Antisemitic Incidents on Campus Spike to Record High Even as Assaults, Vandalism Decrease, New Data Shows

New data on antisemitic incidents on college campuses released on Thursday by Hillel International paints a picture of the Jewish higher education experience that is somewhat gray, showing improvements in some statistical categories and retrogression in others.

“While we’re encouraged by progress in some areas, any counting of incidents likely underrepresents the true scope of antisemitism, because so many incidents go unreported — especially as they become normalized,” Hillel’s vice president of Israel engagement and confronting antisemitism, Jon Falk, said in a statement. “We cannot allow this level of antisemitism to feel normal. That’s why we’re working on campuses every day, creating safe, inclusive, and vibrant communities for Jewish students everywhere.”

The number of antisemitic incidents counted by the group, which is the largest collegiate group for Jewish students in the world, surged to a record high during the 2024-2025 academic year — 2,234, an increase of more than 500 incidents compared to the 1,853 recorded in the 2023-2024 school year. During the 2022-2023 academic year, the last year before Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and the onset of the Gaza war, Hillel recorded just 289 antisemitic incidents.

However, incidents of assault declined by 36 percent over the past academic year, and incidents of vandalism, and graffiti plummeted by 55 percent. Meanwhile, so-called “Gaza Solidarity Encampments,” once the bane of Jewish college life and a source of early retirement for elite college presidents, fell 92 percent.

Alongside those numbers are indicators that antisemitism is migrating from the campus to the internet and social media, where it can be easily masked by burner accounts and faceless forum groups in which the cover of anonymity encourages extremism. According to Hillel, antisemitic online harassment increased by 185 percent. Additionally, anti-Israel activists are disrupting commencement ceremonies at marginally higher rates. The 2024-2025 school year saw 37 such incidents. The previous academic year saw 31.

“All Jewish students should feel they belong on campus, but unfortunately, too often we’re seeing environments that make Jewish students feel excluded and threatened,” Hillel International chief executive officer Adam Lehman said in a statement. “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. When universities step up and enforce their rules, Jewish students and all students benefit from a safer, more inclusive campus environment.”

Other research has explored the role of social media in spreading antisemitic and anti-Zionist propaganda.

In May, a report produced by the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University, Bloomington and shared with The Algemeiner — titled “Anti-Israel Campus Groups: Online Networks and Narratives” — discussed the ways in which pro-Hamas student groups draw in the world beyond the campus to heighten pressure on university officials and create an illusion of inexorable support for anti-Zionism. Key to this effort, the report explained, is a vast and ambitious network of non-campus anti-Israel organizations which ply them with logistical and financial resources that significantly boost their capabilities beyond those of normal student clubs.

“Social media platforms, particularly Instagram, play a critical role in mobilizing these groups, spreading radical narratives, and coordinating actions at both local and national levels,” report authors Gunther Jikeli and Daniel Miehling wrote. “Social media shapes perceptions of the Israel-Hamas conflict in significant ways, often through highly emotive and polarizing content that fuels activism and, at times, incitement.”

Having modernized the manufacturing and distribution of political propaganda by reducing complex subjects to “memes” — some involving humor or contemporary cultural references which appeal to the sensibilities of the youth — social media has become the cheapest and most effective weapons in the arsenal of the pro-Hamas movement, the report said, adding that this was true before the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel precipitated an explosion of anti-Israel activity online.

However, extremist groups have been pushing such anti-Israel activism on campuses long before the Oct. 7 atrocities, according to the report.

From 2013 to 2024, Students for Justice in Palestine, pro-Hamas faculty groups, and others posted over 76,000 posts on social media which were analyzed by the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. Over half, 54.9 percent, included only a single, evocative image.

“In contrast, Reels (5.3%) and Videos (4.9%) are used far less frequently,” the report said. “Based on these descriptions, we see a strong preference among campus-based anti-Israel groups for static visual formats, suggesting that this type of bimodal content represents the highest form of shareability within activists networks.”

To boost their audience and reach, pro-Hamas groups also post together in what Jikeli and Miehling described as “co-authored posts,” of which there were over 20,000 between 2013 and 2024. The content they contain elicits strong emotions in the individual users exposed to it, inciting incidents of antisemitic discrimination, harassment, and violence, the report continued. Such outrages increase in proportion to the concentration of anti-Israel groups on a single campus, as the report’s data show a relationship that is “particularly strong.”

Of all the groups responsible for fostering a hostile campus environment, SJP stands out for being “the most frequent collaborator with other anti-Israel organizations,” the report added. The group’s closest ally appears to be the Palestinian Youth movement, which maintains ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terror organization which became infamous in the 20th century for perpetrating a series of airplane hijackings.

“This close collaboration not only broadens SJP’s audience but also suggests that PYM’s radical anti-Zionist rhetoric and visual language may shape elements of SJP’s discourse,” Jikeli and Miehling explained. “PYM’s posts frequently incorporate imagery associated with socialist iconography, national liberation movements, and Islamist martyrdom. Such content often features slogans that reject the legitimacy of the Israeli state, depict convicted Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israel as political prisoners, and glorify members of terrorist groups.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Antisemitic Incidents on Campus Spike to Record High Even as Assaults, Vandalism Decrease, New Data Shows first appeared on Algemeiner.com.