic hostility towards Israel and towards Jews that have come to permeate these professional spaces,” said Guila Franklin Siegel, chief operating officer of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington. “In fighting against this, we are fighting against a much bigger problem.”

Andrea Yudell, a therapist in Washington, told Jewish Insider on Thursday that voting to expel Israeli social workers “would effectively legitimize the hostility that we’ve been seeing in the field.”

A petition organized by several groups for Jewish therapists in the U.S. and Canada is urging the National Association of Social Workers and the Canadian Association of Social Workers — the two membership organizations in each country — to publicly oppose next week’s vote. 

“It imposes a nationality-based collective sanction, treating professionals as ethically suspect solely because of their national affiliation. No other national association is held to this standard,” the petition states. It has been signed by more than 11,000 people. Spokespeople for NASW and CASW did not respond to requests for comment. 

Several U.S. Jewish organizations are helping to circulate the petition and generate attention about the vote, which the Anti-Defamation League called “collective punishment.”

The issue, according to Jewish social workers, goes deeper than just professional drama among the practitioners. The spread of antisemitism in a field predicated on compassion could threaten to alienate or harm Jewish clients who turn to social workers to help meet their emotional and material needs.

“It’s not just the social workers themselves. It’s the people we are trying to serve. Those people. It’s unethical to them,” said Jennifer Kogan, a licensed clinical social worker in Washington, D.C. “Jewish clients are affected by this. They don’t feel safe.”

A university professor who resigned from her position following a Title VI antisemitism investigation, and another who organized large-scale anti-Israel demonstrations, are among several controversial speakers scheduled to speak at an event on Friday hosted by the University of Washington. 

The day-long conference, called “The World as Palestine: On Advocacy, Activism, and Justice,” is organized by the Middle Eastern Studies department and is scheduled to be held in the university’s student union building. 

Andrea Brower, a former instructor in a “Solidarity and Social Justice” program at Gonzaga University in eastern Washington, is scheduled to speak during the program’s opening panel, “Reflections from Eastern Washington’s Palestinian Liberation Movement.” She resigned in 2024 after the school opened an antisemitism investigation into the protests she led on campus against Israel’s war in Gaza and her criticism of the university’s investment in companies with ties to Israel.

The panel will examine “academic dissent, critical thought, and resistance with reflections from Eastern Washington’s Palestinian liberation movement,” according to its registration page.  

Another speaker on the panel will be Majid Sharifi, the director and professor of international affairs at Eastern Washington University. When Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel in October 2024, Sharifi told CBS News Miami that Iran was “defending itself” after its “sovereignty was violated” by Israel’s assasination months prior of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. 

The third speaker alongside Brower and Sharifi is Kathryn DePaolis, an associate professor and interim chair and director of the School of Social Work at Eastern Washington University. DePaolis helped create a new group called the Inland Northwest Coalition for the Liberation of Palestine two months after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks. During Israel’s war in Gaza, the organization staged Palestinian “die-ins” in front of the Spokane courthouse. 

“The event isn’t about the scholarship of activism, which would be different — it’s activism itself,” a Jewish faculty member at UW told Jewish Insider. “It’s using state resources to promote an ideology and worldview that contributes to antisemitism and anti-Zionism on campus.” 

Other panel topics are “Lessons from the Palestinian and Filipino Struggles for Liberation” and “Activism and Civic Engagement in Washington State.” Laila Taji, an author speaking on the latter panel, has ties to the radical student group Students United for Palestinian Equality & Return (SUPER UW), which led a destructive protest on campus last year over the school’s ties to Boeing — and Boeing’s ties to the IDF — that caused more than $1 million in damages to the university’s engineering building. 

The event will also screen “The Palestine Exception,” a documentary about “professors and students as they join calls for a ceasefire and divestment from companies that do business with Israel and face waves of crackdown from administrators, the media, the police and politicians,” according to the film’s synopsis. 

Neither the UW administration nor Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson responded to requests for comment from JI about the selection of speakers for the event at the university, which is a public college. 

The event comes days after students from SUPER UW who were suspended and arrested last spring for their participation in the engineering building vandalism were allowed to return to campus, Victor Balta, a spokesperson for the university, confirmed to JI. “The student conduct hearing process has been completed and the students have been found responsible for violations of the student conduct code and held accountable. The students were out of class and banned from campus for three quarters,” said Balta. Twenty-one students were suspended at the time.

