Antisemitism moves from outside encampments into indoor classrooms

This summer, a college in Oregon agreed to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism and hire an independent outside monitor to keep watch over its campus in one of the most sweeping campus antisemitism settlements a university has ever signed.The case began after Oct. 7, 2023, when anti-Israel demonstrators started blaming a Jewish student for what they falsely called Israel’s “genocide.”The harassment escalated: an attempted break-in of her dorm room, the desecration of the mezuzah on her door and a rock thrown through her window that struck her in the head. She reported every incident. The college never recognized the attacks as antisemitic, and she transferred out of the small liberal arts school in Portland, citing the hostile environment.Reed is not an isolated case. Years of sustained work by the American Jewish community and its allies—lawsuits, federal civil-rights complaints and pressure from Jewish organizations—have forced…
Antisemitism on U.S. college campuses has shifted from visible protests to academic settings, with a quieter form of hostility now embedded in curricula and faculty actions, despite a reported decrease in overall antisemitic incidents last year. Several universities, including Reed College, Columbia, UCLA, Harvard, and UC Berkeley, have reached settlements to address antisemitism, often adopting the IHRA definition and implementing new protective measures for Jewish students. For instance, Reed College agreed to hire an independent monitor and a Title VI coordinator. The American Association of University Professors made its first national political endorsement, backing an anti-Zionist candidate, and reports indicate faculty unions are pushing for boycotts of Israeli universities. Jewish students and faculty face pressure to self-censor, and some professors have assigned materials by figures associated with Palestinian terror groups. In Florida, state funding of $2.3 million was allocated to the Florida Hillel Jewish Student Safety Initiative to combat antisemitism. As Denise Katz-Prober of the Louis D. Brandeis Center stated, the Reed College settlement "should serve as a model for other schools."
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