BY BROOKE LOBER, ELI MEYERHOFF, AND EMILY SCHNEIDER
The climate on American university campuses is dangerous. Administrators ban protests for Palestinian rights. Immigration and Customs Enforcement snatches students off the streets. The Trump administration revokes hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for research. And all this is done in the name of protecting Jewish students against a so-called culture of antisemitism. Last April, Claire Shipman, the current acting president of Columbia University, told a congressional committee the university had a “specific problem . . . rampant antisemitism.” If that claim were true, it would constitute a crisis. But it’s not true. Instead, Trump and the Right are weaponizing false claims of antisemitism to attack pro-Palestinian protesters, and they’re using this lie as a smokescreen for destroying higher education and other public goods.
Last year, a student movement arose to protest Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza. When Shipman sold the story of “rampant antisemitism” to Congress, she was subscribing to a big lie that both fails to tell the real story and uses isolated incidents of prejudice to smear and discredit an entire protest movement. That big lie is now being used to justify an all-out war on US universities. The big lie has put researchers who devoted their careers to bettering humankind out of work, and it has subjected Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, and a growing list of others to immigrant detention and potential deportation.
It’s time to come clean about this big lie and start telling the true story.
We are Jewish academics who have devoted our lives to teaching and research on college campuses. If there were a pervasive culture of antisemitism on campuses, we would know about it, and we would fight it. But we have observed no such thing. Instead, defenders of Israel have spread a lie to distract from and crush dissent over Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
The “big lie” is a technique of political propaganda that involves repetition of extreme assertions that grossly distort the truth. The most infamous historical example is the Nazi Party’s propagation of a lie about an international Jewish conspiracy instigating World War I—a big lie that Nazi propagandists used to justify their extermination of Jewish people.
For generations, pro-Israel organizations have normalized the idea that the Palestine solidarity movement is antisemitic, calling criticism of Israel the “new antisemitism.” Since 1979, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has produced an annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, using a flawed methodology that includes criticisms of Israel, expressions of solidarity with Palestinians, and anti-Zionist Jewish rituals as antisemitic incidents. Since Israel’s assault on Gaza after October 7, 2023, the ADL and aligned organizations have used these inflated statistics to present a false narrative about increasing antisemitism, especially on college campuses. But criticism of the state of Israel is not antisemitic.
A report from the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University found that nearly half of Jewish students consider the phrase “Israel violates the human rights of the Palestinian people” to be antisemitic. But the fact that Israel has violated and continues to violate the human rights of the Palestinian people is undeniable. The state of Israel was born through a mass expulsion of Palestinians during the ethnic cleansing of 1948, known as the Nakba. This was followed by decades of military occupation and the imposition of apartheid and siege; now, in a genocidal assault, Israel has killed more than sixty thousand Palestinians and continues to starve two million people in Gaza. We should thus be asking ourselves which political forces have led so many Jewish students to misinterpret such factual and necessary criticisms of the Israeli state as antisemitism. As the 2023 documentary Israelism shows, this mischaracterization of political speech, especially by young Jewish people, is the intended outcome of Zionist organizations’ effort to manufacture consent for Israeli injustice.
The last eighteen months have seen a large, diverse protest movement against Israel’s assault, not against the Jewish people. As academics, we want a model to explain prejudice and antagonism toward all of our students. The big lie relies on an inaccurate account of the data: focusing only on the harassment of pro-Israel Jewish students while ignoring the harassment of others, including Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and Jewish students who are protesting Israel’s genocide. At UCLA, administrators allowed a pro-Israel mob to physically attack students, as campus security and police watched. At the UC Santa Cruz encampment, police physically beat students, and administrators banned student protesters from the university. At Columbia, Arab and pro-Palestinian students were harassed and assaulted. Jewish students and faculty protesting against Israel’s war in Gaza have been doxed, harassed and assaulted by Zionists. At times, academic institutions have themselves performed acts of antisemitism like destroying anti-Zionist Jewish students’ ritual objects. Now, the Zionist organization Betar is sending the federal government lists of students to deport.