“Suspensions also resulted in forfeiture of tuition paid or the repayment of tuition by any student who must remain in good standing in order to receive financial aid, such as tuition exemption grants for graduate students or work study. Once a suspension is concluded, any outstanding balances due must be paid in order to be eligible for re-enrollment,” Balta continued.

The students could still face criminal charges, though none have been brought in the nine months since the protest. The incident also led the Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism to open a review into the university. 

SUPER UW was suspended as an official student organization in December 2024 after its members were charged with “vandalism,” “unauthorized keys, entry, or use,” “failure to comply” and “disruption and obstruction” by the school’s administration, according to the group. As a result, SUPER UW does not have access to school resources but can still gather on campus. 

In August, Secure Community Network, found that a manifesto released by SUPER UW — which the student group published on Medium shortly before its building takeover began — was inspired by a foreign terrorist entity. 

The document praised Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel as a “heroic victory” and said the group looks to “the rich history of struggle in our university for strength and inspiration as we take action.” SUPER UW also released a statement of solidarity with the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a fundraising arm of the terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine that was designated as a terror group by the U.S. Treasury Department in October 2024. 

When several hundred people gathered on Sunday evening at the French Embassy in Washington for the Capital Jewish Museum’s second annual gala, they did so in service of a simple theme: “preserving history and building bridges.”

That message was particularly resonant as the evening’s honorees and organizers paid tribute to a tragic moment in recent history that will be part of the story of Washington’s Jewish community forever: the murder of Israeli Embassy staffers Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky outside the museum in May.

“It was a horrific, brazen act of antisemitic violence, a wrenching reminder of the importance of what the museum does every day of its existence and the fact that it collects artifacts, but it is a living, breathing place for a viable Jewish community to go, and that’s what was happening that day,” CNN anchor Dana Bash, who emceed the gala, said at the start of the event, as she introduced a moment of silence for Milgrim and Lischinsky. 

The Capital Jewish Museum opened in downtown Washington in 2023 with a commitment to teaching the history of the District’s local Jewish community, in the context of the city’s unique role as a nexus for civic-minded Americans. Speakers throughout the evening, including Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, touted the diversity and warmth of Washington while taking not-so-subtle jabs at President Donald Trump’s recent takeover of the city’s police force. 

“You know that the real D.C. is 700,000 people that actually live here, go to work, raise their families and are tax-paying Americans,” Bowser said. “While we are diverse, we are also a connected city, and so we know in our honorees tonight that they have followed their faith [and] invested in their families, their city and their nation.” 

The Sunday evening gala honored the investor and philanthropist David Rubenstein and Esther Safran Foer, the former longtime CEO of Sixth & I Synagogue and the Capital Jewish Museum’s founding board president. The two were asked, in conversation with Bash, where each traces their love of history.

For Rubenstein, the co-founder of the private equity giant Carlyle, who has supported major American institutions like the National Archives and the Kennedy Center, the answer was a sixth grade teacher who encouraged him to watch President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, sparking a lifelong love of American history. He used historical reference points — immigration quotes from 1915 and the doomed voyage of the MS St. Louis, a European ship with Jewish refugees on board that was turned away by the U.S. — to bemoan antisemitism as “at a level I’ve never seen before in my lifetime.” 

Foer described a lifelong search for answers about her family’s story in Ukraine, which they fled after the Holocaust. She detailed that quest in her 2020 memoir, I Want You To Know We’re Still Here. 

“Pulling together the family history and the context of the history of the times has been kind of a lifelong obsession for me,” said Foer, who was born in Poland in a displaced persons camp soon after World War II ended. 

“My background is a Holocaust background, but when I wrote my book and I was working on the title, my working title was, ‘I Want You To Know We’re Still Here,’ and it ultimately became a title, because that’s our story. The Holocaust happened at a terrible time, a terrible place, but there’s a vibrant Jewish life here, in other countries. We need to celebrate that, and a museum is a way to celebrate that, to keep telling the stories.” 

Hasan Piker, the far-left streamer who frequently stirs controversy for using antisemitic rhetoric in his commentary on Israel and Jewish issues, will join a roundtable discussion next month hosted by The New Yorker Festival, the publication announced on Wednesday in a full lineup of events.

The conversation on Oct. 26, which will focus on “how the internet has reshaped political life” and its implications “for the future of democracy,” will also feature Saagar Enjeti, a right-wing populist pundit who co-hosts the “Breaking Points” podcast. It will be moderated by Andrew Marantz, a staff writer for The New Yorker, who published a feature story last March about Piker’s popularity among an audience of young, male voters who have recently gravitated to the right.

