Jewish students have a right to feel safe. Universities can't let them down again.

This September, colleges and universities have the opportunity – and legal obligation – to ensure a safe and inclusive return of Jewish students to their campuses. After last year’s unprecedented rise in antisemitic incidents that have led to multiple Title VI investigations, and with Jewish students confronting isolation, bullying, harassment and exclusion across a large number of U.S. and international universities, administrators and safety officers must recommit themselves to having a solid plan for welcoming back Jewish students to campus. 

The Anti-Defamation League and Hillel International’s survey of Jewish American students last November provided a crystal-clear picture of how Jewish students were feeling just over a month after the Oct. 7 attacks committed by terror organization Hamas against Israeli civilians. That survey gives us all an important look at the different aspects of planning that need to go into a holistic plan of action.

The spillover of the horrors of the Oct. 7 attacks and the ensuing war between Israel and Hamas onto university campuses in the form of encampments and protests across the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe led to an atmosphere of intolerance and insecurity for many Jewish students.

University presidents and administrators have also experienced one of the toughest academic years in current memory, being under a microscope about public and private statements and actions. Some have been hauled in front of deeply political congressional hearings to answer for their campus climate, and some have even lost their jobs.

So as both an academic and member of the Board of Directors of ADL, America’s oldest anti-hate organization, I’d like to provide American university presidents and administrators 10 steps they can take to proactively and successfully welcome back their Jewish students and offer them the assurance that last year’s academic nightmare won’t be repeated.

These steps are based on guidance issued by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, Hillel International, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Jewish Federations of North America.

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Universities must ensure Jewish students' safety

1. Clearly communicate the standards and rules governing the campus community, including policies on protests and demonstrations. Make sure students and faculty are aware of your campuses’ codes of conduct, including policies and procedures for managing protests, demonstrations, postings and other speech activity ‒ including time, place and manner regulations.

2. Make clear to administrators, faculty and staff their obligations as employees and members of an academic community to uphold a commitment to no tolerance for antisemitism or any form of hate. In advance of the start of the academic year, prepare communications about what these policies are, why they are important, how they align with core campus values and the consequences of violating them. And if those policies are violated, make sure steps are taken to enforce those policies. Students and their parents need to know your words mean something.

3. Take assurances that members of the academic community are not silenced, harassed, intimidated or threatened; that the university’s normal teaching, learning and research activities are not disrupted. These policies must then be enforced in an even-handed, content-neutral and consistent manner. This means activist faculty bringing their activism into a class unrelated to their activism should be warned and if they persist, removed from teaching that course.

How colleges can combat antisemitism on campus

4. Directly respond to antisemitic incidents as well as other forms of hateful acts when they occur. University leaders should publish strong, timely statements that (a) explicitly condemn the incident and explain what steps will be taken by the university to address the situation and prevent its recurrence, (b) describe specific support available for the Jewish community and (c) establish clear expectations for respectful campus discourse tied directly to the mission of the institution.

The fact that the incident may involve protected free speech in no way reduces the university’s obligation to step up and speak out, as indicated by the U.S. Department of Education: “The fact that harassment may involve conduct that includes speech in a public setting or speech that is also motivated by political or religious beliefs ... does not relieve a school of its obligation to respond under Title VI ... if the harassment creates a hostile environment in school for a student or students.”

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5. Support Jewish students by preventing discrimination against Jewish students in campus organizations, clubs and institutions. Pronouncements such as “Zionists are not welcome” should not be tolerated. This form of exclusion becomes even more insidious when the word “Zios” (a term coined by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke) is invoked as an antisemitic slur applying this type of litmus test.

6. Unequivocally denounce the targeting of Jewish student organizations. Recently, Jewish institutions like Hillel, the primary center for Jewish student life on campus, and Chabad, another essential Jewish campus organization, have increasingly become targets of attacks, with protesters calling for schools to sever ties with Hillel and Chabad. This is antisemitism pure and simple and should be called out as such.

Jewish students, faculty deserve to be seen and heard

7. Ensure Israeli students and faculty are welcome and reject BDS (boycott, divestment and sanction campaign). Covert or “soft” boycotts of Israeli institutions and academics that include canceling agreements with Israeli academic students and institutions, denying Israeli academics visiting professorships and canceling lectures by Israeli professors negate the pursuit of free academic inquiry. Colleges and universities must reaffirm their opposition to BDS and explain to the campus community why that movement is harmful and antithetical to campus values.

8. Provide antisemitism education and training for all students and front-line faculty and staff. Too many students don’t know the red lines between criticism of Israeli policy and outright antisemitic speech and behavior.

9. Proactively prepare for Oct. 7 and other moments with high potential for disruption to university operations. Remember that many campus demonstrations crossed red lines when they used antisemitic rhetoric and symbols (often in support of terror organization Hamas, Hezbollah and others). Campus encampments violated campus rules and harassed Jewish students.

On those campuses where demonstrators occupied buildings, besides the illegal occupation, destruction of property and at times violent assault that took place, demonstrators were often allowed to stay in those spaces and administrators were too slow to take steps to put an end to the illegal activities. Negotiating a quick end to such illegal activity without the use of law enforcement is always the best option, but what last year taught us is the longer such illegal and aggressive activities last, the more dangerous they become.

10. And finally, get to know your Jewish students, their diversity, their identity, their sense of community. Show up, be inquisitive, be curious. Don’t tokenize your Jewish students and faculty. Don’t allow small fringe groups who claim to speak for all Jewish students to stifle the sentiment of the core Jewish groups. Show your Jewish students that they are seen and heard. Show their parents that your motivation is not one of averting legal trouble, but that all your students feel safe and secure.

I know the steps I’ve laid out are no easy task, we are experiencing challenging times and university campuses have historically sat at the epicenter of our culture and political wars. But they speak to the core mission of every university.

After all, if Jewish students don’t feel safe to be their full Jewish selves, to walk around campus being visibly Jewish, wearing their kippah or their Star of David, if their parents feel insecure in sending their children to your campus, then we have all failed as a democracy. It’s simply that elementary.  

Sharon Nazarian is the president of the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Family Foundation. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Anti-Defamation League and is an adjunct professor at UCLA. She founded and chairs the advisory board of the Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies at UCLA.