Emma Whitford
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: In a letter to American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the education committee, accused American Association of University Professors president and AFT vice president Todd Wolfson of promoting “organizational antisemitism” within the AAUP.
Cassidy cited an August Inside Higher Ed interview with Wolfson in which the union leader stood against sending weapons to Israel, accused the Trump administration of weaponizing antisemitism for political gains and advocated for the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, a definition of antisemitism that does not include anti-Zionism.
Samuel J. Abrams
Minding the Campus
Excerpt: When Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber turned on his fellow university leaders at an April panel discussion, all but accusing Vanderbilt and Washington University chancellors of “carrying water for the Trump administration,” he revealed the dangerous delusion gripping elite academia.
This wasn’t a debate about abstract principles. It was Eisgruber’s desperate attempt to maintain the fiction that elite universities are victims rather than perpetrators, that accountability is oppression, and that denial can substitute for leadership.
Katie J.M. Baker
New York Times
Excerpt: In late April, the Heritage Foundation dispatched a team to Israel to meet with power players in Israeli politics, including the country’s foreign and defense secretaries and the U.S. ambassador, Mike Huckabee.
Kian Petlin, Devon Rudolph, and Vitus Larrieu
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: A speaker event with former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Monday was interrupted at various points, with approximately 20 protesters walking out of the event, an extended disruption by an individual who does not appear to have an affiliation with Princeton in the middle, a subsequent fire alarm interruption, singing by the event’s attendees at the end, and yelling between protesters and event attendees in the courtyard after.
Samuel J. Abrams
American Enterprise Institute
Excerpt: Well over a decade ago, when I started teaching at Sarah Lawrence College, I realized that many of my faculty colleagues were anti-Semitic. Because I am visibly Jewish and refuse to denounce Israel, I have been hazed; I have been called a “white skinned Taliban” by a senior professor. I was told that I was part of a colonial, genocidal Jewish people. I have had swastikas drawn on my office door. Somehow, I was expected to do more work than other colleagues to earn their support for promotion. It became clear that my Jewish faith and heritage was a problem for large numbers of professors on campus.
Greg Lukianoff
The Eternally Radical Idea
While I certainly know critics of Israel who are not at all motivated by anti-Semitism, I have run into a lot more outright anti-Semitism over the past 10 years — and particularly in the last six months — than I ever thought I'd see in my lifetime. Anti-Semitism is vile, and I believe it is absolutely a growing problem today.
Given my point of view on this, it might be surprising to people that FIRE and I oppose the Antisemitism Awareness Act. To those who understand how a viewpoint-neutral defense of the First Amendment works in practice, however, this should come as no surprise at all.
By Marisa Hirschfield ‘27
On April 24th, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens spoke about free speech, journalism, and Israel to approximately one hundred attendees gathered in Guyot Hall. The event, entitled “Writing About Israel as a Columnist and as a Jew,” was co-sponsored by a variety of campus organizations, including B’Artzeinu and the Center for Jewish Life. I attended in my capacity as a Writing Fellow for Princetonians for Free Speech, a contributor to the event.
Katherine Knott
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: If colleges and universities want to receive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), they’ll have to certify that they don’t operate any diversity, equity, inclusion or accessibility programs that violate federal antidiscrimination laws, under a new NIH policy announced Monday.
The change appears to codify parts of President Donald Trump’s executive orders that banned funding for DEI programs and builds on the strategy to leverage colleges’ research funding to compel certain behaviors. But the new policy goes even further than the president’s directives, barring colleges from boycotting Israel or Israeli businesses if they want to receive NIH grants.
Caroline G. Hennigan and Bradford D. Kimball, Crimson Staff Writers
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: The Harvard Law School student body voted on Thursday to call on the University to divest from Israel — delivering a decisive endorsement of language that Law School administrators harshly criticized before it went up for a vote.
The resolution, which called on Harvard to “divest from weapons, surveillance technology, and other companies aiding violations of international humanitarian law, including Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its ongoing illegal occupation of Palestine,” passed with 72.7 percent of votes in favor, with 842 students participating. Nearly 2,000 students attend HLS.
Universities don’t have to choose between protecting Jewish students and championing freedom of speech. In fact, federal law requires them to do both. Yet when my alma mater, Brown University, resolved a federal civil rights investigation in July 2025, the line between protected speech and unprotected conduct was unnecessarily blurred.
Kian Petlin
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: Two weeks ago, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett visited campus to protests and a full lecture hall. His talk was interrupted several times, including by a walkout and a fire alarm — a remarkable spate of disruptions that prompted a University investigation, a public apology from University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83, and even a stand-alone editorial in The Wall Street Journal.
On Tuesday, another prominent figure in Israeli politics — this time the Israeli ambassador to the United States — came to give a talk. This time, he was met by a scaled-down audience, a smaller protest, and no disruptions inside — as well as a small army of Public Safety (PSafe) officers, University security, and free speech coordinators to ensure nothing went awry.
Charlie Yale
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: What if I told you that Princeton is under investigation by the federal government for antisemitism, not because students, staff or faculty have filed a complaint, but because one man who is not affiliated with the University sent a complaint to the Department of Justice (DOJ)? What if I told you that this complaint and its overblown rhetoric is what led to the suspension of millions of dollars of federal funding to Princeton University?
For starters, it’s weird that the investigation spurring Trump’s rationale for the funding cuts was initiated by Zachary Marschall — a far-right blogger who has no connection to Princeton’s campus or community. Marschall made the jump from a few online videos of chants to the illogical and incorrect conclusion that they made Jewish students unsafe. If campus community members are feeling unsafe, allow them to make the complaint themselves.
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.
Emma Whitford
Inside Higher Ed
The University of California, Berkeley, suspended lecturerPeyrin Kao without pay for the spring semester because he made pro-Palestinian political comments during class.
Kao, a lecturer in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, participated in a 38-day hunger strike this fall to protest the use of technology in what he called Israel’s genocide in Gaza. He allegedly told students during class that he was undergoing a “starvation diet” and directed them to his website to learn more about why he was striking.