A better model—and a more honest story about campus climate—would look at the larger context of the war and how it has increased tensions across the board. On October 7, 2023, Palestinian militant groups staged a revolt against the seventeen-year blockade. They attacked the infrastructure of occupation and kidnapped and killed Israelis, among others. As the US and Israeli media dehumanized Palestinian people and repeatedly characterized this politically motivated attack as “senseless violence” or motivated by “antisemitism,” they paved the way for Israel’s disproportionately harsh retaliation; unsurprisingly, harassment and violence toward Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims ensued. Israel responded to the attack with a genocidal campaign, while marking their conquered territory with holy Jewish symbols and justifying their assault in the name of collective Jewish safety. It is this violent instrumentalization of Jewish identity, a longstanding project of the Israeli state, that has provoked renewed harassment of Jews around the world.
Instead of telling a nuanced, responsible story about all that has happened, the Trump administration and the far right, like the Democratic administration that preceded them, have spread the reductive story that the campus tensions are caused by antisemitism. This lie distorts the causes of the campus conflicts and legitimizes the violence facing students like Mahmoud Khalil.
It’s time to call out the big lie for what it is: an effort to silence dissent and smear protesters. Pro-Israel advocates have aligned themselves with the forces of repression. Resistance to such forces is not about the hatred of Jews. Our people’s long history of antifascism drives our rejection of both Zionism and the weaponizing of charges of antisemitism. Cloaking right-wing commitments to racism under the guise of fighting antisemitism will never keep us safe. We call on everyone to reject the big lie, and to commit to a fight for Jewish safety based on the liberation of all people.
Brooke Lober is a lecturer in gender and women’s studies at UC Berkeley.
Eli Meyerhoff is a fellow with the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom.
Emily Schneider is assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northern Arizona University.
Thank you! I have been waiting for someone to ask why every criticism of Israel and Netanyahu is considered “antisemitic .”
Sorry, but not every criticism of Israel is considered antisemitic by rational persons (both Jews and non-Jews).
There are nuances in play here that don’t lend themselves to such a hasty generalization. Criticism of Israel’s policies is fair game; criticism of Israel’s right to exist is an entirely different story. Those that seek to eradicate Israel – as voiced in many pro-Palestinian protests – legitimize the claim of antisemitism.
I will second your point, Bob. Criticism against Israeli policies are legitimate, just like any criticism against any other country.
Calls for the eradication of Israel, as in “From the river to the sea…” are not. Such calls have not been made against any other country but the Jewish one, and thus are antisemitic.
The same goes for calls for indiscriminate violence against Jews everywhere, such as in “globalize the Intifada”.
Bravo! Well-put. Antisemitism is real and is far too serious a matter to allow the actual antisemites of MAGA to be the ones defining and weaponizing it. And those “liberals” who have in the past signed on to the Big Lie that the pro-Palestine movement is somehow anti-Jewish (rather than against Zionist ideology and against the genocidal behavior of the Israeli state) have been complicit in creating the present situation. It has now become one where “Jewish safety” is being exploited to stamp out DEI, cancer research, academic freedom, and more. This takes the focus off the real growth of antisemitism on the Right (especially among young men influenced by conspiracy theories via social media) and sets the stage for “blaming the Jews” for the destruction of academic and social programs that benefit the majority. (Of course, so one is suggesting that the Palestine solidarity movement, DEI, etc., are any more perfect or free of some poorly-chosen tactics than their worthy predecessors such as the anti-war movement of the 60s.) One thing that might be added here: We also have to stand firm against adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which Harvard has already embraced.
Sorry about typo–fourth sentence from the end should be “(Of course, no one,” not “(Of course, so one )…”
Wow, this is a really powerful and important post. Having followed these issues closely I found all the arguments and evidence familiar, but I have never seen all of this put together as comprehensively and convincingly as this.
You characterize the reaction to Israel’s “brutal assault” on Gaza.
Hello? What was Hamas’ demonstration other than a “brutal assault”?
You cannot use the word “genocide” with linking it to Israel.
You say that the rioters attacked “the infrastructure of repression” – how were families in their homes, with children, part of this infrastructure? A number of peace activists lived near the Gaza border, constantly working for peace. Residents (who were later killed for their pains) gave Gaza residents trips to Israeli hospitals to receive treatment.
Was the reaction of the Israeli military over-the-top?
Yes.
Could this reaction have been anticipated?
Yes!
Is the Trump administration justified?