Piker, whose videos on Twitch and YouTube reach millions of viewers, has faced criticism for justifying Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks, while forcefully denying some of the terror group’s atrocities — such as widespread reports of sexual violence that he has dismissed as “rape fantasies” and “hallucinations.”

In one stream last year, Piker, 34, argued that “it doesn’t matter if rapes f***ing happened on Oct. 7 — like that doesn’t change the dynamic for me even this much,” adding that “the Palestinian resistance is not perfect.”

He has also described Orthodox Jews as “inbred,” called a Jewish man a “bloodthirsty, violent pig dog” and compared Zionists to Nazis, among other slurs seen as antisemitic.   

His festival appearance drew criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, which denounced The New Yorker’s “decision to platform Piker” as “the latest example of mainstream media normalizing his brand of antisemitism and anti-Zionism.”

The streamer’s “toxic and extreme rhetoric opposing Zionism and the Jewish state normalizes antisemitism, reinforces bigotry and launders terror — and it has no place at a conference devoted to prominent influencers,” an ADL spokesperson told Jewish Insider on Wednesday, arguing that Piker’s “extreme statements” on a range of topics “should permanently disqualify him from appearing at any major media festival.”

“His appearing at a festival alongside such notables as Salman Rushdie, who lived for decades under threat of death from the Iranian regime, is deeply ironic, considering that Iran supports Hezbollah and the Houthis, two groups that Piker has openly admired and celebrated,” the spokesperson added, referring to the British-Indian writer who is among several prominent guests now scheduled to join the event next month.  

A spokesperson for The New Yorker declined to comment when reached by JI on Wednesday. 

In his extensive online monologues, Piker has notably defended the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, compared the Houthis in Yemen to the hero of an anime show and characterized the Oct. 7 attacks as an inevitable response to “violent means of maintaining an apartheid,” among other extreme comments.

Piker, a fierce opponent of Israel’s right to exist, has more recently equated liberal Zionism with Nazism, according to a video of his remarks posted to social media last month.

“Zionism is an exterminationist ideology built around ethno-religious supremacist values,” he said in a conversation with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) at the Democratic Socialists of America’s convention earlier this month. “So when people say, like, ‘Oh, well, I’m a liberal Zionist, I want there to be a Jewish ethno-state,’ I’m like, OK, what do you mean? It’s like saying you’re like a liberal Nazi. Like, you want an Aryan majority ethno-state?”

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) has accused Piker of engaging in “textbook antisemitism” and called on Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, to cut ties with the streamer, describing his comments as a leading contributor to “an explosion of Jew-hatred on social media” in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.

Piker has rejected allegations of antisemitism, while insisting his views have been misconstrued as opposition to Jewish people rather than the Israeli government, a claim his critics have interpreted as disingenuous.

The streamer has otherwise mocked widespread concerns about rising global antisemitism — calling the issue a distraction from Israel’s military conduct in Gaza.

But even as he has faced backlash for promoting antisemitic rhetoric, Piker has continued to draw friendly profiles in mainstream outlets such as The New York Times and GQ magazine, which is owned by The New Yorker’s parent company, Condé Nast. He has also hosted several high-profile lawmakers on his streaming platform, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Ed Markey (D-MA) and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA).

Piker did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday about his planned comments for the roundtable next month. 

The New Yorker Festival, an annual multiday event in New York City featuring well-known figures in arts, media and politics, previously faced backlash in 2018 for inviting Steve Bannon, a former White House chief strategist to President Donald Trump who now hosts a popular MAGA-world podcast, to headline a conversation with the magazine’s editor, David Remnick.

Following major dropouts from participants who protested Bannon’s appearance at the festival — as well as internal objections raised by the magazine’s employees — Remnick announced he had decided to pull the invitation, saying that he did not “want well-meaning readers and staff members to think” that he had “ignored their concerns” regarding the controversial Trump ally.

In the recent viral debate surrounding American Eagle’s “great jeans” ad campaign with Sydney Sweeney, which used a double entendre that drew accusations of promoting eugenics, it seemed many critics overlooked that the clothing retailer’s chief executive is a leading Jewish philanthropist who has long been committed to fighting antisemitism.

