Ben Shapiro, a senior at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said that the school is in many ways an “amazing place to be a Jewish student.”
As president of Illini Hillel, Shapiro organizes barbecues, semi-formal dances and weekly Shabbat dinners for a Jewish student population of about 3,000.
Yet this community also faces “a lot of challenges,” he said. When Shapiro was a freshman, a rock was thrown at a group of Jewish students gathering at Illini Hillel during a religious holiday, he said. Swastikas have been drawn on dorm room doors.
“There was one particularly disturbing incident where a Jewish student with a yarmulke was walking on the quad, and another student threw a bunch of pennies on the ground and said, ‘Would you pick that up?’” Shapiro said.
Shapiro said he’s now encouraged that the university on Tuesday agreed to comply with federal civil rights laws following a multiyear U.S. Department of Education investigation into allegations of antisemitism and anti-Muslim discrimination at the Big Ten university.
The federal agency’s Office for Civil Rights looked into 135 complaints of discrimination against Jewish students — as well as four alleging anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian or anti-Arab discrimination — from 2015 to 2023. Alleged antisemitic incidents during that time included accounts of swastikas drawn around campus, a brick shattering the window of a Jewish fraternity and mezuzahs — a religious symbol — ripped off of the doors of Jewish students, according to the Department of Education’s review.
According to investigators, evidence “does not reflect” that the U. of I. had fulfilled its legal obligation under Title VI to assess whether reported incidents of discrimination had created a hostile environment for students, faculty or staff on campus.
The university has now committed to overhaul its anti-discrimination policies, while also entering into a separate agreement with Jewish groups to combat antisemitism on campus.
“Before, we were our own educators and we were our own advocates, and with this agreement, hopefully (we) will no longer have to be that,” said Samantha Levy, vice president of Illini Hillel and a junior at U. of I. “I think it will make a big deal on campus, if people stick to it. And I truly hope that this university is committed to doing it, because, let me tell you, they can set a precedent for universities all across the country.”
The release of this agreement comes at a time when Jewish college students across the nation say they are facing increased harassment and tension on campus. Reports of antisemitic and Islamophobic discrimination have surged around the country since the war in Gaza began last year with the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.
The Anti-Defamation League tracked about 300 antisemitic incidents nationwide in the first two weeks following Oct. 7, a 388% rise over roughly the same period the previous year. An ADL report in late 2023 said that nearly three-quarters of Jewish college students reported experiencing or witnessing antisemitism since the start of that academic year.
Since Oct. 7, numerous groups of Jewish students have sued their universities and filed federal complaints alleging discrimination. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is currently investigating another Title VI complaint regarding antisemitism at Northwestern University, while an Israeli American student filed a federal lawsuit against the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits entities such as universities that receive federal funding from discriminating based on a set of protected characteristics, including national origin. Many forms of antisemitic and Islamophobic discrimination have been defined as unlawful under Title VI, as they are based on “shared ancestry.”
Unlike many of the other ongoing investigations involving U.S. universities, the federal complaints against U. of I. date back to 2020, when Jewish students on campus alleged that they already had seen an “alarming increase in antisemitism and anti-Zionism.”
“Obviously post-Oct. 7 there’s been a paradigm shift,” said Rabbi Dovid Tiechtel, executive director of Illini Chabad and co-chair of the Chancellor’s Advisory Council on Jewish and Campus Life. “There’ve been years that things have been better. Now there’s a national challenge with growing hate on college campuses and acceptance of it.”
‘A very difficult time to be a Jewish student on campus’
Erez Cohen, executive director of Illini Hillel, said that he has witnessed firsthand how antisemitic incidents have caused Jewish students at U. of I. to feel unsafe and unwelcome. Hillel staff at U. of I. have been the “first responders” to many of the incidents listed in the Office for Civil Rights’ report, Cohen said.
“The main impact on Jewish students when they experience antisemitic events or hear about antisemitic events (is that they) try to hide their Jewish identity from the rest of the public,” Cohen said. “This is teaching students to basically try to hide their identity so that they don’t get targeted.”
Students have consciously stopped wearing jewelry displaying Jewish symbols such as the Star of David, as well as T-shirts from Jewish summer camps and youth groups, he said, “avoiding signaling their Jewish connection.”
U. of I. senior Jaden Pazol says it’s “a very difficult time to be a Jewish student on campus” because of a rise in antisemitism at his school.
Pazol, the student executive board president of Illini Chabad, said that prior to fall 2023, he had never experienced much fear on campus related to his Jewish identity. Now, he said, “a lot of things have shifted.”
About a month after Oct. 7, his Jewish fraternity displayed a banner outside their house that included their Greek letters and the phrase “stands with Israel.” The banner was ripped down that night, even though they hung it “pretty tight,” Pazol recalled.
“That was kind of alarming because it was at a Jewish fraternity. There’s 50 or so guys that live in the house,” Pazol said. “Right after that happened we took certain initiatives to make sure everyone was safe. So we installed security cameras and we had to put up some protection on the windows.”
Cohen said he hopes that the new agreements will prompt U. of I. to take more decisive action when incidents do occur in the future. When Jewish students reported antisemitic harassment to the university in the past, university officials would either drop their cases or tell them there was nothing they could do, he said.
The Office for Civil Rights report alleges that the university’s response to antisemitic, anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic harassment has “lacked coordination and inconsistently applied university policies and procedures.”
Four incidents mentioned in OCR’s investigation involve discrimination against Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students, with the perpetrators allegedly including UIC employees. According to OCR, one employee posted the message “I won’t tolerate Islam” on social media, while another allegedly struck a pro-Palestinian student protester multiple times.
