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Commentary: AAUP Should Rethink Stance on Israel, Antisemitism

September 11, 2025

Miriam Elman and Mark G. Yudof
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: In sports competitions, someone has to draft the rules and make critical judgments about their enforcement. Was the runner out or safe at home? Did a defensive player trip the dribbling guard? Should the tush push be banned? So too for the professions: lawyers, physicians, accountants and others. In higher education, the American Association of University Professors for many decades has been the gold standard for impartiality. No more.

In a recent disturbing interview published in Inside Higher Ed, the AAUP’s president, Todd Wolfson, made it unmistakably clear where the organization stands at a time when antisemitism on college campuses is spiking—against both students and Jewish faculty, whom the AAUP purports to represent.

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College Officials Must Condemn On-Campus Support for Hamas Violence

October 20, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/20/opinion/hamas-colleges-free-speech.html?unlocked_article_code=1.T04.MQMi.lC3J1RNGPlWu&smid=url-share

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Commentary: Let’s reassess campus responses to antisemitism

August 11, 2024

Glenn C. Altschuler and David Wippman
The Hill

Excerpt: Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has spawned hundreds of campus protests and a series of widely publicized incidents that left many Jewish students feeling unsafe. These include an online threat to assault Jewish students at Cornell University; a Jewish counter-protester whose nose was broken while he was trying to stop the burning of an Israeli flag at Tulane; pro-Palestinian students pounding on the doors of Cooper Union library with Jewish students inside; the violent occupation of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University; and statements by student organizations at Harvard and faculty members at Yale, Columbia and Cornell appearing to justify Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.

How accurate are claims that campus antisemitism is pervasive? The reality is more complicated than critics admit, and the result is often a mismatch between problems that actually exist and the responses that are emerging.

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Harvard, M.I.T. and Systemic Antisemitism

March 14, 2024

David French
New York Times

Excerpt: This Monday, March 11, roughly 200 Jewish students and supporters marched through the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, and it was newsworthy that they were not attacked. Local news hailed that they were able to, as one headline noted, “successfully march without confrontation.”

I spent virtually my entire legal career defending free speech on campus, including the free speech of Muslim students and staff members. I’ve also walked through metal detectors at a tense and volatile Columbia University to defend the academic freedom of Jewish students challenging antisemitic statements made by university professors. And during those decades of litigation and my subsequent years in journalism, I have never seen such comprehensive abuse directed against a vulnerable campus minority group as I’ve seen directed at Jewish students and faculty since Hamas’s terror attack on Oct. 7.

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The Fallout: What the Antisemitism Hearing Could Mean for Higher Education

December 07, 2023

Katherine Knott
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: The failure of three college presidents to clearly say Tuesday that calling for the genocide of Jewish people violated their campus policies quickly went viral on social media—galling alumni, free speech experts and advocates in the Jewish community alike.

The high-profile hearing featured sharp criticisms and fiery exchanges over how Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have responded to campus protests in support of the Palestinian people and their free speech policies. House Republicans also used their platform to air conservative grievances about higher education more broadly. As the metaphorical smoke cleared, we wanted to know what the remarkable hearing—which has already spurred more calls for the three presidents to resign—could mean for higher education writ large.

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Princeton, Columbia Deans Aim to Educate With Talk on Israel, Palestine

December 04, 2023

Brett Tomlinson
Princeton Alumni Weekly

Excerpt: Amid a tumultuous semester of often polarized demonstrations by pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups on college campuses, Amaney Jamal, the Palestinian American dean of Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, and Keren Yarhi-Milo, the Israeli American dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, penned an Oct. 30 New York Times op-ed calling for universities to be centers of free speech and “hold difficult conversations without fear of retaliation.”  

This week, Jamal and Yarhi-Milo put some of their ideas into practice, discussing the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the history of diplomacy in the region, and the role universities can play in adding nuance to the discourse at a pair of public conversations, Nov. 28 at Princeton and Nov. 30 at Columbia.

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Hunter College Pulls Screening of Film Critical of Israel

November 16, 2023

Jennifer Schuessler
New York Times

Excerpt: Hunter College this week abruptly pulled a screening of a documentary film critical of Israel, creating a backlash from faculty members and students who have charged the New York school’s administration with undermining academic freedom.