No. And this will be proved. Trump is NO FRIEND OF THE JEWS.
Dividing groups and setting them against each other is a hallmark of dictatorship.
THIS is the main lesson we need to take away.
Genocide = Israel
As a student who dealt with horrific anti-Semitism in 2023 and 2024, and who obtained a settlement, I would ask you not to speak for all of us.
Thank you, Professors Lober, Meyerhoff, and Schneider, for not only calling out “The Big Lie” that there is rampant antisemitism in universities, but also for providing so many useful references.
Now more than ever it’s the Jewish people who have to stand up for the oppressed. This slanderous, and dangerous claim of anti-Semitism, is somehow being eaten up by the majority of Americans sadly, who view those who speak up as Jew haters– unaware of the many Jews in the crowd– now being disgustingly called ‘fake Jews’ by Zionists.
Especially those of us with education, power, titles, and a degree of respect. If our youth are risking their future careers for this cause it is the least we can do as adults.
Martin Niemöller’s famous quote is more relevant than ever. Not in my name.
Thank you for this thoughtful, well-reasoned piece.
The Technique of Accusation in the Mirror
As it turns out in 2012 Kennith L. Marcus wrote a paper called Accusation in the Mirror.
It can be found here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2020327
Mr. Marcus is the founder of the Brandeis Center https://brandeiscenter.com/founder-and-chairman/ and the Center that brought aforementioned lawsuit against my beloved Pomona College.
On page 23 of the download one finds B. Functions in Facilitating Persecution. “AiM had six interrelated functions: to shock, to silence, to threaten, to insulate, to legitimize, and finally, to motivate and incite.”
First, and foremost it is Mr. Marcus this time around who has been and is at the center of these nationwide accusations through the use of the six inter-related functions against anyone who dares to accuse the State of Israel of Genocide.
Have Mr Marcus come to Pomona College and let him deny the use of these Six Functions.
Academic Freedom of the Professor right to profess and student right to advocate DEMANDS it.
Michael Keenan
The authors assert that the claim of “rampant antisemitism” on college campuses is the “big lie.”
And to support their “big lie” theory, the authors offer blog readers the “trust us” argument. They tell us that they themselves haven’t observed rampant antisemitism and that they would know about it because they are Jewish academics. This appeal to their authority is nothing more than an “ipsi dixit’ fallacy.
Antisemitism: Big Lie or Not?
If not antisemitism, one has to wonder: What exact term would these authors choose to describe the wide spread hostility directed at Jewish students by pro-Palestinian mobs?
If not antisemitism, one has to wonder: How else would the authors characterize the pervasive bullying, harassing, physical assaulting, and access blocking that have been directed against Jewish students?
If not antisemitism, one has to wonder: Why would pro-Palestinian supporters perpetrate these wrongdoings against Jewish American students when, in fact, those Jewish American students have no control (repeat no control) over what Israel does or does not do?
To be clear, criticism of Israel’s policies is NOT ipso facto antisemitism. But the action of pro-Palestinian supporters who abuse and intimidate Jewish students is not – in any shape or form – legitimate criticism of Israel. It is – pure and simple – hostility of Jewishness; it is wrongful conduct; and it reeks of antisemitism.
The authors’ “big lie” theory would have more credibility if the pro-Palestinian protesters directed their anger solely against Israel and Israeli students and not against random Jewish students. But that is not what has happened.
Additionally, the authors go far astray with their “big lie” theory when they apparently want to re-litigate Israel’s existence and impugn Israel as an evil oppressor. They even seem to shamefully justify Hamas’ unspeakable 10/7 evil by euphemistically calling it a militant “revolt.” And, equally disturbing, they ignore Hamas’ horrific indoctrination and multiple teachings of antisemitism that, unfortunately, animate way too many supporters of the Palestinian cause.
Taken in full context, the authors’ attempt to minimize the manifest presence of antisemitism by repeatedly calling it the “big lie,” is in itself the very type of pernicious lie that they condemn.
Ok if that does not work how about the The Big Zionist Hearsay? That should clinch it.
While I am happy to offer a meaningful response to criticism of whatever I post, your reply to my comment seems a bit snarky and makes light of a serious subject. As such, it doesn’t really merit any further discussion from me.