Dua Aldasouqi, a 36-year-old Palestinian American living in the Champaign area and a member of the CU Muslim Action Committee, noted that discrimination and harassment of Muslim students across the country has also skyrocketed since the start of the war in Gaza.
She said one Muslim student at the university described the climate on the U. of I. campus as “tense” at the beginning of this academic year. Aldasouqi noted that many students have called on university leaders to issue a statement “recognizing the massive injustice and murder of Palestinians in Gaza.” The lack of such a declaration, she said, has shown that “the university has not been inclusive of all of its (students).”
Nationwide, the Council on American-Islamic Relations received more than 680 complaints of education discrimination in 2023 — about a 300% increase from the previous year.
The voluntary resolution that the U. of I. has now agreed to, resolving the Title VI complaints lodged with OCR, requires the university to review and revise its nondiscrimination and protest policies for all students. The school has also promised to provide training to university community members focused specifically on shared ancestry discrimination.
“The agreement reflects the university’s commitment to enhance our ongoing efforts to provide a safe and supportive educational environment,” wrote Robin Kaler, U. of I. associate chancellor, in an email to the Tribune. “We are proud to partner with OCR to implement measures that build on our ongoing work and take new steps to bring consistency and transparency in addressing discrimination and harassment based on national origin and shared ancestry.”
Tiechtel, who has spent more than two decades at U. of I., said that he thinks the university’s administration has shown a “deep commitment to make the campus a safe and good place,” particularly compared with other higher education institutions.
As a Jewish community leader on campus, he said that he encourages what he calls “pro-semitism,” actively building Jewish pride and urging students to wear a Star of David or affix a mezuzah to their doorpost to celebrate their faith. Chabad even hosted a tailgate with kosher food at a recent football game, which he said was attended by hundreds of students.
“Us as leaders, our response is to build a generation of ‘pro-semitism’ and … to keep the students strong and proud,” Tiechtel said.” At the same time, a big chunk of our time is working with the administration and police and working through issues every single day.”
Redefining antisemitism on the university campus
The same day the OCR report was published, U. of I. also separately agreed to a set of “Mutual Understandings” with the Jewish United Fund of Chicago, Hillel International and Illini Hillel.
This six-page document highlights the university’s commitments to creating a safe environment for Jewish students on their campus, clarifying policy changes and including definitions and examples of antisemitism. According to Kaler, the agreement was constructed through conversations with Jewish stakeholders and represents “shared values and expectations related to combatting issues of antisemitism on campus.”
The Mutual Understandings agreement specifically affirms that “prohibited harassment or discrimination based on real or perceived Zionist aspects of (students’) Jewish identity” falls under the purview of U. of I.’s nondiscrimination policy.
“For many Jewish students, Zionism is an integral part of their identity and their ethnic and ancestral heritage,” reads an excerpt from a 2020 U. of I. statement reiterated in the agreement. “These students have the right to openly express identification with Israel.”
The question of whether criticism of Israel and Zionism crosses the line into antisemitic harassment has been hotly debated on college campuses and within Jewish communities, particularly since the start of the war in Gaza.
A number of the allegations of antisemitism outlined in OCR’s report involve political speech against Israel, the Israeli people and Zionist ideology. These include a presentation by a student employee titled “Palestinian Resistance to 70 Years of Israeli Terror” and a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, by Students for Justice in Palestine claiming that Zionists “advocate for white supremacy.”
Many Jewish students at U. of I. and faculty interviewed after the agreement’s release said that the classification of anti-Zionist harassment as antisemitic is the most monumental change achieved.
“The most important part of the agreement, from my perspective, is recognizing that Zionism is an element of a protected class,” Shapiro said. “Specifically, Zionism is a part of being Jewish, and so an attack on the ideology of Zionism is akin to Jewish hatred in general.”
Brett Kaufman, an assistant professor of classics and Jewish studies at U. of I., said that “just like any other group, Jews should be able to define what hatred against them looks like,” adding that the university’s new definition “rights a wrong.”
Yet other Jewish students argue that conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism will threaten free discourse on campus regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict, as well as erase the identities of the significant numbers of anti-Zionist Jews.
A Department of Education spokesperson wrote in an email to the Tribune that “even when the nature of the speech warrants First Amendment protection, a school still has a legal obligation to ensure that the very same speech does not create or contribute to a hostile environment.”
Chelsea Birchmier, a graduate student in psychology who serves on the Chancellor’s Advisory Council on Jewish and Campus Life, is concerned U. of I.’s agreement with the Jewish groups will create “a chilling environment for free speech on campus.”
“I think the agreement reinforces the false equivalence that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism,” Birchmier said. “I have a lot of questions about this agreement as a Jewish person myself. Am I antisemitic because I speak out against the genocide in Gaza or attend a protest opposing the actions of Israel?”
U. of I. junior John Speaks said that he doesn’t personally think Zionism “is a core Jewish belief at all.” He said that he knows many other Jewish students at school who support Palestine’s right to exist, but the university’s new statement does not reflect this “nuance.”
“When I read (the agreements), I was imagining that it was really targeted at making pro-Palestine protest movements harder,” Speaks said. “I didn’t think it would really bring about positive change for the Jewish community. But I think really, it’ll just kind of give campus authorities another limiting tool for organizing.”
Birchmier added that she has seen a definite rise in antisemitism on campus as well as across the United States, but she doesn’t attribute this to students who support Palestinians or their demonstrations.
“I think it’s the result of a society where white nationalism and fascism are on the rise,” she said.