The documentary, “Israelism,” investigates what it calls the uncritical love of the Jewish state inculcated in American Jews, through the stories of two young Jews who travel to Israel and the West Bank. There they encounter a different reality from the one they said they learned at their religious day schools and summer camps.

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To Speak at This University, You Must Agree Not to Boycott Israel

November 01, 2023

Nell Gluckman
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: Earlier this year, Shirin Saeidi was at a dinner with three speakers who had been invited to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville center she directs when they told her something that surprised her. As part of the paperwork that would allow them to be reimbursed and paid for the trip, they had been prompted to sign a pledge saying they were not boycotting Israel. They told her it was something they would have liked to have known about beforehand.

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Harvard President Emeritus Larry Summers says he is 'sickened' by Ivy League school's response to attacks on Israel after 31 organizations said the country was 'entirely responsible'

October 09, 2023

Germania Rodriguez Poleo
Dailymail.com

Harvard President Emeritus Larry Summers says he is 'sickened' by Ivy League school's response to attacks on Israel after 31 organizations said the country was 'entirely responsible'
Harvard's President Emeritus Larry Summers has said he is 'sickened' by the Ivy League school's response to Hamas' terror attack on Israel after 31 organizations claimed the Jewish nation was 'entirely responsible'. Summers, who is Jewish and led Harvard University from 2001-2006, reacted to the prestigious school's lack of official response to the atrocity, as well as to a letter claiming Hamas' attacks  'did not happen in a vacuum. . . . We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,' the groups wrote.

Summers, who also served in the Obama administration, addressed the school, tweeting: '"In nearly 50 years of affiliation, I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today. The silence from Harvard's leadership, so far, coupled with a vocal and widely reported student groups' statement blaming Israel solely, has allowed Harvard to appear at best neutral towards acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel."

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Critics say Princeton again advances claim Israel harvests Palestinian organs

August 07, 2023

Menachem Wecker
Jewish News Syndicate

Excerpt: A 2017 book that is part of a sample reading list for an upcoming Princeton University humanities course has drawn charges of antisemitic blood libels. It also raises broad questions about academic freedom and what kinds of scholarship are appropriate for classroom study.

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Columbia ‘Incorporating’ IHRA Antisemitism Definition

July 17, 2025

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Columbia University’s acting president says the institution is incorporating the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism into the Office of Institutional Equity’s work. That office investigates discrimination complaints against students and employees.

“Formally adding the consideration of the IHRA definition into our existing anti-discrimination policies strengthens our approach to combating antisemitism,” Claire Shipman said in a statement Tuesday announcing “additional commitments to combatting antisemitism.”

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Commentary: On Israel-Palestine, campus is still getting discourse wrong

March 17, 2025

Elena Eiss, Sophie Miller, Emmett Weisz, and Madeline Denker
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: On Feb. 19, a group of students gathered in a Robertson Hall basement classroom. On the tables before them were two poems: “The Diameter of the Bomb” by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai and “Mimesis” by Palestinian-American poet Fady Joudah, both highlighting the long-lasting effects of war even after peace has been reached. The meeting — organized by our student group J Street U Princeton — marked one month since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into effect on Jan. 19. 

But heated shouting and partisan divide too often characterize discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Campus activists accuse the University administration of complicity in human rights abuses and make sweeping claims about Israel, alienating their fellow students. Meanwhile, the Trump administration and lobby groups weaponize antisemitism — often in poor faith — conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism and breathlessly depicting campuses as hotbeds of Jew-hatred.

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Commentary: Why the Resources Committee is not recommending dissociation from Israel

March 06, 2025

John T. Groves
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: Nine months ago in The Daily Princetonian, I described how the Resources Committee of the Council of the Princeton University Community, which I chair, would take up a divestment and dissociation request related to the State of Israel.

I outlined our approach, promising it would include careful consideration of input from the broad University community, and cautioning that it might be a lengthy process. That process has concluded, and the Committee has decided against forwarding a dissociation recommendation to the Board of Trustees.

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UVA alumni group accuses university of ignoring rampant campus antisemitism

December 27, 2024

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.

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A Year After the First Antisemitism Hearing, What’s Become of the Presidents Who Testified?

December 05, 2024

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.

