'We won't stop': College students return to changed campuses after a year of protests

A year after Emmit DeHart started classes at his dream school, he couldn't wait to get out.

Transferring out of the University of Washington to Yeshiva University , a private orthodox Jewish university i n New York City, wasn't an easy decision for DeHart, now a 20-year-old sophomore. But after the Hamas attack on Israel last Oct. 7, he said his time on the Seattle campus became a nightmare.

On his walks to class, he would pass 200 protest tents that he found alienating, and graffiti he found hateful, he said. People yelled at him, "Free Palestine," and "Zionists aren't welcome."

"I felt like every day I was having to confront antisemitism," he said.

One year after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, American college students have returned to campuses that feel as if they have changed. Protests against the war in Gaza and administrations' responses to them upended traditional benchmarks – prestige, academic rigor, affordability – of what defines a "good" school. Now, some students also ask: Is this place safe for me? Is my free speech protected?

After a year of protests, as reports soared of campus antisemitism, administrators cracked down with new policies restricting protest activity and on-campus speech that student protesters decried as repressive censorship, as some Jewish students said administrators still failed to protect them.

'Uncomfortable and unsafe'

DeHart was among Jewish students across the nation left stunned and traumatized by the massacre of 1,200 Israelis in the attack last year. But when Israel launched its war in Gaza in response, another sentiment surged through U.S. college campuses, as thousands of students demonstrated against the ballooning death toll, now over 40,000, and ongoing U.S. support for Israel's military.

"It felt really uncomfortable and unsafe walking to class every single day," he said.

As the demonstrations escalated last spring, students like DeHart said they no longer felt safe and protected in their homes-away-from-home. Jewish students reported harassment, intimidation, and discomfort – the Anti-Defamation League recorded at least 1,200 antisemitic incidents on college campuses in the year following Oct. 7, a 500% increase from the same period a year before, according to preliminary data released Oct. 6 .

When DeHart brought his concerns to administrators, they "stonewalled," he said. "The job is to protect students and to support students, and I just feel like they were so utterly failing at that."

DeHart is now a sophomore studying politics and finance at Yeshiva University in New York. The decision to transfer to the private Jewish university in New York was "challenging" but "very worthwhile," he said.

He also filed a complaint against the University of Washington through the Brandeis Center, a nonprofit legal organization, over what it calls "severe and persistent harassment and discrimination" endured by Jewish students on campus. The university, it said, failed to take "meaningful steps to address the hostile climate for Jewish students."

In a statement to USA TODAY, Victor Balta, a spokesperson for the university, said administrators are in "active discussions" with the Office of Civil Rights and anticipate the release of a final report with recommendations from a university task force on antisemitism and Islamophobia on Tuesday.

"We encourage any Jewish student facing bias or harassment on campus to report it through our university bias or student conduct reporting tool," according to Balta. "We take reports seriously and are committed to doing all we can to address them."

DeHart said his Jewish beliefs and love for Israel should not impact his ability to learn.

Related: Pro-Palestinian Columbia University group calls for armed resistance: 'violence is the only path'

'Don't want to let them win'

Marie Adele Grosso has been involved in pro-Palestinian activism for her whole life. As a student at Barnard College, part of Columbia University, she was arrested during protests – twice.

Grosso, 19, of Michigan, was arrested once at a tent encampment protest on Columbia University's campus, and again outside Hamilton Hall, which student protesters took over before a massive NYPD operation cleared them out. She and at least 52 other Barnard students were placed on interim suspension and barred from their dorms in April.

Barnard College is steps from Columbia University, the epicenter of campus protests. The Ivy League school was among the iconic elite campuses where scenes of violence and destruction played out last spring when administrators called in police to respond to peaceful student protests.

At Columbia, more than a hundred were arrested as NYPD officers swept into tent encampments. In images reminiscent of the antiwar protests of the Vietnam era, police in riot gear stormed Hamilton Hall , where Grosso was arrested, after protesters took over the building. In the aftermath, the university canceled its commencement , and its president, Minouche Shafik, resigned months later.

The ensuing crackdown by administrators spilled over into Barnard, where Grosso feels new policies restricting campus speech are even more draconian than Columbia's. Students now must swipe their ID to enter campus. A new demonstration policy updated for the fall semester allows protests between 12 p.m. and 6 p.m. within a "Designated Demonstration Area." Students must ask permission to demonstrate 36 hours in advance.

According to a list of "community expectations" released by administrators in September, students cannot hang posters on the outside of dorm room doors, and professors can't display or distribute any material that is not coursework.

Barnard said they were not binding policies, but the announcement sparked widespread criticism from students, faculty, and alumni, who held a "community in crisis teach-in" last month, Columbia Spectator reported .

