From protest skits to full-time surveillance, universities and Jewish groups hope to change the campus climate as the school year begins
Schools are improvising different ways to keep Jewish students safe as campus protests seem likely to continue
A crowd watches rapper Kosha Dillz perform during the “We Will Dance Again” event presented by MIT Hillel in Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 16, 2024. Hillels have come under fire from some campus encampments, which have demanded schools cut ties with them. (Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
(JTA) — Rutgers University tried something different for its new-student orientation this year: It staged its own protest.
Incoming freshmen at the New Jersey public university were presented with a skit in which two opposing student groups faced off over a made-up dispute. According to the student newspaper The Daily Targum, students were asked to choose between two actions: “escalating with chants” or “setting up a negotiation table.”
The hypothetical dispute was about funding for student groups, but the skit arrived after a school year punctuated by protests about the Israel-Hamas war. A Rutgers spokesperson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency the skit was one of “various exercises and discussions that introduce incoming students to unfamiliar situations they may encounter on campus, such as protests and demonstrations.”
But if it aimed to show students that they could make their voices heard without disrupting others, a very different lesson soon took place, when the simulated protest was interrupted by a real one.
A pro-Palestinian activist group unaffiliated with the university stormed the stage and shut down the skit to advocate for the school to divest from Israel. Video from the group’s Instagram account shows them interrupting the sketch, which was being held in a common area, and unfolding a banner reading “Rutgers Can’t Stop Student Power” in front of a few dozen spectators.
“As if there can be a ‘compromise’ over something like an ongoing genocide,” the protest group, Build Up Resistance Now, wrote on Instagram.
The protesters exited after a few minutes when they were asked to leave, a Rutgers spokesperson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. In an apology email to students, Rutgers said, “We are sorry your orientation was disrupted with anti-Semitic rhetoric, which is abhorrent and has no place on our campus,” (School officials did not specify — in the campus email or in communications with JTA — which language it considered antisemitic.)
Protesters still declared victory, claiming that Rutgers stopped running the skit after they targeted it.
It was the exact kind of situation campus administrators were hoping to stave off. The incident illustrated how colleges, caught flat-footed by a groundswell of protests last year that frequently created a hostile climate for Jewish students, are trying to get ahead of the problem this fall. Meanwhile, various Jewish groups, including those with a focus on college students, are announcing initiatives of their own after venting their frustrations with what they say is inadequate action by the colleges.
Facing lawsuits, Congressional hearings, donor pressure, Title VI complaints and the occasional high-profile resignation of a campus president, many schools are still improvising what exactly protecting Jewish students will look like this year. Universities have issued revised policies around the acceptable time, place and manner of student protests.
Some, such as Indiana University and the University of Denver, have banned all tents, late-night rallies and writing on campus walls. George Washington University preemptively suspended student groups, including the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace, before classes began. Others, such as the small liberal arts school Ohio Wesleyan University, are trying the approach that gained renown for Dartmouth College last year by launching new civic dialogue initiatives.
Yet the campus protest movement, like the Israel-Hamas war itself, is still casting a long shadow. New-student orientations at other schools this summer, including the University of New Mexico and the University of Michigan, have also been disrupted by anti-Israel activists. Young Democratic Socialists of America, which has chapters on more than 100 campuses, is encouraging a “national student strike for Palestine.”
And this week the American Association of University Professors, a major national faculty organization, changed its longstanding policy discouraging boycotts to say they can now be “legitimate tactical responses” — clearing the way for faculty to argue in favor of boycotting Israeli universities, a longtime rallying cry of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Pro-Palestinian faculty encouraged or even participated in many of the most disruptive student protests last year.
All this is worrying Jewish leaders, who are warning they will continue taking action if universities don’t get their act together.
“Jewish students deserve better,” Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote in a letter to the Wall Street Journal Wednesday. “We will be watching as the academic year gets under way. If other university leaders fail to live up to their responsibility, they too must face consequences.”
Other Jewish groups are taking more aggressive action for students, without waiting for the schools to improve their policies. The Community Security Service, saying it had heard from Jewish students who “fear for their life,” recently announced new self-defense training for students.