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House Report on Campus Antisemitism Details Need for Colleges to ‘Restore Order’

October 31, 2024

Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: House Republicans lambasted private elite colleges and some state flagship universities for how they’ve handled pro-Palestinian protests in a new report in which they argue that antisemitism has engulfed college campuses and administrators prioritized “terrorist sympathizers” over the Jewish community.

In the scathing 325-page report released Thursday, Republicans on House Education and Workforce Committee detailed the findings of their yearlong investigation into antisemitism at 11 colleges. Most of the findings reiterated many of the same points they’ve been making publicly since Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

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Angela Davis fills McCosh 50, discusses Palestine, elections, and the legacy of her activism

October 23, 2024

Nikki Han
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: In a public lecture given on the evening of Tuesday, Oct. 22, Angela Davis reflected on the importance of voting in elections, solidarity and support for Palestine, and her end goal of revolution.

The 445 seats in McCosh Hall 50 were not enough to hold the large turnout, with dozens standing against the walls and lining the stairs to hear Davis in conversation with Professor of African American Studies Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. About 100 people also congregated in an overflow room down the hall to watch the event virtually.

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UVA Leadership Squelches Debate About University’s Antisemitism Problem

March 03, 2024

James A. Bacon
Bacon's Rebellion

Excerpt: During the University of Virginia Board of Visitors meeting Thursday, Provost Ian Baucom briefed board members on what the administration was doing to defuse tensions in the UVA community between Jews and the vocal pro-Palestinian faction over the Israel-Gaza war.

But when board members began addressing the hostile environment for Jewish students at UVA, there was no sign that the Provost, President Jim Ryan, or Rector Robert Hardie were interested in “listening” to anyone who disagreed with them, much less in “engaging” with them on the most contentious issue to afflict the University in recent years.

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House Republicans Hit Harvard With Subpoena in Antisemitism Investigation

February 16, 2024

Amanda Yen
Daily Beast

Excerpt: The House committee investigating alleged antisemitism at elite universities will subpoena Harvard University for documents relating to its handling of campus speech.

The Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced its decision—which marks the first time a university has been served with a subpoena in the panel’s history—Friday morning in statement. It said subpoenas were necessary because Harvard failed to hand over “priority documents” to the committee, instead providing many that were already public.

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Is saying ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ protected speech under the First Amendment?

December 19, 2023

Jordan Howell
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression

Excerpt: Since the October 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel and the subsequent invasion of Gaza, college campuses across the United States have experienced almost daily protests and demonstrations by students and faculty of all political stripes. Some are raising their voices in support of Israelis; others, in support of Palestinians.

That being said, FIRE has been troubled to see some college leaders react to protected speech and peaceful protests with calls to prohibit speech they view as inflammatory or even to ban student groups because of their viewpoints. The use of one phrase in particular — “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — is so hotly contested that some have called for banning its utterance entirely.

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Eisgruber issues statement in response to congressional hearings on antisemitism

December 12, 2023

Sandeep Mangat and Isabel Connolly
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: After dramatic hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives about antisemitic speech on college campuses which have led one university president to resign, University President Christopher Eisgruber released a statement. In the statement, Eisgruber condemned antisemitic speech on campus, highlighted Princeton’s robust free speech protections, and stressed the responsibility of the institution to push back on hateful speech.

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Commentary: When It Comes to Israel, Who Decides What You Can and Can’t Say?

November 04, 2023

Michelle Goldberg
New York Times

Excerpt: Last week, the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law sent a letter to nearly 200 college presidents urging them to investigate campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine for potential violations of federal and state laws against providing material support to terrorism. As evidence for these very serious accusations, the ADL and the Brandeis center offered only the student group’s own strident rhetoric.

The Homeland Security, Justice and Education Departments are all taking steps to combat campus antisemitism. Congressional resolutions have condemned it. But while plenty of pro-Palestinian students have behaved in appalling ways, many also feel besieged, and for good reason.

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The Context of Hamas Apologists’ Call for Context

November 05, 2023

Peter Berkowitz
RealClear Politics

Strategists close to the front seek to understand the constellation of circumstances and ideas that give rise to war. So too must responsible commentators far from danger assess the adversaries’ rival claims. The need to grasp a war’s wider frame goes for Hamas’ 10/7 massacres and Israel’s exercise of its right of self-defense.

