Antisemitic assaults and vandalism are down on campuses but online bullying is up, Hillel finds

JTA – The number of antisemitic assaults and acts of vandalism on college campuses fell sharply in the past school year, according to Hillel International.
And the pro-Palestinian encampments that ignited fear among many Jewish college students in early 2024 effectively disappeared in the year since, with just nine encampments taking place in the past school year, the Jewish campus group said in its annual tally of antisemitic incidents, released on Thursday, 17 July.

But Hillel International said antisemitic incidents were still on the rise on college campuses overall, citing an increase in online harassment and bullying reported by Jewish students.
The organisation said the trend might reflect more aggressive action on the part of universities to intervene on behalf of Jewish students and their advocates.
“What we saw this past year was there was a penalty for antisemitism at many universities, so what it did was, it took a lot of these incidents that would have happened on campus and moved them online,” Jon Falk, Hillel’s vice-president of Israel engagement and confronting antisemitism, said in an interview.

The finding comes at a complicated moment for the push to combat antisemitism on college campuses, with the Trump administration taking up the cause in ways that have divided Jewish observers. Though many have expressed relief that schools are being encouraged – and in some cases coerced – to adopt policies to stem antisemitism, some are concerned that the effort is also compromising free expression on campuses.

Adam Lehman, the president and chief executive of Hillel International, said he believed changes to improve the climate for Jewish students on college campuses were paying off.
“Over the past year, many universities have made significant changes to better clarify and enforce their policies and codes of conduct, supported by our work with them to achieve these improvements,” said Lehman. “When universities step up and enforce their rules, Jewish students and all students benefit from a safer, more inclusive campus environment.”
Even if some forms of antisemitism on campus seem to be in decline, the overall picture remains starkly different from before Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, according to Hillel’s data.

Last year, the group recorded 2 334 antisemitic incidents on campuses, an increase of more than 500 recorded incidents compared to the 2023-2024 school year, in which 1 853 incidents were recorded. But during the 2022-2023 school year, Hillel recorded just 289 antisemitic incidents.
The group said it tallied incidents of antisemitic harassment, vandalism, assault, and hate speech, as well as incidents recovered from social media, emails, articles, and publications.
To collect the data, Hillel cross-references college and university bias reporting portals; reports from students; the Campus Antisemitism Legal Line; and ReportCampusHate.org, a joint project of Hillel, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Secure Community Network, which co-ordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide.
Hillel staff on campuses work to identify and verify each antisemitic incident reported, and the resulting data set uses a “technical system so that we make sure that we get every single incident”, Falk said.

“I care deeply that every incident is counted,” he said. “That’s what Jewish people have been doing for centuries. We care about counting, and we want to count correctly, and so that’s what we’re doing every day.”
At a time when campuses are wracked by tension over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, some of the incidents that Hillel counted as antisemitic reflect ongoing complexity around determining what kind of Israel criticism constitutes antisemitism. The organisation said incidents of antisemitic articles and publications had increased 50% since the 2023-2024 school year, rising from 40 to 61 incidents. It offered as examples an article in Mondoweiss, a left-wing online publication, by a University of California, Davis graduate student advocating for a boycott of an exchange programme with an Israeli university; a pro-Palestinian parody of Northwestern University’s student newspaper; and an OpEd by a Jewish student in The Bowdoin (College) Orient criticising Zionist Jews and the war in Gaza.

“Antisemitic articles and publications negatively impact the climate for Jewish students on campus,” Falk said by email in response to an inquiry about why the articles were counted in the tally. “Each article/publication incident met Hillel’s criteria for an antisemitic incident by containing at least one element of antisemitic language.”
The Hillel data covers a period that included a string of recent attacks on Jewish groups and leaders, including the firebombing of Jewish Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s home in April; the murders of two Israeli embassy workers in Washington, D.C. in May; and the deadly firebombing of a group demonstrating for the release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza last month.
The day after each attack, Falk said that Hillel recorded a “spike” in antisemitic incidents on campuses.

“The next day, we would see a spike, both when it comes to social media and when it comes to targeting students,” he said. “I don’t think folks truly understand the impact of incidents that happen outside of the campus space, and how they could impact the campus environment.”