Jewish life on campus ‘attacked’ as anti-Israel activists call for Hillels to be defunded, shut down

Anti-Israel protesters at colleges and universities have taken aim at a new target: the campus Hillel.

Activists around the country have called on schools to defund or even shut down Hillel International centers — gathering places for Jewish students to socialize, worship and observe religious holidays — at schools including the University of Pittsburgh and Baruch and Hunter College in Manhattan. It’s a tactic Jewish students and faculty say is a direct assault on their presence on campus.

“We’re very concerned that this is a clear effort to undermine Jewish life on campus,” Shira Goodman, Vice President of advocacy and national affairs at the Anti-Defamation League, told The Post. “It’s not just limited to Hillel, it’s about really attacking organized Jewish life on campus.”

Hillel International serves 180,000 students at 850 colleges and universities around the world with centers also known as The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life.

Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and the pro-Palestinian protests that followed, the ADL has seen an unprecedented explosion of assaults on campus Hillels, which Goodman says are antisemitic in nature.

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“It’s demonstrative of a larger pattern of how these protests are becoming blatantly more antisemitic,” she explained. “I think it’s an attempt to separate Jewish students from the rest of campus, to create an other, to ostracize, to create wedges, to make people feel unwelcome on campus.”

Baruch College’s Hillel was protested in June with a “Rally against Hillel” in front of the Gramercy Park building. The event was promoted activist accounts on social media with a graphic that read: “Hillel your hands are red! Over 40,000 dead! Hillel stands with Genocide.”

One protester at the event held a banner adorned with a swastika inside of a Star of David and reportedly shouted “Synagogue of Satan” — while others in the crowd shouted “from CUNY to Gaza, globalize the intifada” and “Hillel, Hillel, what do you say? How many kids did you kill today?”

Meanwhile, at schools across the country, pro-Palestine student groups have called for campus Hillels to be defunded or shut down entirely.

Students at the University of California in Santa Cruz demanded on social media that the school hold a “complete academic boycott” and “cut ties UC wide with all Zionist institutions … [including] Hillel International.”

Activists at Drexel University in Philadelphia also demanded the university “immediately terminate Drexel’s chapter of Hillel, a global zionist campus organization” and said “organizations must be replaced by non-zionist Jewish ones that in no way support the ongoing genocide, occupation, or apartheid in Palestine or are funded by such.”

Drexel Hillel executive director Rabbi Isabel de Koninck told The Post that, though disturbing, the calls were ignored by the school.

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“While the encampment on our campus did include removing our organization from campus as one of their demands last year, I do not have any reason to believe those demands were taken seriously by the university,” she said.

Similarly, student protesters who set up an encampment at the University of Pittsburgh demanded the school “immediately terminate Pitt’s chapter of Hillel.”

Daniel Marcus, the executive director of the Hillel Jewish University Center of Pittsburgh, said he was disturbed by demands his organization be shut down.

“We were called out to be terminated … which, of course, is unacceptable and antisemitic,” he told The Post. “It’s more than disconcerting.”

He says protesters outside of his Hillel have called for the abolition of Israel and even blocked the entrance to prevent Jewish students from being able to come and go in peace.

At the University of Michigan, student body leadership attempted to freeze $1.3 million in funding for all student groups, including Jewish student organizations, until the school divested from Israel. Independent funding from the Hillel, however, was not threatened .

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Here in New York City, campus Hillels have been under consistent assault as the new school year ramped up.

Demonstrators at Hunter College on the Upper East Side directly targeted the school’s Hillel in August with an inflammatory poster reading “It is right to rebel. Hillel go to hell.” The “i” in Hillel was dotted with an inverted red triangle which, according to the ADL , is a symbol of resistance that originated in the al-Qassam military wing of Hamas.

And in September Jewish freshmen from Baruch College attending a Hillel dinner at a kosher restaurant in Midtown were harassed by protesters .

“Where’s Hersh, you ugly ass b–ch? Go bring them home,” one protester reportedly said, referring to Hersh Goldberg-Polin , an Israeli-American hostage killed by Hamas in August. “You ain’t going home tonight,” another protester threatened, according to the university’s Hillel.

Hillel International says this type of direct targeting of Hillel centers is entirely new post-October 7th — and just one manifestation of campus antisemitism on the rise.

The organization recorded 1,854 antisemitic incidents on campus in the 2023-2024 school year, compared with just 290 the previous year.

Hillel International President and CEO Adam Lehman told The Post that Jewish presence on campus is under siege:

“Calls for violence toward Hillels and Jewish students, or for universities to cut ties with an organization like Hillel that acts as a safe space for so many in the Jewish community, are overtly antisemitic and equate to a campaign to erase a significant portion of Jewish life and identity on campus.”

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