No shortage of Hamas apologists insist that the jihadists’ mass atrocities perpetrated against civilians in southern Israel and their indiscriminate rocket attacks extending to much of central Israel must be placed in context. But the apologists don’t provide a reliable account of Hamas’ motives, ideas, goals, and conduct; a reasonable summary of Israel’s response; or a scrupulous overview of the Israeli-Arab conflict, not least Islamist enmity toward the Jewish state. Instead, Hamas apologists suppress facts, invent narratives, and repackage outlandish neo-Marxist talking points.

On Oct. 22, 69 professors and 595 students and alumni published in The Daily Princetonian an open letter “in solidarity with Gaza” addressed to university president Christopher Eisgruber. The professors, students, and alumni wrote “to express our unequivocal outrage over the tragic loss of Israeli and Palestinian lives during the past week” but suggested that Israel acting in self-defense was worse than Hamas jihadists butchering civilians. While declining to describe Hamas’ documented atrocities, they accused Israel of engaging in “the targeting of civilians by the relentless bombing of hospitals, homes, roads, schools, universities, and infrastructures of survival in the Gaza Strip” while imposing “unchecked collective punishment.”

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Ben Sasse’s Letter on Israel to Jewish Gators

October 12, 2023

Editorial Board
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: In the face of Hamas’s atrocities, some U.S. college administrators at first said little or issued equivocating mush, such as what Dartmouth College put out Tuesday in its “Statement on the Israel-Gaza War.” A notable exception: University of Florida President Ben Sasse.

Here’s what Mr. Sasse wrote Tuesday in an email addressed to “Jewish Gator Alums,” which deserves to be quoted at length:

“I will not tiptoe around this simple fact: What Hamas did is evil and there is no defense for terrorism. This shouldn’t be hard. Sadly, too many people in elite academia have been so weakened by their moral confusion that, when they see videos of raped women, hear of a beheaded baby, or learn of a grandmother murdered in her home, the first reaction of some is to ‘provide context’ and try to blame the raped women, beheaded baby, or the murdered grandmother. In other grotesque cases, they express simple support for the terrorists.

“This thinking isn’t just wrong, it’s sickening. It’s dehumanizing. It is beneath people called to educate our next generation of Americans. I am thankful to say I haven’t seen examples of that here at UF, either from our faculty or our student body. . . .

“In the coming days, it is possible that anti-Israel protests will come to UF’s campus. I have told our police chief and administration that this university always has two foundational commitments: We will protect our students and we will protect speech. This is always true: Our Constitution protects the rights of people to make abject idiots of themselves. . . .

“When evil raises its head, as it has in recent days, it is up to men and women of conscience and courage to draw strength from truth and commit ourselves to the work of building something better—to the work of pursuing justice and pursuing peace. That is what we aim to do through education, compassion, and truth here at the University of Florida.”

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Two Takes: Was UC Berkeley right to suspend a lecturer over his pro-Palestinian advocacy?

January 28, 2026

In December, UC Berkeley administrators handed down a six-month suspension without pay to Peyrin Kao, a 26-year-old computer science lecturer, after finding that he had violated university policy by making pro-Palestinian comments to students in a classroom after class and advertising that he was participating in a hunger strike.

We asked two UC Berkeley professors with opposing views, Christopher Kutz and Erwin Chemerinsky, to succinctly lay out their case in support, or in opposition, to the measure.

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Commentary: I Faced Antisemitism in Soviet Academia. It’s Not a Problem at George Mason University

August 07, 2025

Igor Mazin
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Ages ago, in the 1970s Soviet Union, a Jewish stand-up comedian, Mikhail Zhvanetski, remarked in one of his skits that if you want to argue about the taste of coconuts (not available in the Soviet Union at that time), it’s better to talk to those who’ve actually tried them. If you want to argue about antisemitism in academia, better ask those who have actually experienced it. Ask me.

The U.S. Department of Education is taking seriously a charge of “a pervasive hostile environment for Jewish students and faculty” at George Mason. This is as shocking to me (and to many of my Jewish colleagues at GMU) as hearing that I have broken two legs and never noticed it. 

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Princeton Fails To Enforce Its Rules on Free Speech, Antisemitism

June 04, 2025

By Danielle Shapiro

RealClear Politics

Princeton’s President Christopher Eisgruber has positioned himself as perhaps the leading academic defender against the Trump administration’s crackdown on universities, citing the importance of universities and academic freedom, as well as his belief that the administration has greatly overreached in its attacks, especially against Harvard.

