Deborah Lipstadt, formerly the United States’ Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, was invited to teach at Columbia University for a semester. But, she felt compelled to turn down the offer due to the epidemic sweeping through many American universities—virulent campus antisemitism.
As special envoy, Lipstadt “watched the alarming unraveling of campuses that claimed to be dedicated to the pursuit of truth transform themselves into places where basic morality had been inverted,” she wrote in The Free Press in March 2025. “Following Hamas’s attack of October 7, 2023, things went from bad to worse.”
Lipstadt did not feel “safe or even able to teach without being harassed,” citing anti-Israel protesters’ 2024 takeover of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall and a similar action at Barnard College, Columbia’s sister school for women. “I do not flinch in the face of threats,” she stated. “But this is not a healthy or acceptable learning environment.”
Two months after Lipstadt’s remarks, a mob of masked anti-Israel protesters stormed Columbia’s Butler Library, defaced its property, and disrupted students studying for exams. Their takeover lasted five hours and resulted in the arrest of 81 people, primarily from Columbia and Barnard.
Like Columbia, many other schools in the Ivy League—the class of universities once emblematic of Western heritage and ideals—reek with antisemitism.
In April 2025, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke at Princeton University. Shortly after he began speaking, 20 anti-Israel protesters chanted, “Naftali Bennett, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.” Then they exited the building to join more than 200 other anti-Israel protesters.
Shortly after the walkout, the fire alarm in the building was set off. In an Instagram post, the Princeton Palestine Liberation Coalition, the campus chapter of the antisemitic group Students for Justice in Palestine, seemed to take credit for pulling the alarm, writing, “GENOCIDE ALARM ACTIVATED.”
Danielle Shapiro, a Princeton senior who attended Bennett’s speech, shared her experience:
As we filed out of the building, the protest had swelled to around 100 [participants], with most people wearing masks and many yelling at us: “You’re committing a holocaust!” and “You’re killing babies!” Multiple students, myself included, were told to “go back to Europe.” We also heard many shouts of “They’re all [expletive] inbred!” and “inbred swine!” At least two or three protesters used their hands to create the shape of the Hamas triangle. (36:22–24).
In April, an anti-Israel protester splattered red paint on the façade of Dartmouth Hall at Dartmouth College. Granted anonymity, the perpetrator claimed to commit the crime purposely on the day prospective students were visiting the campus.
“As Dartmouth welcomes the Class of 2029 to campus, university students in Gaza must put their education on pause for the second consecutive year due to Israel’s continued assault on the Gaza Strip,” the culprit said. “Let the blood that drips from Dartmouth Hall remind you of the price of silence.”
That same month, Jewish students at Yale University were blocked from walking across campus by anti-Israel protesters demonstrating against Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir’s presence. In a video, Jewish student Netanel Crispe is seen trying to get through the mass of keffiyeh-clad protesters who tell him he must go around their mob to cross the campus. According to a Fox News report, when the demonstrators saw Crispe, who was wearing a kippah, they formed a human chain, refusing to let him pass. Sahar Tartak, another Jewish student at Yale, told Fox that a protester referred to her, Crispe, and another Jewish friend as “scum” and other slurs.
“Anybody who stands up for a Jewish right to life, and that tends to be Jewish students, that puts a target on your back,” she said.
The Trump administration has withheld substantial federal funding from several Ivy League schools that have ignored antisemitism on their campuses and threatened to remove their tax-exempt status. Still, the fact that America’s most prestigious schools deal with antisemitism only when facing federal pressure demonstrates their moral vacuity.
Ty Perry is the Director of Field Ministries for The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, a Bible teacher, and the host of Gesher podcast.
Editor’s Note: ‘Irrational And Demonic’
Antisemitism expert Olivier Melnick has frequently underscored that the definition of antisemitism is incomplete without acknowledging the spiritual battle bubbling under the surface.
“The definition that I have arrived at, after more than two decades in that field, is as follows: ‘Antisemitism is the irrational and demonic hatred of Israel and the Jewish people, characterized by thoughts, words, and/or deeds against them,’” he noted. “It was satisfactory to me for quite a long time until a few years ago, when I decided to add two words that have become critical to that definition: irrational and demonic.”
“In all the volumes I own on that topic (more than 400), I have found almost no scholar or theologian mentioning a spiritual component to antisemitism,” Melnick underscored. “I have learned much over the years about the history, geography, sociology, and morphing of the oldest hatred, but I extremely rarely see the spiritual aspect of it all being addressed. Yet, we have to recognize that antisemitism is very irrational, and that is because it is from Satan himself.”
