Welcome Back, Jewish and Pro-Israel Students. Here’s What to Expect.

As a rising junior at UC Irvine, I’m often asked by new parents and teachers how to navigate life on American college campuses in light of the antisemitic tidal wave of the last two years.

For some of us, the summer was a welcome reprieve. In the months after Oct. 7, 2023, on campus after campus, Jewish students suffered unchecked discrimination, with administrative indifference and even legal culpability in some cases. 

Unsurprisingly, a spring 2025 poll conducted by the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) determined that 74% of Jewish college students believe that antisemitism is a serious problem on campus, and 87% of Jewish college students are concerned that anti-Israel protests and petitions to boycott the State of Israel lead to hate crimes and violence. 

It’s a multi-front battle; we aren’t just under assault from our classmates. Even faculties have been infiltrated by an anti-Jewish ideology, with nearly one-third of American Jewish college students surveyed by the American Jewish Committee feeling that faculty members have promoted antisemitism or fostered learning environments hostile to Jews. 

Campuses were paralyzed by massive encampments and protesters who harassed visibly Jewish students, and in some cases even shut down classes and other on-campus activities — such as commencement ceremonies — for a period of months. On my campus, members of the Jewish community, including myself, were targeted by the encampment organizers who had people follow us whenever we went near the encampment. This surveillance led to one of my close friends being assaulted when we tried to talk to the numerous people with no relation to the UCI campus who had gathered outside the encampment to support it. Yet all of this hatred and disruption is masked as “anti-Zionism” in an effort to claim that what these people are doing is morally right. 

Many people misunderstand Zionism. Zionism is the belief in Jewish self-determination in our own land, and it is an integral part of Jewish identity for the vast majority of Jews. These past two years of organized anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic harassment campaigns have made a vast majority of Jewish students and faculty feel openly excluded.

So, how will a combined student body of millions of undergraduate students marinated in an antisemitic miasma on social media receive its Jewish peers this fall? If the past is any indication, we should buckle up. 

We as Jews suffer 69% of all religiously-motivated hate crimes in the United States, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, while representing 2.4% of the population. Famous podcasters and music artists either deny the Holocaust or even say it was a good thing, selling Neo-Nazi paraphernalia. Even at the most recent mass shooting at a church in Minneapolis, the shooter had “6 million wasn’t enough” written on his holster. 

Yet through all of this, Jews are still excluded from campus areas that are meant to promote a safe space for students of all cultures. The intersectional narratives that dominate campus intellectual life, in disturbing parallels to the past, say that Jews cannot be recognized as victims because Jews “as a class” are “privileged.”  

The intersectional narratives that dominate campus intellectual life, in disturbing parallels to the past, say that Jews cannot be recognized as victims because Jews “as a class” are “privileged.” 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z”l illustrated this phenomenon when he taught about the mutation of antisemitism. He showed that this very particular type of hate has evolved from attacking Jews for their peoplehood in ancient times, for their religion in the Middle Ages, for their “race” at the dawn of the modern era, and now for our statehood in this “postmodern” age.

In any conversation about today’s campus climate, it’s critical to make clear that the calls for Israel’s destruction that we hear are an inherently antisemitic act. The Jewish ethnic connection to Israel goes deep to the heart of our identity. 

As legal scholar Alyza Lewin puts it, “for the overwhelming majority of Jews, Zionism — the recognition that the Jews are a people indigenous to the land of Israel — is an integral component of how they define their Jewish identity.”

And yet, in our darkest hour, the last academic year showed Jewish students displaying tremendous courage and moral clarity. The bonds in the Jewish community have become unbreakable; we are weathering the storm together as is coded deep in our epigenetics. In our history as a people, we have learned the lesson time and again, but it bears repeating. When they attack, when the world turns against us, and when our equal status in society is revoked, our only way through is together. 

My message for Jewish students is this: We must make our voices heard when we find ourselves excluded, marginalized, or assaulted on or off campus. Take advantage of your campus resources and connect with other Jewish students. Never doubt our community will support you; no matter what, you will always find support from millions of Jews around the world. Above all, we must demand our seat at the table and in the classroom. The tide is turning, and together we will win.

Sevan Minassian-Godner is from Berkeley, California. He is a student at UC Irvine, majoring in political science with an emphasis on political theory and international relations. Sevan is the Vice President of Hillel at UCI, served as Pegisha chair for Chabad, and is on the board of his campus’s chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi, the Jewish Fraternity.