Yet his ability to lead credibly this defense was challenged in April by an event at Princeton featuring former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is considered one of the favorites to succeed Benjamin Netanyahu next year. Demonstrators inside McCosh Hall shouted Bennett down and a fire alarm was pulled, apparently by a protester, ending the event. Outside, Jewish attendees were called “inbred swine,” among other slurs, and told to “go back to Europe.” President Eisgruber apologized to Bennett and university officials promised a serious investigation. A number of observers noted the importance of Princeton enforcing its rules in this situation. I attended the April 7 event, and I volunteered to speak as a witness to university investigators, with whom I met twice for over two hours.

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Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias

April 29, 2025

Harvard University 

Excerpt: This is the Final Report of the Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias.

This report summarizes the findings of the Task Force’s study of conditions at Harvard University. We gathered oral and written documentation between March and September 2024, and we devoted the rest of 2024 and beginning of 2025 to writing the report. Our work involved meeting with hundreds of students, faculty, and staff in listening sessions for specific segments of the campus community as well as private conversations with individuals. We also met with members of the wider Harvard community, including alumni. In our outreach, we spoke with non-Jews, American Jews, and Jewish and Arab citizens of the State of Israel within the Harvard community. 

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It’s Not Too Late to Tell the Truth About Antisemitism on Campus

April 25, 2025

Brooke Lober, Eli Meyerhoff, and Emily Schneider 
Academe Blog

Excerpt: The climate on American university campuses is dangerous. Administrators ban protests for Palestinian rights. Immigration and Customs Enforcement snatches students off the streets. The Trump administration revokes hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for research. And all this is done in the name of protecting Jewish students against a so-called culture of antisemitism. 

Last April, Claire Shipman, the current acting president of Columbia University, told a congressional committee the university had a “specific problem . . . rampant antisemitism.” If that claim were true, it would constitute a crisis. But it’s not true. Instead, Trump and the Right are weaponizing false claims of antisemitism to attack pro-Palestinian protesters, and they’re using this lie as a smokescreen for destroying higher education and other public goods.

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Princetonians struggle to come face-to-face on Israel-Palestine

December 10, 2024

Sena Chang and Nikki Han
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: At 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 21, Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of the founders of Hamas, addressed a crowd of 350 in McCosh 10. Yousef, a brash, outspoken supporter of Israel, rejected the idea of Palestinian ethnicity, stating that the notion was “psychological” and rooted in “a narrative of victimhood.” Yousef was greeted with raucous applause.

At the same time, approximately 980 feet away, an event constructing a case for the legal recognition of Palestinians was underway. Rabea Eghbariah, a human rights scholar and legal expert, was introduced by an applauding audience in Robertson 002 as part of the Princeton Palestinian Studies Colloquium. The event, sponsored by multiple departments on campus including Near Eastern Studies and African American Studies, packed the room of about 120.

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Antisemitism Goes on a College Tour

October 30, 2024

The Editorial Board
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: Political speakers on campus often face protests from activists who say their presence makes students feel “unsafe.” No such worry for United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who is going on something of an American campus grand tour with her anti-Israel message.

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Commentary: How the October 7th Attacks Changed Higher Ed

October 08, 2024

Kali Jerrard
National Association of Scholars

Excerpt: Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of Hamas’ invasion of Israel and in the course of the past year, world politics and higher education have irrevocably changed.

While campus protests began anew this semester and pro-Israel professors face cancelation there is a small glimmer of hope. This past year has refocused the efforts of policymakers to right the ship. Moreover, we have seen what can happen when college administrators show real courage and stand up to the mob. Such examples should be reproduced elsewhere. Our colleges and universities may, after all, find a path back to the principles that once made them world class. Here’s hoping.

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Commentary: By erasing Hamas and the Oct. 7 attacks, PIAD’s proposal is unproductive and deeply unsettling

September 04, 2024

Judah Guggenheim
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: In Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest (PIAD)’s 66-page proposal for divestment, there is not a single mention of Hamas, unless you count the titles of articles in the footnotes (which I don’t). The proposal references “Israel’s response,” but never explicitly mentions the horror of the Oct. 7 attacks that Israel is responding to or the fact that the terrorists who carried them out are deliberately hiding in places of worship, schools, and private homes. Israel is currently fighting a war against a terrorist organization that indiscriminately killed, raped, tortured, and kidnapped over 1400 people of many nationalities. That sentence should break your heart.