It was the sort of irony befitting Jay Schottenstein, 71, a mild-mannered billionaire entrepreneur from Columbus, Ohio, who oversees a sprawling business network that, in addition to American Eagle, includes DSW, the designer shoe chain he leads as executive chairman, among other holdings in wine, real estate and furniture.

But outside of philanthropic circles — where he is widely recognized as one of the most consequential sponsors of Jewish causes in the United States and Israel — his relatively private lifestyle has otherwise obscured his long-standing dedication to a range of issues including educational efforts, archeological research and translations of ancient Jewish texts.

“I think most people really don’t know who he is,” said Brad Kastan, a Jewish Republican donor who lives in Columbus and has long been friendly with Schottenstein. “He kind of keeps a low profile.”

Still, Schottenstein, who is Modern Orthodox, remains “accessible,” according to Kastan. The retail mogul, he told Jewish Insider, often can be seen walking to synagogue on Shabbat from his home in Bexley, a Columbus suburb, to attend Congregation Torat Emet, which he has endowed. “Because he’s a proud observant Jew,” Kastan added, Schottenstein “literally walks from Bexley to Ohio State, which has got to be six or seven miles, to go to football games on Shabbos.”

Meanwhile, Schottenstein, whose family is friendly with President Donald Trump, is a major player in Ohio politics, contributing to candidates from both parties, even as he largely favors Republicans. Most recently, he has donated to Vivek Ramaswamy, who is the likely GOP nominee in next year’s Ohio governor’s race. 

For years, Schottenstein, who was instrumental in lobbying for legislation to allow Ohio to buy Israel bonds, has been a go-to resource among pro-Israel candidates looking for guidance on key issues about the Middle East. “If you support Israel and you’re running for office and you’re looking for advice or support in the Jewish community in central Ohio,” said Kastan, “you’re going to find your way to Jay’s office.”

The Ohio benefactor has built deep ties to Israel, where the National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel, which is under construction, bears his name. Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, has called him a friend, and he was a top contributor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2015 reelection bid. American Eagle also operates dozens of stores in Israel.

Schottenstein, who has said he was in Israel during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, has stepped up his efforts to support the Jewish state in the aftermath of the incursion. He has led donations to victims of the attacks and co-founded a fund to lend financial support to families of IDF soldiers killed in the war in Gaza, among other things.

“You watch what’s going on in Israel, how everyone’s pulling together, and there’s a lot of pain,” Schottenstein said in a podcast interview last year. “I mean, this is real pain to the Jewish people. In my lifetime, I don’t think we’ve ever experienced a war like this — never experienced a time like this. But thank God, we have a strong Israel. We have a strong sense of being.”

Through his foundation, which he leads with his wife, Jeanie, whom he met at Hillel as an undergrad at Indiana University, Schottenstein has supported a growing number of Jewish institutions. These include Chabad, Agudath Israel, Hillel, Hadassah, Yeshiva University and United Hatzalah, the latter of which honored him with a humanitarian award last year. 

Howie Beigelman, president and CEO of Ohio Jewish Communities, which represents the state’s eight Jewish Federations and affiliated nonprofit agencies, said that the “Schottensteins broadly are among the most generous and committed givers today,” adding that “their giving also now includes their children and grandchildren in an unmatched dedication to Jewish causes close to home and across the globe.”

Eli Beer, the founder of United Hatzalah, an Israeli emergency medical services volunteer organization, told JI that he has known Schottenstein and his wife for 18 years. 

“I can say with certainty that the most important value for them is tikkun olam, repairing the world and making it a better place,” Beer explained. “Eighty percent of our conversations and time together, whether at their home for a weekend or just visiting, revolve around charity and how they can help more people in education, health and even sports, especially those who are underprivileged.”

Howie Beigelman, president and CEO of Ohio Jewish Communities, which represents the state’s eight Jewish Federations and affiliated nonprofit agencies, said that the “Schottensteins broadly are among the most generous and committed givers today,” adding that “their giving also now includes their children and grandchildren in an unmatched dedication to Jewish causes close to home and across the globe.”

“Where they stand out, of course, is in transformation projects that are charitable moonshots,” Beigelman told JI. “But they also work to find leaders they believe in and work with them to ensure the mission and the cause they champion has what it needs to succeed. And despite the reach of their generosity, and the significant amounts, they also remain deeply connected to each cause and each organization.”

Schottenstein, a descendant of Lithuanian immigrants who inherited his family’s retail business in the early 1990s, credits his late father, Jerome, a prominent supporter of Jewish causes, with fueling his continued devotion to philanthropy.

