Rutgers University tried something different for its new-student orientation this year: It staged its own protest.
Incoming freshmen at the New Jersey public university were presented with a skit in which two opposing student groups faced off over a made-up dispute. According to the student newspaper The Daily Targum, students were asked to choose between two actions: “escalating with chants” or “setting up a negotiation table.”
The hypothetical dispute was about funding for student groups, but the skit arrived after a school year punctuated by protests about the Israel-Hamas war. A Rutgers spokesperson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency the skit was one of “various exercises and discussions that introduce incoming students to unfamiliar situations they may encounter on campus, such as protests and demonstrations.”
But if it aimed to show students that they could make their voices heard without disrupting others, a very different lesson soon took place, when the simulated protest was interrupted by a real one.
A pro-Palestinian activist group unaffiliated with the university stormed the stage and shut down the skit to advocate for the school to divest from Israel. Video from the group’s Instagram account shows them interrupting the sketch, which was being held in a common area, and unfolding a banner reading “Rutgers Can’t Stop Student Power” in front of a few dozen spectators.
“As if there can be a ‘compromise’ over something like an ongoing genocide,” the protest group, Build Up Resistance Now, wrote on Instagram.
The protesters exited after a few minutes when they were asked to leave, a Rutgers spokesperson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. In an apology email to students, Rutgers said, “We are sorry your orientation was disrupted with anti-Semitic rhetoric, which is abhorrent and has no place on our campus."
Protesters still declared victory, claiming that Rutgers stopped running the skit after they targeted it.
It was the exact kind of situation campus administrators were hoping to stave off. The incident illustrated how colleges, caught flat-footed by a groundswell of protests last year that frequently created a hostile climate for Jewish students, are trying to get ahead of the problem this fall. Meanwhile, various Jewish groups, including those with a focus on college students, are announcing initiatives of their own after venting their frustrations with what they say is inadequate action by the colleges.
Facing lawsuits, Congressional hearings, donor pressure, Title VI complaints and the occasional high-profile resignation of a campus president, many schools are still improvising what exactly protecting Jewish students will look like this year. Universities have issued revised policies around the acceptable time, place and manner of student protests.
Some, such as Indiana University and the University of Denver, have banned all tents, late-night rallies and writing on campus walls. George Washington University preemptively suspended student groups, including the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace, before classes began. Others, such as the small liberal arts school Ohio Wesleyan University, are trying the approach that gained renown for Dartmouth College last year by launching new civic dialogue initiatives.
Yet the campus protest movement, like the Israel-Hamas war itself, is still casting a long shadow. New-student orientations at other schools this summer, including the University of New Mexico and the University of Michigan, have also been disrupted by anti-Israel activists. Young Democratic Socialists of America, which has chapters on more than 100 campuses, is encouraging a “national student strike for Palestine.”
And this week the American Association of University Professors, a major national faculty organization, changed its longstanding policy discouraging boycotts to say they can now be “legitimate tactical responses” — clearing the way for faculty to argue in favor of boycotting Israeli universities, a longtime rallying cry of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Pro-Palestinian faculty encouraged or even participated in many of the most disruptive student protests last year.
'Jewish students deserve better'
All this is worrying Jewish leaders, who are warning they will continue taking action if universities don’t get their act together.
“Jewish students deserve better,” Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote in a letter to the Wall Street Journal Wednesday. “We will be watching as the academic year gets under way. If other university leaders fail to live up to their responsibility, they too must face consequences.”
Other Jewish groups are taking more aggressive action for students, without waiting for the schools to improve their policies. The Community Security Service, saying it had heard from Jewish students who “fear for their life,” recently announced new self-defense training for students.
Hillel International and the Secure Community Network, which organizes security for Jewish spaces, are partnering on “Operation SecureOurCampuses,” their own training initiative for Jewish students and staff. The new venture includes what the groups describe as “full-time intelligence analysts to monitor campus security incidents and provide real-time support.” Some individual Hillels are also taking their own steps: Penn State University’s is reinstating a full-time Israel educator to its staff.
Legal action has compelled at least some schools to crack down on protests. The University of California system announced this week it would be “reinforcing” prohibitions on camping and mask-wearing, days after a federal judge ordered the system’s UCLA campus to do a better job of stopping protesters from blocking Jewish students’ access to campus. A Jewish student had sued the school over the encampment behavior last semester, which had led to violent clashes on campus between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian factions.