As students, professors, and administrators get ready to return to campus for what events both in the United States and abroad suggest will be another tumultuous year, the American Association of University Professors has decided to add fuel to the fire by announcing that it no longer categorically opposes academic boycotts. The decision by the once-august and respected organization is not surprising. After all, the AAUP is now led by a professor of journalism and media studies who a week ago used his official platform to call J. D. Vance “a fascist” and to claim that America’s colleges and universities are not in fact “ideological indoctrination centers.”
Federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment Wednesday against eight pro-Palestinian activists who are accused of conspiring to run a criminal intimidation campaign against University of Michigan officials while trying to force the school to cut financial ties to Israel.
The indictment describes threats and vandalism at officials’ homes, some businesses and the Jewish Federation of Detroit. The document highlights several incidents that made headlines in the past few years, including fake bloody corpses that were placed in an elected university board member’s yard and the spray-painting of anti-Israel messages at the home of the school’s president at the time, Santa Ono.
Incidents decreased most significantly on college and university campuses, by 66% (from 1,694 to 583).
The most significant factor contributing to the decrease in incidents on college campuses in 2025 was the decline of the anti-Israel encampment movement that drove the spike in incidents on campuses in the spring of 2024. Antisemitic incidents related to anti-Israel protests, including encampments, decreased by 83% on college campuses in 2025 compared to the year before. But the threat of antisemitism on college campuses is far from gone. Incidents on college campuses remained almost three times higher in 2025 than in 2021.
In a blistering report released Tuesday, Republicans on the House Education and Workforce Committee say campus antisemitism didn’t begin with the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and isn’t confined to a handful of universities.
“Instead, antisemitism in higher education is a systemic problem that affects a broad swath of America’s colleges and universities,” the report states. “The evidence demonstrates that antisemitism on campus is driven by persistent leadership failures and radical faculty and student groups that legitimize and foment antisemitism in classrooms and on campus grounds. Meanwhile, universities with satellite campuses overseas are failing to stop antisemitism and live up to their stated goals of spreading Western values.”
A judge declared a mistrial on Friday in a case of five current and former Stanford University students related to the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests when demonstrators barricaded themselves inside the school president's office.
The case was tried in Santa Clara County Superior Court against five defendants charged with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass. The rest previously accepted plea deals or diversion programs. The jury was deadlocked. It voted nine to three to convict on the felony charge of vandalism and eight to four to convict on the felony charge to trespass. Jurors failed to reach a verdict after deliberations.
An immigration judge has rejected the Trump administration's efforts to deport Tufts University PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was arrested last year as part of its targeting of pro-Palestinian campus activists, her lawyers said on Monday.
Lawyers for the Turkish student detailed the immigration judge's decision in a filing
with the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which had been reviewing a ruling that led to her release from immigration custody in May.