I’ve taught at several colleges and universities, and my experience is that there *is* antisemitism on campus — not nearly as pervasive as claimed, but it’s there. A major reason for it, in my opinion, is the claim, repeated ad nauseam by the Israeli government, whether led by centrists or the far right, that they represent and act on behalf of all Jews everywhere. Worse, this is believed by many, maybe most, of Israel’s supporters in the US. For this reason, it is common for defenders of Palestine to generalize their opposition from “Israel” to “Jews”. This has caused me to distance myself at times from pro-Palestinian groups I otherwise strongly support. Repeat: this is a reaction to the view of Israel, promulgated almost everywhere, as representing Jews in general.
Incidentally, the attack of Oct. 7 was not just an act of resistance. Had it targeted only IDF installations I could buy that. Tragically, perhaps in pursuit of hostages, it went after civilians, particularly, as it happened, many of those in adjacent kibbutzim who were seen by the Israeli population as already “soft” on Palestinians. This was inhuman in itself, and it virtually guaranteed the genocidal onslaught that ensued. *Political actions have to be judged by their expected consequences.* Hamas should be no one’s idea of a progressive, democratic organization, and their operation on Oct. 7 precipitated a catastrophe. This judgment is not altered by the fact that Israel has made any reasonable political process in Gaza utterly impossible.
“On October 7, 2023, Palestinian militant groups staged a revolt against the seventeen-year blockade. They attacked the infrastructure of occupation and kidnapped and killed Israelis, among others.”
As someone who is a signatory of the Not in Our Name statement and agrees with much else in this blog post, the above sentence nearly made me physically sick. I want absolutely nothing to do with a movement that cannot bring itself to denounce the wanton slaughter of civilians by EITHER the Israelis or Hamas. Absolute moral nihilism.
Lets look at the big picture.
What recent conflicts have gotten this attention on college campuses
X – Afghanistan estimates are up to 400,000
✅ – Israel
X Sudan – no-one has good estimates
X South Sudan – no-one has good estimates
X Syria civil war – UN estimated up to 650,000
X Yemen civil war – UN estimated 400,000
X Ukraine
it is anti-semitic if you only care/act when it is Israel.
Mini, you are 100% correct. Your comment nails one of the main components of antisemitism: Treating Israel and Jews at-large by a different standard than that which is applied to other countries and other peoples in comparable circumstances. Thanks for making this point.
If Israel wishes its moral comparisons to be with ISIS, to the Taliban or to the Janjaweed in Sudan… that’s on Israel. However, from what I see Israel and Israelis prefer to be thought of as members of the community of civilized nations. In that case, it’s entirely reasonable for Israel to be held to a higher standard than the combatants in the conflicts mentioned.
The constant whining that it’s antisemitic to criticize Israel because North Korea is worse cheapens the whole concept of antisemitism.
Scott, if you wish to rebut my comment on antisemitism or even clarify it, you really need to use facts and logic; not mere anti-Israel bias. The entirety of your comment lacks soundness. It starts off with a palpably false premise; expands on that falsity in its body; and concludes with a partial straw man assertion. As such, your distorted points lack credibility and warrant no further discussion from me.
That’s fairly predictable: when you’re a mindless channel for hasbara and Muslim-hatred, argument isn’t going to be your strong point.
Israel is a democratic country.
That`s why Israel is treated differently, Mini and Bob. This is not antisemitic, this is respecting Israel as a solid, democratic country with all the rights, but also obligations that come with it.
If you consider the number of civilian deaths in relation to poulation size and the duration of the war – the current Israel Gaza War is the conflict of the last 20 years with the highest civilian casualty rate per capita per year in which a democratic country has been involved.
Israel is a democratic country.
That`s why Israel is treated differently, Mini and Bob. This is not antisemitic, this is respecting Israel as a solid, democratic country with all the rights, but also obligations that come with it.
If you consider the number of civilian deaths in relation to poulation size and the duration of the war – the current Israel Gaza War is the conflict of the last 20 years with the highest civilian casualty rate per capita per year in which a democratic country has been involved.
It appears – based on the civilian casualty statistic you offer – that you believe that Israel – as a solid democratic country with rights and obligations – has not met its obligations, i.e., Israel has done something wrong.