For some religious Jews, the Schottenstein name is all but synonymous with the eponymous, 73-book English translation of the Babylonian Talmud that the family sponsored over 15 years at an estimated cost of $250,000 to produce each volume. 

“I think the Schottenstein name, the tradition established by his father and his grandfather, they have established a worldwide brand not just in their stores, but in Torah learning,” Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman emeritus of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told JI. “In many cases they are models of philanthropy — and really exemplify impact giving.”

Schottenstein, who calls the translation one of his proudest achievements, took over the project from his father when he died in 1992. Published by ArtScroll, it was completed in 2005 and has since “revolutionized the study of the texts,” Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman emeritus of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told JI recently.

Earlier this year, Schottenstein, speaking at a gathering of the Mesorah Heritage Foundation, which supports ArtScroll, said the organization, where he serves as board chair, had distributed paperback copies of the Talmud to Israeli soldiers fighting in the war. “Nobody could have imagined how the Gemaras would be used, on the battlefield, in tanks, in bunkers, in buildings,” he said in a speech in February. “Every rest period, you’d see guys studying.”

“I think the Schottenstein name, the tradition established by his father and his grandfather, they have established a worldwide brand not just in their stores, but in Torah learning,” Hoenlein told JI. “In many cases they are models of philanthropy — and really exemplify impact giving.”

Schottenstein’s passion for Jewish causes has on occasion intersected with his business. In 2024, for instance, he chose to mark the 30-year anniversary of American Eagle as a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange by blowing a shofar rather than ringing the opening bell. Months before the Oct. 7 attacks, meanwhile, American Eagle placed a mezuzah on the front door of its flagship location in Times Square. 

And the fashion company itself has partnered with the Anti-Defamation League on initiatives to help raise awareness about rising antisemitism, an American Eagle spokesperson confirmed to JI.   

“My affinity for philanthropy is guided by faith, family and caring for others,” Schottenstein said in a statement to JI on Monday. “One’s value is not determined by possessions, rather by the number of people we have positively impacted. Of all the accomplishments in my life, the most rewarding have been giving back to those who need it most.” 

He declined to comment on his company’s recent jeans ads.

WASHINGTON — When hundreds of pro-Israel college students from around the country gathered in the nation’s capital earlier this week for the Israel on Campus Coalition’s three-day annual national leadership summit, the rise of antisemitism on campuses sparked by the aftermath of the Oct. 7th terrorist attacks nearly two years ago was still a topic of conversation throughout panels and hallways. 

This year, however, some students also said that antisemitism is lessening — though they offered mixed views about what is leading to the improved campus climate. 

Some attributed it to the Trump administration’s ongoing pressure campaign on universities to crack down on antisemitic behavior, which has included federal funding cuts from dozens of schools. Others said their campuses started to take a serious approach to antisemitism, before President Donald Trump was reelected, in the fall semester following the wave of anti-Israel encampments from the previous spring. 

But many student leaders from universities that have been targeted by the Trump administration — facing billions of dollars in slashed funds — said that if their school enters into negotiations to restore the money, they would like a deal to include structural reforms, unlike the one made last week between the federal government and Columbia University. 

The penalties under that deal were largely financial, with Columbia agreeing to pay a $200 million settlement over three years to the government.

Harvard University has signaled a willingness to settle next, The New York Times reported this week, which could see the school agree to the Trump administration’s demand for as much as $500 million to end its clash.

“If there is a settlement in the coming days, I don’t think that Harvard paying a fine would be helpful,” Kyra Esrig, an incoming sophomore at Harvard, told Jewish Insider at the ICC summit. Instead, Esrig hopes to see “more of a focus on antisemitism itself without this maneuvering to get it to be a DEI incentive that every time they talk about antisemitism they have to add that they’re not anti-Muslim as well.”

“I want to see something specific in writing — [outlining] the steps the university will take to change antisemitism. I want to see an action-specific type of agreement. If the university treads more carefully around the issue, if the university is at least a little more responsive to people’s concerns around antisemitism, I think that will be a good thing.” 

Esrig does not believe antisemitism has improved on campus since the Trump administration slashed $2.6 billion in funding from the university in the spring.  

“It’s not like the Trump administration came into power and then there was sweeping change. For Harvard to change its culture, that’s an incredibly difficult thing to do and I don’t know that the Trump administration can go about issuing that.” 