Hillel International and the Secure Community Network, which organizes security for Jewish spaces, are partnering on “Operation SecureOurCampuses,” their own training initiative for Jewish students and staff. The new venture includes what the groups describe as “full-time intelligence analysts to monitor campus security incidents and provide real-time support.” Some individual Hillels are also taking their own steps: Penn State University’s is reinstating a full-time Israel educator to its staff.
Legal action has compelled at least some schools to crack down on protests. The University of California system announced this week it would be “reinforcing” prohibitions on camping and mask-wearing, days after a federal judge ordered the system’s UCLA campus to do a better job of stopping protesters from blocking Jewish students’ access to campus. A Jewish student had sued the school over the encampment behavior last semester, which had led to violent clashes on campus between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian factions.
Still, Jewish leaders across the UC system told J. the Jewish News of Northern California they expect protests to flare up again this fall, in part because they don’t believe the schools did enough to stop them last year.
And the nation’s most scrutinized elite schools, where pro-Palestinian protesters prompted extensive political blowback, are also trying to chart a new path. Harvard University, which is also facing a lawsuit related to its campus protests, planned earlier this summer to ban chalk and unapproved signage from student protests, according to documents obtained by the student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. (A Jewish recent graduate who sued the school denounced antisemitism at the school during the Republican National Convention last month.)
Columbia, meanwhile, has taken heat for allowing many of the students arrested or disciplined for their protests to return to campus this fall, even as the school — whose president, Minouche Shafik, just resigned — also hopes to beef up its protest response with a new color-coded access system meant to keep outside agitators from entering campus.
Other schools may see protests renewed by promises they struck with student encampments in the spring. Brown University, in exchange for peacefully dismantling the encampments, agreed to allow protesting students to argue in favor of divesting from Israel at its trustees’ meeting this fall.
There are signs that some schools are regretting such deals, and that students have no interest in respecting them. Earlier this summer the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee apologized to the local Jewish community after striking an encampment deal that included an official university call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Some of the encampment’s organizing groups were recently suspended after making social media posts the university said “included intimidating language aimed at Jewish community members and organizations that support Israel.”
Even at schools that struck deals, new efforts to ward off antisemitism and contain protests are emerging. Northwestern University’s Jewish president, Michael Schill, announced new initiatives this week to fight antisemitism and other forms of hate, including mandating antisemitism training for all incoming students and implementing a new “Display Policy” for protests that he said he would elaborate on at a later date. Schill’s actions came after he attracted intense criticism this summer for his decision to broker a deal with the encampment organizers. His school’s antisemitism committee collapsed, and groups including the ADL called for his resignation.
Universities will be looking to avoid that kind of attention from Jewish groups this fall, while also hoping to demonstrate that they respect academic freedom and the right to protest. Some, including Rutgers (which also struck a deal, and whose chancellor was also subpoenaed by Congress), hope to walk that tightrope with new statements of principles.
“While the right of freedom of expression is protected, it has limits and does not include the right to engage in conduct that disrupts the university’s operations, endangers the safety of others, or creates a discriminatory or harassing environment,” a passage on Rutgers’ new “Free Expression” website reads.
For all of the efforts underway to mitigate protests and keep Jewish students safe, some students aren’t leaving anything up to chance. Ethan Oliner transferred from Cornell University to Yeshiva University, as part of what the Modern Orthodox flagship said was its largest-ever pool of transfer students.
“After Oct. 7, every time I walked into class, it felt like someone was giving you a dirty look,” Oliner told InsideHigherEd.
Even as Jewish students are navigating this tense moment on campus, some say they are more determined than ever to find a new way forward. In the Jewish journal Sources, rising Princeton senior Stephen Bartell recounted running into a pro-Palestinian classmate at a coffee shop.
“We hadn’t spoken in quite some time—mostly, I thought, because we no longer live near one another,” Bartell wrote. “We exchanged glances and instinctively, I smiled and waved at her. She seemed caught off guard and confused. She waved back, walked towards me, and we chatted briefly. As she turned to get in line for coffee, she said, ‘I’m so glad we can talk again. I didn’t know if you would want me to say hi to you anymore.’ I was glad, too.”
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