Jewish students ‘alienated’ as antisemitic incidents at new high

Jewish students in the UK have been subjected to record levels of physical and verbal abuse amid conflict in the Middle East, including reports of inappropriate behaviour from university staff. 

According to a report by the Community Security Trust (CST) charity, over the past two academic years 325 university-related antisemitic incidents were reported across the UK – more than double the figure in CST’s previous report in 2022. 

“Most troublingly”, according to the report, 272 of these incidents – 84 per cent – took place in 2023-24 following Hamas’ 7 October attack and Israel’s subsequent retaliation in Gaza, with 85 taking place in October 2023 alone, accounting for 26 per cent of all attacks. 

October 2023 accounted for more than the two previous annual totals for university-related antisemitic incidents, totalling 52 in 2022-23, and 55 in 2021-22. Some 24 of the incidents involved university staff.

While the CST notes that it did not receive any reports of its highest category rating of extreme violence, 81 per cent of university-related incidents were categorised as abusive behaviour, totalling 264 incidents.

There were 10 instances of assault, with one occurring in the academic year 2022-23 in Leeds, and nine in 2023-24, two of which occurred in Cambridge and one each in Belfast, St Andrews, Exeter, Birmingham, Middlesex, Wandsworth and Hertfordshire.

The report describes how in one incident in November 2023, Jewish students at a university in Scotland “had eggs thrown at them” by a small group of unknown individuals while walking back from an event attended by the chief rabbi. 

“After this incident, a couple of the students remained at the place in which the incident occurred due to the shock, recomposing themselves, and the assailants ran away. However, they returned and threw more eggs towards the Jewish students,” it says.

In another incident, CST received a report that during a pub crawl organised by a university’s medical and law society, which involved activities where students would draw on each other’s t-shirts, “students wrote ‘I [heart] Hitler’, ‘Jew’ and drew a caricatured Jewish face on the back of a known Jewish student’s t-shirt”. 

Other incidents depicted instances of Nazi and anti-Jewish symbolism being graffitied across campuses and Jewish venues, and Jewish society WhatsApp groups being infiltrated by anti-Jewish participants who sent antisemitic messages to members.

Pro-Palestine encampments set up following Israel’s response to Hamas have mostly been “legitimate and not antisemitic”, and while CST received an “unprecedented number” of reports on such activities, “[many] did not meet CST’s criteria for recording as antisemitic due to a lack of clear evidence of anti-Jewish language, motivation or targeting”.

Campus resource: To combat antisemitism in HE, teach students about Jewish history

While these reports are not included in the statistics, “they are worth noting because they reflect the anxiety felt by many (although not all) Jewish students, academics, staff and the wider connected community…regarding what was perceived to be a hostile environment on campus”, the report says.

The report echoes previous findings that indicate an increasingly hostile environment for Jewish students, with the Israel-Hamas war dominating student politics in the past year.

Sami Berkoff, president of the Union of Jewish Students (UJS), said that the statistics “paint a stark picture of the challenges faced by Jewish students and staff on UK campuses”.

“It is essential to recognise that antisemitism does not exist in a vacuum. The legitimisation of extremist rhetoric on campuses, including support for terror groups, emboldens protesters and further alienates Jewish students. Universities must reaffirm their commitment to being inclusive spaces by taking strong and unequivocal stances against all forms of hate,” Ms Berkoff said. 

Lord Mann, the Westminster government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, said he would “continue to work alongside CST and UJS to ensure that Jewish students feel safe and able to live their lives at university, free from discrimination and hate”. 

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com