“I’m not entirely sure what the Trump administration is trying to gain,” Ezra Galperin, an incoming junior at the Ithaca, N.Y. school, told JI. “I think Cornell’s administration has been pretty effective in combating antisemitism — before there were threats from the Trump administration — with President Kotlikoff coming on. [Kotlikoff] makes a point of listening to Jewish students.”

Rather, “a lot of the positive changes are coming from the original backlash after Oct. 7,” she said, pointing to the university expanding its kosher lunch options in August 2024. 

“That’s a result of the powerful force of Jewish students at Harvard saying that we need certain resources,” Esrig said. 

Cornell University faced a $1 billion funding cut in April from the federal government amid a civil rights investigation into its handling of antisemitism. Ezra Galperin, an incoming junior at the Ithaca, N.Y., school studying government, noted an improvement in campus antisemitism this year compared to last.

But he attributes the shift to the university’s new president, Michael Kotlikoff, who stepped into the role in March. 

“I’m not entirely sure what the Trump administration is trying to gain,” Galperin told JI. “I think Cornell’s administration has been pretty effective in combating antisemitism — before there were threats from the Trump administration — with President Kotlikoff coming on. [Kotlikoff] makes a point of listening to Jewish students.”

“There’s progress to be made, but I don’t think it warrants a millions of dollars fine,” Galperin said.

If Cornell does enter into a settlement with the government, there are two reforms Galperin hopes to see. “I want to make sure organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine that stir things up on campus are held accountable,” he said. “I want to see accountability for the grad students union who is seemingly selective in the students they choose to represent, alienating those who are pro-Israel. That’s my main hope for the year.”  (Cornell SJP was suspended in March for disrupting the “Pathways to Peace” event where former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro and former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad spoke.)

“What I would like to see, in light of the cuts, is a deal to be made which would include a mask ban imposed and enforced, for regulations to be actually written down more clearly and then enforced and then for punishments to be enforced on those who have breached the regulations that are made,” said Maximillian Meyer, a rising junior at Princeton University and student president of the campus group Princeton’s Tigers for Israel.

“If a deal is to be struck, I do hope it’s something tangible,” Galperin continued. “There is a sense that the Columbia deal was insufficient and a bit of a ploy.” 

Maximillian Meyer, a rising junior at Princeton University and student president of the campus group Princeton’s Tigers for Israel, said he is taking a wait-and-see approach to the government’s crackdown on his campus, which also faced a funding freeze in April. 

“I would be in support of a settlement — but not just any settlement,” Meyer told JI.

“What I would hope the Trump administration’s cuts would do, at a minimum, is to compel the university administration to enforce its own regulations. Even since the Trump administration made its cuts, the Princeton administration has not enforced its policies on time, place and manner restrictions.

“What I would like to see, in light of the cuts, is a deal to be made which would include a mask ban imposed and enforced, for regulations to be actually written down more clearly and then enforced and then for punishments to be enforced on those who have breached the regulations that are made,” Meyer continued, pointing to anti-Israel demonstrators repeatedly disrupting former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s speech at the university — including pulling a fire alarm — just days after the Trump administration slashed funding. 

“The university should have been prepared for disruptions, but was undeterred by Trump’s funding cuts,” Meyer said. He called on Princeton to “work with the Trump administration to do something about [antisemitism]” rather than “the university’s current posture which is fighting against the administration.” 

But Uriel Alvin, a student at City College of the City University of New York,  expressed concern that any government intervention does more harm than good on campus. 

“After the [Gaza solidarity] encampments [in spring 2024], we saw protests afterwards because of NYPD’s involvement shutting down the encampments,” said Uriel Alvin, a student at City College of the City University of New York. “I think having intervention causes more problems — adds to the flame more than it puts it out.  I don’t think it was helpful for Columbia either.”  

Alvin said he has worried about wearing a kippah on campus since Oct. 7, and that he “hasn’t felt any better this year.” 

Earlier this month, Félix Matos Rodríguez, chancellor of CUNY, was called to testify during a House Committee on Education and Workforce hearing over his alleged failure to address campus antisemitism. That hearing, or any approach that involves the government, “wouldn’t help things,” Alvin said. 

“After the [Gaza solidarity] encampments [in spring 2024], we saw protests afterwards because of NYPD’s involvement shutting down the encampments,” he said.  

“I think having intervention causes more problems — adds to the flame more than it puts it out.  I don’t think it was helpful for Columbia either.”