But the PIAD proposal gives no indication as to how boycotting or divesting from Israel will lead to a better future for Palestinians, because it never addresses what that future will actually look like.

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How Colleges Should Address Anti-Semitism

September 01, 2024

Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic

Excerpt: Stanford found anti-Semitism to be “widespread.” Harvard reported that Jews and Israelis faced “shunning, harassment, and intimidation.” Columbia found that they “have been the object of racist epithets and graffiti, anti-Semitic tropes, and confrontational and unwelcome questions.” All of the task forces explored how to protect Jews from discrimination, harassment, and barriers to educational access, while also honoring commitments to free speech. Most schools urged expanding diversity, equity, and inclusion frameworks to encompass and benefit Jews.

But Stanford rejected that approach, arguing that DEI is itself “fundamentally flawed.” Instead, its task force recommended treating all students equally and helping them to forge a culture that encourages constructive disagreement. Alone among the reports, the Stanford recommendations offer its campus and other institutions that heed its advice a path to a better future.

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The Resurgence of Antisemitism in American Higher Education

August 06, 2024

Paul Larkin
Heritage Foundation

Excerpt: The text of the Constitution prohibits the adoption of a religious qualification as a prerequisite for holding federal office, and the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause bars the federal or state governments from denying anyone the ability to adopt whatever religious beliefs he or she chooses to treat as sacred.

But culture can be upstream or downstream of the law. In the case of antisemitism, American society did not extirpate it; it merely drove antisemitism underground, where it lay in wait for a chance to return. Sadly, it is back, as the events on America’s campuses have proved in the months since Hamas launched its brutal, murderous, and savage attack on Israel and its people on October 7, 2023.

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Commentary: Gaza, Genocide, and Academic Freedom

June 24, 2024

David Moshman
Academe Blog

Excerpt: Discussions about campus matters related to Gaza, including posts on this blog, have focused on free speech issues associated with campus protests. Let me shift the focus. Universities should indeed support freedom of speech, but their primary function is to seek and communicate the truth, including the truth about Gaza, and their primary concern should be protecting the freedom to teach and do research about Gaza.

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‘All for Show’: Harvard Ignored Action Plan from Its Antisemitism Task Force, Report Says

May 17, 2024

Zach Kessel
National Review

Excerpt: Harvard University leaders failed to implement an action plan from the school’s own task force aimed at combatting antisemitism on campus, according to a new report by a House education committee whose chairwoman said the task force was apparently “all for show.”

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A Yale Professor Wrote an Op-Ed About Anti-Semitism on Campus. The University Spent Over a Year Investigating Him.

May 08, 2024

Aaron Sibarium
The Free Beacon

Excerpt: Yale University spent more than a year investigating a Jewish professor for six words of an op-ed he published in a pro-Israel newspaper, raising questions about the school’s approach to anti-Semitism and free speech as the campus continues to cope with the fallout of the Israel-Hamas war.

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After President’s Remarks on Antisemitism, Penn Should Consider Her Future, the State’s Governor Says

December 06, 2023

Megan Zahneis
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: A day after M. Elizabeth Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, testified at a congressional hearing about campus antisemitism, the state’s Democratic governor said she had “failed” to “speak and act with moral clarity” and made an implicit call for her removal.

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Harvard Law Review Editors Vote to Kill Article About Genocide in Gaza

November 21, 2023

Natasha Lennard
The Intercept

Excerpt: A week after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, by which time Israel’s all-out assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had killed thousands of civilians, the online editors of the prestigious Harvard Law Review reached out to Rabea Eghbariah.

Eghbariah submitted a draft of a 2,000-word essay by early November. He argued that Israel’s assault on Gaza should be evaluated within and beyond the “legal framework” of “genocide.” In line with the Law Review’s standard procedures, the piece was solicited, commissioned, contracted, submitted, edited, fact checked, copy edited, and approved by the relevant editors. Yet it will never be published with the Harvard Law Review.

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NYU Langone Fired Him for His Anti-Hamas Posts. He’s Suing.