Unfortunately, you do not articulate what you think those obligations are, nor do you put the casualty data that you offer in any context. Indeed, you improperly try to compare the conflicts of the last 20 years to a war caused by the unique horrors of Oct 7th.
Moreover, you imply that another democratic country (presumably one that meets its obligations) would do a better job than Israel in prosecuting the war. That is, another democratic country – faced with Hamas killers, kidnappers, and rapists at its border – would be able to eliminate the Hamas savages without causing heavy civilian casualties to the surrounding population.
Here is a reality check: No such democratic country exists today that has the special discriminating military powers you desire. The democratic country you envision that is capable of killing urban combatants without seriously harming civilians is an illusion.
Given the unspeakable evil that Hamas committed on Oct 7th, Israel has no choice but to totally eradicate Hamas. And given the unique circumstances behind Hamas’ war strategy (operating in tunnels; using civilians as shields; firing from schools, residences, and hospitals), it is – despite your misleading statistic – quite remarkable that Israel has kept the “civilian” casualties as low as they have.
Still, it is always interesting to hear “virtue-signaling” armchair military experts complain about Israel’s prosecution of the war, but – at the same time – offer no better military plan of their own.
This is flat out false; I’ve personally seen the Ukraine and Afghanistan conflicts get attention on campus, I’ve also seen college students talk about all the other conflicts you listed and more.
It also ignores how institutional and governmental relations vary among the countries you list. In my experience college students are not going to ask their schools or state or federal governments to divest from entities they’re not heavily invested in.
Calling the October 7 massacre of Jews a “revolt” is disgusting, bigoted, and supportive of Hamas, which openly expresses its goal of wiping Jews off the face of the planet.
Shame on you. Shame on you for publishing this lie, shame on you for publishing this whitewashing of the Hamas rapes and murders of civilians on that day, shame on you for pretending it was at all related to the blockade (which began because Hamas fired rockets at Israel and is an ISIS-like group) when Hamas itself said its goal was to wipe Jews out and destroy Israel.
You, and the organization that published this, should be ashamed. You are beyond belief, and an iteration of the latest version of people excusing antisemitic murders and pogroms.
Dave Johnson, thank you for your well expressed – no nonsense – incisive comment. I could not agree more with your analysis. This article not only lacks any intellectual rigor, but worse, parts of it are – as you rightfully point out – shameful.
The emergence of today’s Palestinian population is not the result of a static, indigenous ethnic community, but rather of a demographic dynamic shaped by immigration, wars, labor migration, and geopolitical realignments.
⸻
1. Migration into the British Mandate of Palestine (ca. 1850–1948)
• From the late 19th century onward, Jewish immigration increased—primarily from Eastern Europe, Russia, Yemen, and later Germany.
• At the same time, there was extensive Arab in-migration, especially from:
• Greater Syria (including today’s Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan)
• Egypt (particularly during British canal construction)
• Turkey/Anatolia (following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire)
• Circassians, Bosniaks, Armenians—displaced by Ottoman expulsions
👉 This Arab in-migration was largely economically motivated:
Jewish development of infrastructure, agriculture, healthcare, and industry created jobs, better wages, and improved security of supply.
→ Estimated impact (according to Prof. Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial):
Between 1880 and 1948, hundreds of thousands of Arab migrants settled in Palestine from surrounding regions and later identified as “Palestinians.”
⸻
📊 Statistical corroboration:
• The Hope-Simpson Report (1930), commissioned by the British authorities, documented illegal Arab migration from neighboring countries.
• British administrators struggled to determine the ethnic origin of many Arab residents, as most lacked formal documentation.
⸻
📌 Political implications:
The narrative of a native, continuous, thousand-year-old Palestinian people is historically untenable.
That does not mean today’s Palestinians have “no rights”—
but it does mean that the claimed “right of return” for millions of descendants is not rooted in direct dispossession,
but in a constructed national myth, politically activated only after 1948, and particularly after 1967.
⸻
🧠 Conclusion:
This touches a taboo:
That Jewish return and development made the land attractive, prompting Arab in-migration,
and that many who today identify as “Palestinians” are in fact descendants of economically motivated migrants, not “indigenous inhabitants.”
To say so is not racism.
It is demography, history, and truth.
⸻