As a freshman at Columbia University, when Alumnus Jamin Weiss (‘23) looked out of his dorm room window in the months after Oct. 7, he saw pro-Palestinian activists storming into Hamilton Hall at Columbia University. Weiss said it surprised him that antisemitism could be so prevalent on college campuses.
Antisemitism has heavily increased on college campuses since Oct. 7, according to the AJC, with nearly one-third of Jewish students experiencing antisemitism, but different students have different experiences depending on the person and college. Weiss has had a personal experience with antisemitism during the pro-Palestinian protests in the months that followed Oct. 7, 2023.
“I was watching [the protests] unfolding from a window that morning and because of everything that was happening I wore a shirt that said ‘End Jew hatred’ and a girl came down in a kefiyah, and she had 300 papers and that said ‘free Palestine’ on them, and she said, here, throw them out the window,” Weiss said. “I said, ‘Sorry, what good does throwing papers out the window do?’ And she told me to spread awareness and then she looked at my shirt. And she goes, ‘Oh, are you a Zio?’ And I go, ‘Yes, I’m a Zionist,’ and she goes, ‘Oh, so you like dead babies.’”
Weiss said that much of the antisemitism on campus had lessened during the 24-25 school year, but has not completely gone away. Weiss still sees some students using hateful rhetoric, but its impact has weakened, especially after the freeze on federal funding by the Trump administration, which cut off money to Columbia because of their antisemitic events.
Some students, like Alumnus Ethan Safra (‘24), who is a sophomore at the University of Maryland (UMD), have had relatively few encounters with antisemitism. Safra said he can’t remember a time when he personally experienced direct antisemitism while on campus, but he has witnessed antisemitism on social media.
“I’ve seen a video on Instagram that was in my apartment complex,” Safra said. “This is before I moved into this apartment complex. The video I found on Instagram … was a post about someone’s Israeli flag in the toilet… And I was just like, ‘wow. That’s like, close to here.’”
Safra says that since there is a large Jewish community at UMD, he believes it has caused the campus to do more to prevent antisemitic events from taking place by shutting down student events that are deemed Antisemitic. He thinks this is why the college repeatedly said that they would not divest from Israel, even if attempted Boycott Divest Sanction (BDS) votes would have passed.
“This year they moved the vote when they saw what our response was.” Safra said. “But they tried to schedule the BDS vote like on Rosh Hashanah and so the Jewish community kind of wrote a response letter that just said, we’re not validating this.”
Due to the rise in antisemitism across many colleges, JDS has begun preparing students for what their experience might be like in college. High School Principal Lisa Vardi says that they have begun teaching students in Israel advocacy through seminars and in the college admissions process.
“We really want to provide kids with some tools and strategies in which they can be prepared to go off and on college campuses and combat anti semitism,” Vardi said. “[We want them to] feel like they’re finding their place on campus and feel supported.