November 24, 2023

Joseph Goldstein
New York Times

Excerpt: A prominent doctor is suing NYU Langone Health after he was fired as director of its cancer center over his social media postings about the Israel-Hamas war. The lawsuit could propel NYU Langone — a major New York hospital — into the center of a national debate over how much power private institutions have to fire employees over their online postings.

Laws protecting employees from being fired for what they say or do outside of the office vary widely by state. In New York, the law is somewhat unclear, lawyers say. But as tensions and protests escalate over the violence in the Middle East, the issue of what sort of speech is protected or acceptable has roiled American businesses and campuses.

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Handling Rising Antisemitism on Campuses

October 31, 2023

PEN America

Excerpt: A wave of antisemitic rhetoric, harassment, threats, vandalism and violence has rocked campuses across the U.S. as the Israel-Hamas war escalates. At Cornell University, law enforcement was called in to investigate what the university president called “a series of horrendous, antisemitic messages threatening violence” against the campus’s Jewish community that forced students into lockdown. Drexel University, a women’s restroom was reportedly defaced with antisemitic graffiti and a Jewish student’s dormitory door was set on fire. At Bates College, a swastika was drawn in a public restroom and at American University a swastika and Nazi slogan were graffitied in a student dorm.

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After sending a truck accusing SPIA Dean of coddling antisemitism, off-campus group issues private apology

October 24, 2023

Sandeep Mangat
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: On Oct. 18, a truck with the message “DEAN JAMAL: WHY DO YOU CODDLE ANTISEMITISM” appeared on Nassau Street with photos of the recent terrorist attack in southern Israel. The truck circulated in town for three days during fall break, targeting Amaney Jamal, Dean of the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA). The group in question has since apologized to Jamal, noting a previous statement she issued condemning Hamas.

The truck was sent by Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF), a group which claims to “counter antisemitism and the demonization of Israel on college and university campuses across the nation.”

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Watch: Pro-Palestinian Rallies at American Universities

October 26, 2023

Zach Kessel
National Review

Excerpt: Wednesday, October 25, was a national walk-out day ostensibly in support of the Palestinian cause, promoted by activist groups and even some professors who offered extra credit in exchange for participation in the rallies. Just as I did with horrific student-group statements in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, I’ve asked students on campuses across the country to send me footage of what happened at their universities. I will continue to update this post as I receive more.

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Israel slams ‘modern-day antisemitic blood libel' in Princeton syllabus

August 14, 2023

Excerpt: Last Wednesday, in the wake of a report that Princeton University will include a book in its syllabus that claims that the IDF had been harvesting Palestinian organs, Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli wrote a letter to the university’s senior leadership, Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber and Dean of Faculty, Professor Gene A. Jarrett.
“I am writing to you as Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, which entails the responsibility of fighting incitement and bigotry against the Jewish People and the State of Israel,” Chikli prefaced the letter.

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Garber Condemns Federal Grant Disqualification but Says Harvard Shares ‘Common Ground’ With McMahon

May 12, 2025

Dhruv T. Patel and Grace E. Yoon
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 reaffirmed in a Monday letter that the University would not bow to interference from the Trump administration — even as he suggested Harvard and the government “share common ground.”

In a three-page message addressed to United States Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, who announced one week ago that the Trump administration would no longer issue any grants or contracts to Harvard, Garber defended Harvard’s record on antisemitism and doubled down on the University’s refusal to concede to what he called an unlawful attempt to shape its core values.

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Columbia Learns a Hard Lesson

March 23, 2025

The Editorial Board
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: Columbia University’s decision Friday to bend to the Trump Administration’s governance demands has shocked the academy far and wide, and it is an unprecedented sanction. But perhaps it will also shock our academic elites into recognizing that they have courted this political backlash by too often abandoning their central mission of free inquiry.

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Princeton’s Pro-Palestinian Encampment Ends

May 14, 2024

Elisabeth H. Daugherty, Brett Tomlinson, Julie Bonette, and Carlett Spike
Princeton Alumni Weekly

The pro-Palestinian encampment was gone from Cannon Green by Thursday morning. Protesters had slowly begun clearing it on Tuesday, May 14, after signs appeared around the area reading, “This space is CLOSED in preparation for University events,” and workers began installing lighting for Class Day.

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