Antisemitism and Free Speech on Campus

Elyse C. Goncalves and Akshaya Ravi
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: Harvard Medical School canceled a planned Jan. 21 lecture on wartime healthcare and a subsequent panel with patients from Gaza receiving care in Boston in response to objections that students would hear from Gazans impacted by the war and not also Israelis.

Course instructors and students were notified Tuesday morning that the events — scheduled for that evening — would not be held. Medical School Dean George Q. Daley ’82 wrote in a Wednesday email sent to first-year students and obtained by The Crimson that his office began receiving complaints from students and faculty within days after the session was first publicized last week.

Sophia Vitter
College Fix

Excerpt: The University of Virginia “has willfully ignored its longstanding antisemitism problem” and must address it now, according to the Jefferson Council, an alumni network dedicated to preserving Thomas Jefferson’s legacy at the venerable university.

The alumni group recently published a 13-page report authored by council President Joel Gardner that argues antisemitism has been “exponentially exacerbated” on campus over the last year, following the massacre of Israeli citizens by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2024.

David Zimmerman
National Review

Excerpt: The student government at the University of Michigan has removed its top two leaders, who vowed to block funding for campus groups unless the university agreed to divest from companies accused of profiting from the Israel–Hamas war.

The student assembly’s president and vice president, Alifa Chowdhury and Elias Atkinson, were officially ousted late on Monday after they were impeached last month, the New York Times reported. Each received a guilty count of dereliction of duty for either missing council meetings or failing to organize them.

Josh Moody
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Last Dec. 5, the presidents of three leading universities stepped before Congress for a hearing on campus antisemitism that was widely criticized when they failed to offer forthright responses on whether hypothetical calls for the genocide of Jews would violate their institutions’ policies. Those three presidents—representing Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—were followed by four others in two separate hearings in April and May as pro-Palestinian student protests swept campuses across the nation last spring.

Of the seven campus leaders who testified, only two remain on the job (though one was already on the way out). Here’s a look at where all seven leaders are today.

Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: When a group of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched a pro-Palestine magazine in the spring of 2024, they hoped it would serve as a platform for “revolutionary thought on campus,” according to its first issue: “We believe that writing and art are among the most powerful tools for conducting a revolution.” Housing artwork, literature and essays related to Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, the publication, titled Written Revolution, began as a totally independent magazine before becoming an official student organization this fall.

The publication has ceased nearly all distribution in response to administrators’ demands, according to students affiliated with the organization, and Iyengar is facing disciplinary action.

Emma Camp
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Last year, student-led protests over the Israel-Hamas war broke out at dozens of college campuses. With the new school year well underway, student demonstrations have begun again in earnest.

According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), attempts to deplatform speakers were surging by this April. Of the 67 attempts it had recorded from January to mid-April, 73 percent involved controversy surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So how did a year of raucous—and occasionally disruptive and destructive—protest affect student opinions on free speech?