SPECIAL REPORT

Conflict on Campus

What’s it really like for Jewish students as colleges and universities erupt over the war between Israel and Hamas? We dispatched 11 reporters to find out.

Photos, clockwise from upper left, show U.C. Berkeley (by Kimberly Winston); U. Chicago (Debra Nussbaum Cohen); U. Michigan (Debrah Miszak); Harvard (Mira Fox); Columbia (Camillo Barone); Tulane (Leah Jablo); and University of Southern California (Louis Keene). Collage by Matthew Litman.

Dear Readers,

From, the first days after Hamas’s brutal terror attack in Israel, we have been covering the shocking and scary ways the war is reverberating on U.S. campuses. Death threats at Cornell. An assault at Columbia. An altercaton over the burning of an Israeli flag at Tulane. Harvard students blaming Israel for the attack — and being doxxed for doing so.

We will continue, of course, to cover incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia and clashes over free speech on campus. But we wanted to get beyond the histrionic headlines and viral videos to build a deeper understanding of what it’s like to be one of the 250,000 Jewish students on American campuses in this fraught moment.

So sent 11 reporters to 11 campuses — some that have drawn national attention, like Cornell and Columbia, and some where conflicts have been perhaps quieter but no less challenging, like Rutgers and the University of Michigan. We watched rallies and joined ice-cream socials. We saw screaming slogans on the sidewalks.

And we listened.

“You can prepare yourself for antisemitism as much as you want, and you can read every scholarly book about it, and you can know everything about it intellectually,” said one Tulane student. “But it's so different when you actually experience it.”

Please let us know what you think by emailing [email protected]. If you value our journalism about antisemitism on campus, support us with a donation, and urge your friends to sign up for our free newsletters.

Thank you for reading,

Jodi Rudoren

Editor-in-chief

University of Southern California

(Louis Keene)

Andrew Turquie, a junior, was not involved in Jewish life on campus before Oct. 7. But since the war began, he’s led his fraternity to raise $2,700 for Magen David Adom and helped organize events supporting Israelis held hostage in Gaza. One of those hostages is Daniel Perez, who Turquie met during his gap year in Israel.

“It’s shocking to see after all these years, when it’s the biggest massacre since the Holocaust, and the picture you see with that description is a friend you know,” Turquie said. “When this happened, I realized that there’s more to the Jewish story than just us — there’s a story of educating others about us.”

Brooklyn College

(Sam Lin-Sommer)

Alec Wolf grew up in the tidewater region of Virginia, where he was the only Jewish kid in school. He chose Brooklyn College, in part, to change that. This week, he brought Starbuck’s hot cocoa and black-and-white cookies to the police officers newly stationed outside the campus Hillel.

“I never felt like, when I was in Virginia, I was going to be attacked because I was Jewish; I never felt like I needed to tuck my chai necklace,” Wolf said. “But now that I’m in New York City, I do tuck my chai necklace when I get on the subway or leave the Hillel building.”

University of Michigan

(Debrah Miszak)

The large rock near Michigan’s campus is something of a barometer of what’s going on — the social-justice slogan of the moment, the upcoming big football game. On Wednesday, the word “Yisrael” in “Am Yisrael Chai” had been crossed out in red pain, as had a yellow Star of David.

“Even though some people are pretending that the war is over, for many of us it’s still at the forefront of our experience at school,” said Sari Rosenberg, Michigan’s Hillel . “It’s difficult to continue on with normal life, such as going to parties or bars and hanging out with friends, when there's work to be done for the war.”

Questions/feedback:[email protected]

Edited by Talya Zax. Graphics by Matthew Litman.

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