In response to anti-Israel protests, encampments, and security issues on campuses since the October 7 Massacre, the Hillel Foundation for Jewish Campus Life and North American Jewish safety NGO Secure Community Network (SCN) announced on Thursday a new security partnership at over 50 campuses as the fall semester commenced.
The new partnership, Operation Secure Our Campuses, will see full-time intelligence analysts monitor campus developments and provide information and real-time support. SCN will assess campus Jewish facilities, and the partners will offer consultations on physical security, emergency plans, and procedures.
SCN said in a press release that it was launching a new training initiative for Jewish students, faculty, and staff on specific campuses to help them develop situational awareness skills, instructions on how to address confrontations and life-threatening situations, how to report incidents, and how to contact law enforcement. The new program builds on previous cooperation, including SCN provision of guidance, resources, training, assessment, and event security planning.
At the basic level, SCN National Director and CEO Michael Masters told The Post, Jewish students should be free from the fear of being victimized, harassed, or needing to hide their identity whether they are going to a Hillel during the week for programming, Chabad on campus for Shabbat or an auditorium on campus for high holiday services.
SCN is working to balance the need for safety and security by retaining a welcoming and open environment in both Hillel facilities and shared-use religious and cultural facilities on campuses, Masters said.
"The last thing that we want is for campuses to be locked down," Masters said. "We want them to be open and safe for everybody, and not for Jewish students to feel that they can't go to school and can't go to classes because they are in fear for their own safety."
Clearer campus security policies
"Our expectation is that colleges and universities do 'better' in the coming weeks and throughout the fall than what we saw in the spring, but we are not waiting around necessarily for campus administrators to define what 'better' is on their own," Masters said. "We are setting the expectation of what we want to see and working directly with the student organizations, campus law enforcement, faculty, and staff as to what that means."
SCN is echoing Jewish student groups in calling for university administrators to articulate clearly what its policies and procedures are, Masters said.
SCN encourages public safety and law enforcement to work closely with all student groups.
Masters referenced Harvard's adoption of an updated set of policies on using campus spaces, prohibiting overnight camping, chalking on university property, and unapproved signage and displays, as Harvard Magazine reported earlier this month.
In July, The Harvard Crimson reported the new set of policies was pulled from existing policies on campus.
"They noted that this had always been the policy. They just hadn't informed anybody about it, hadn't enforced it," Masters said. "That's half the battle when people don't know what the policy is, and there's inconsistency in enforcement."
SCN and Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA) held a roundtable discussion ahead of the school year with representatives from major law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, to discuss the protection of Jewish students and staff, identify security failures at academic institutions over the year and to offer recommendations.
Masters said time and time again that law enforcement was most successful when engaging with student groups ahead of time.
"You never want to be trying to have a conversation amid a protest or civil unrest," Masters said, adding if law enforcement is evident from the get-go with student groups on the school's code of conduct and when it will step in. All parties involved have a baseline from which to operate.
On August 8, SCN released ten security recommendations developed from the roundtable, such as the acknowledgment that anti-Israel protests are likely to occur this semester and that Jewish students would be intimidated by inflammatory Pro-Hamas or anti-Zionist rhetoric.
SCN recommended plans to prohibit building occupations and encampments, to communicate and enforce such policies, to develop the ability to understand when protests move beyond First Amendment-protected activities and to have emergency protocols for violent incidents. This would require campuses to understand the capacity of their local security and how they can quickly communicate issues to local and state authorities.
Masters said SCN is listening and taking seriously what it's hearing from the "Pro-Hamas groups about their intentions."
Since October 7, SCN has trained 200 people and assisted in security plans for 10 Hillel events across the US.
“Creating vibrant Jewish life on campus depends on having safe environments for Jewish college students, which is why we are so proud to work alongside SCN in strengthening our security support for campus Hillels worldwide,” Hillel International CEO and president Adam Lehman said in a statement. “Together, we will continue to invest in expanded security resources that facilitate safe and secure opportunities for students to take advantage of the broad array of Jewish experiences and programs available through Hillel and its partners.”