Antisemitism on college campuses in the United States has faced unprecedented examination by Congress and federal agencies in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7th, 2023. Public hearings have revealed an increasing “climate of hostility,” characterized by a dramatic surge in reported incidents ranging from social exclusion and verbal abuse to physical violence. What began as protest encampments has metastasized into something far more systematic — and far more alarming.

These incidents unfolded with particular intensity at America’s most prestigious institutions: Harvard and Columbia campuses became flashpoints for confrontations between Jewish students and ideologically driven activist movements. Documented cases include enforced exclusion zones, mob intimidation, and university administrations that looked the other way — or worse, instructed law enforcement to stand down.

A Universal Academic Movement

What makes this phenomenon especially disturbing is its transnational character. Similar incidents have erupted in European, British, and Canadian universities, demonstrating that this is not an isolated American crisis but a coordinated, universal academic movement. Across the Atlantic and beyond, Jewish students and academics face harassment under the same ideological banner, employing the same tactics, chanting the same slogans.

This is no coincidence. What we are witnessing is an alliance between wokist and leftist ideologies fused with an Islamist political agenda — a coalition deliberately targeting young, idealistic people at their most formative intellectual stage. The elite universities that were once bastions of open inquiry have become incubators for a new intolerance, their moral authority amplified by mainstream media coverage that often fails to identify the antisemitic nature of what it reports.

The stated cause — solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian people — masks what the evidence increasingly reveals: a broader separatist agenda aimed at fracturing Western societies and isolating Jewish communities. The movement does not distinguish between Israeli government policy and Jewish students in Boston, Paris, or London. That deliberate conflation is not a mistake. It is the mechanism.

U.S. Federal Hearings: A Reckoning Begins

In February 2026, two landmark federal hearings brought the crisis into the sharpest official focus yet. The Religious Liberty Commission, operating under the Department of Justice, hosted its fifth hearing on February 12 at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., specifically examining antisemitism’s assault on religious liberty in educational and private sector settings. The hearing gathered over a dozen witnesses — students, educators, Jewish communal leaders, and federal officials — and produced harrowing accounts from Jewish UCLA students and faculty who were plaintiffs in Frankel v. Regents of the University of California. They described being barred from classes and campus spaces by activist-enforced exclusion zones, with university police ordered to stand down. The case resulted in a permanent injunction against UCLA and over $6 million in damages.

Just one week later, on February 19, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights convened its first-ever briefing dedicated solely to antisemitism on college campuses. Legal scholars, advocacy leaders, and Department of Justice representatives clashed over the boundaries of Title VI — the federal civil rights law prohibiting discrimination in federally funded institutions — and the extent to which anti-Israel rhetoric crosses into actionable discrimination. Carly Gammill of StandWithUs Law argued powerfully that Zionism is integral to Jewish identity — religious, ethnic, and ancestral — making calls for Israel’s elimination a form of harassment. Mark Goldfeder of the National Jewish Advocacy Center drew a direct parallel between Hamas symbols and nooses displayed to intimidate Black students.

Institutional Failure and Congressional Accountability

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the House Education and Workforce Committee have both pointed directly at university leadership. Numerous high-level hearings have concluded that leaders at Harvard and Columbia failed to uphold conduct standards and safeguard Jewish students. A House resolution formally condemned the initial statements made by certain university presidents who declined to explicitly affirm that calls for the genocide of Jews constituted harassment — a moral failure so stark it became a defining moment in the national conversation.

Jewish students, academics, and teachers on American campuses have been the victims of bullying, discrimination, and hate crimes. They have been denied access to facilities. They have been told, implicitly and explicitly, that their presence is unwelcome. That these things happened within institutions that receive billions in federal funding — and that administrators permitted them — is a scandal of the first order.

The Ideological Architecture of Hate

Understanding why this movement has gained such traction requires confronting its ideological architecture honestly. Wokist frameworks, which divide the world into oppressors and oppressed along racial and colonial lines, provide the theoretical scaffolding. Leftist political movements supply the organizational infrastructure and campus networks. And an Islamist political agenda provides both material support and a transnational sense of mission. Together, they form a coalition of convenience united by one common target: Jewish identity in its totality — not merely Israeli policy.

The result is a movement that has achieved what no single component could accomplish alone: the mainstreaming of antisemitic discourse in elite Western institutions, protected by the language of human rights and progressive values. This is the great inversion of our time — hatred dressed in the vocabulary of liberation.

A Turning Point — If the Will Is There

The RLC’s report is due by July 4, 2026, and the USCCR’s investigation continues. These inquiries represent a meaningful step. Stronger enforcement of Title VI, the defunding of institutions that fail to protect all students equally, and the prosecution of hate crimes on campus are not merely legal remedies — they are moral imperatives.

But federal action alone is insufficient. Western civil society must collectively refuse the normalization of antisemitism, regardless of the ideological packaging in which it arrives. Interfaith coalitions, cultural education, and the courage to name what we see clearly — without euphemism — are equally essential. The Jewish communities targeted by this movement deserve nothing less than our full solidarity and our unambiguous commitment to their safety and dignity.

The hearings of February 2026 may mark a genuine turning point — but only if the institutions of Western democracy demonstrate the moral clarity and political will to act on what they have heard.