A junior who's double majoring in sociology and human rights, Grosso first decided to attend Barnard because of its history of activism. Now, the school's crackdown has left her completely disillusioned, she said.

"To some minuscule degree, I trusted that my university, at the very least, cared about my basic safety and needs," Grosso said.

"It's truly not a safe environment for students at this point," she added.

Student protesters have not relented either – in a marked escalation from past messaging, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the group at the helm of many of the protests, retracted a past apology it made after a member said "Zionists don't deserve to live" and called for "liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance."

"In the face of violence from the oppressor equipped with the most lethal military force on the planet, where you've exhausted all peaceful means of resolution, violence is the only path forward," the organization said in a statement posted to Instagram .

A spokesperson for the college referred USA TODAY to Barnard President Laura Rosenbury's statement to the campus newspaper: "We share the faculty’s commitment to free speech and academic freedom and to ensuring the College remains a welcoming and inclusive place that fosters students’ learning and development."

Grosso considered not returning – her parents were deeply concerned for her safety. She said she came back because she loves the people of her college – her classmates, the alumni and faculty. She believes "the community is, to some degree, the institution."

And she is determined to finish her education. "I also don't want to let them win," she said. "I don't want them to be successful in hurting student activists so badly that we drop out."

'Fear is my shadow'

Lauren Cayle, 22, hears people whisper things under their breath as they pass by her on the campus of American University, where she is a senior studying sociology and Jewish studies. In the year since Oct. 7, they feel abandoned by the administration.

"They have just failed at everything," Cayle said.

Cayle proudly wears her Judaism and Zionist beliefs on her sleeve – she dons a Star of David, a dog tag in honor of the hostages, and a yellow ribbon that reads "#BringThemHome" as she walks to class. But she feels her open support has put a target on her back.

"Fear is my shadow," she said. "I'm constantly checking my surroundings."

Among the terms she's been called on campus – "white colonizer, fascist pig. They tell me that I have blood on my hands," she said.

Cayle said the protests that overtook campus last year routinely disturbed her classes and once sent her spiraling into a panic attack.

"I'm on campus," she said. "This is supposed to be my safe space."

Cayle is one of several American University students who filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights accusing administrators of turning a blind eye to the "pervasive and hostile environment for Jewish students" on campus, and sometimes harassing or disciplining "Jewish whistleblowers."

According to the complaint, Jewish and Israeli students found swastikas and Nazi slogans on their dorm room doors and in bathrooms. Protesters allegedly blocked Jewish students from accessing buildings on campus, and posters of Israeli hostages were torn down.

Soon after the complaint was filed in January, the university banned protests in indoor spaces and imposed restrictions on posters and other flyers in public spaces, among other new restrictions.

The university's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine held a march on Tuesday as part of a "week of rage" after Oct. 7. In a post to Instagram on Monday, the organization said administrators threatened student with conduct charges for using amplified sound in the university quad.

Going back in time, Cayle says, she would not have come to American.

"AU has consistently made clear that antisemitism is abhorrent and wrong, and we will not tolerate it," Matthew Bennett, a spokesperson for the university, said in statement.

"This fall, we updated numerous university policies with extensive community input to address concerns about harassment and other behavior that can affect students’ sense of belonging," he wrote.

'We won't stop'

For one Jewish student, the protests epitomized what he came to college to learn.

"My faith in the promise of what a university could be was renewed in the spring through the process of the encampment and over the last year through the process of protesting against the genocide in Gaza," said Adam Nussbaum, a senior architecture major at Yale and student protester with Yale Jews for a Ceasefire, a part of the campus' Palestinian solidarity movement.

Protests went into action at Yale around a year ago, with singing and prayer circles, teach-ins, and town halls, Nussbaum said.

Last spring, they escalated as protesters undertook a hunger strike, confronted administrators in Yale's central Beinecke Plaza, and blocked a street intersection for hours. Police arrested more than 40 students.

As a Jewish student, Nussbaum doesn't see the protests as antisemitic – they are, rather, in line with a "history of antiwar activism in the Jewish tradition," he said.

"It's also just so clear to me that a critique of power and state violence is actually the opposite of antisemitism," he said.

This academic year, Yale has implemented new policies restricting putting up posters and structures, projecting images, and sleeping outside, among other protest activities.

"To think that repression, policing and surveillance can make this problem go away is a huge mistake," Nussbaum said.

Yale "supports free expression on campus by permitting peaceful talks, vigils, rallies, and protests that adhere to university policy by following its time, place, and manner regulations," the university said in a statement.

Nussbaum said student protesters won't let up. "We won't stop until Yale divests," he said.

Cybele Mayes-Osterman is a breaking news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her on email at cmayesosterman@usatoday.com. Follow her on X @CybeleMO.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'We won't stop': College students return to changed campuses after a year of protests