“You can come to New York to celebrate my graduation, but I won’t bring you to campus” I wrote to my parents earlier this week, the morning after protesters occupied Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall.  I’m an Israeli Journalism M.S. candidate at Columbia, where I also earned my B.A. in Sociology and Theater Studies. The university has been my home for several years now, but living here hasn’t always been comfortable. As a humanities student, it was always clear that being from Israel was, to say the least, not cool.  But it was never dangerous, until now.  Over the last two we ..read more

Jules Rabin stood at the busiest intersection of Montpelier, Vermont’s capitol, in early April with snow still on the sidewalks, protesting the war in Gaza. To cope with the 37-degree chill, he wore a scarf, a wool cap and a down vest under his tweed overcoat, accompanied by about 75 friends and family members. Rabin, who was holding a sign that asked, “How could the Nazi genocide of Jews 1933-45 be followed by the Israeli genocide of Palestinians today?” was celebrating his 100th birthday. Rabin and his wife Helen live 20 miles away in Marshfield, Vermont, population 1,583, where they raised ..read more

(JTA) — Yom HaShoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, begins Sunday night, marking the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and serving as a memorial day for the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis. This year, as the Israel-Hamas war enters its seventh month, the day takes on added symbolism: It is the first Yom HaShoah since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, which was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Yom HaShoah, which was first observed in Israel in 1951 and became enshrined into law later in the decade, is viewed by many Jewish communities around the world as their primary day f ..read more

(JTA) — Hello! The unplanned theme of this week’s Jewish Sport Report is Jewish athletes in unexpected places. We’ve got Jewish QBs at a Mormon school, a DI college football player who doesn’t play on Saturdays and even a first baseman on the pitcher’s mound. Let the games begin! The (Play)Book of Mormon Quarterback Jake Retzlaff is entering his second season with Brigham Young University. (Jaren Wilkey/BYU) It’s unusual to see a Jewish quarterback in the NFL: There have been only a handful in the league’s century-plus history. Even stranger, however, is to see a QB with Jewish heritage go ..read more

Columbia’s president on Friday said the university negotiated patiently for eight days and made “a sincere and good offer” to protesters encamped on its central lawn, and referenced her Middle Eastern and Muslim roots in a plea for students to embrace “civil discourse.” A message from President Shafik. pic.twitter.com/zd8i2DE4wp — Columbia University (@Columbia) May 3, 2024 The video, shot on campus, comes three days after Nemat Shafik asked New York City police to enter and clear Hamilton Hall, which students protesting Israel’s military campaign in Gaza had occupied. Police arrested more th ..read more

Many of my peers at Columbia University, where I am a freshman enrolled in a joint degree program with the Jewish Theological Seminary, have spent the past few days expressing fury over the end of the brief occupation of Hamilton Hall by pro-Palestinian protesters. Police were called in Tuesday night; in a press release, Columbia University Apartheid Divest called their arrest of more than 100 protesters within and outside the building “shocking police violence” that “broke every written and unwritten rule of university norms.” What they miss: This occupation, for some Jewish students like mys ..read more

At universities and colleges across the country, police are sweeping through encampments supporting Gaza, trying to clear protesters from the grounds. But at Brown University’s encampment, on the campus’ main green in the middle of Providence, Rhode Island, the biggest drama last Shabbat was that the candles would not stay lit. This was, more or less, the calm atmosphere of Brown’s encampment for the six days it stood; it was not plagued by the antisemitism, violence or arrests that have dominated headlines about schools including Columbia and UCLA. There were no clashes with counter-protester ..read more

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut — I didn’t get to the rally on Yale University’s Beinecke Plaza Wednesday night until nearly an hour after it started, so if there were speeches, I missed them. By 10 p.m., about 200 protesters were chanting things like, “Disclose, divest! We will not stop, we will not rest!” and “Muslim blood is not cheap / For our martyrs we will weep!” Then the woman with the megaphone announced, “We’re going to take a little walk!” and the rally morphed into a march through the dark streets around and through a quiet campus the night before the start of final exams. Most of the ..read more

Several prominent Jewish organizations declined to attend a roundtable on campus antisemitism at the Education Department on Friday morning. The Anti-Defamation League, Hillel International, the Jewish Federations of North America and the Orthodox Union bowed out after several progressive organizations were invited to participate, according to several people familiar with the situation. The meeting with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona took place as planned with a smaller group. Kevin Rachlin, director of the Nexus Leadership Project, which seeks to defend some criticism of Israel from claim ..read more

(JTA) – When he announced this week that Northwestern University had reached an agreement with the groups behind the school’s pro-Palestinian encampment, President Michael Schill was hopeful he could salvage the rest of the semester and commencement. “I am proud of our community for achieving what has been a challenge across the country: a sustainable, de-escalated path forward,” Schill said in a video he released to campus Tuesday. But Northwestern’s president has not been universally celebrated for finding a peaceful resolution amid so many other reports of violence and mass arrests. Instead ..read more