For Jewish students at the University of Denver, the last five months have been, to put it mildly, tempestuous. The good news is that no violence has taken place, although some fear that possibility.
The bad news is that problems abound.
An anti-Israel rally in November attracted a crowd of participants and spectators who heard speakers accuse Israel of genocide and apartheid, shout out “from the river to the sea” and refer to the Gaza war without once mentioning Hamas or the massacre that perpetrated on Oct. 7.
The student newspaper has published op-ed articles with a strong anti-Israel bent without giving space to writers wanting to express alternate points of view.
Jewish students say they have heard anti-Israel — and, some say, some anti-Semitic — comments made on the private institution’s urban campus, both to their faces and behind their backs, and, on at least two occasions, by their professors in their classrooms.
At least one of DU’s estimated 500-600 Jewish students has decided to leave the school and has begun filling out transfer applications. Others have reached out to Jewish campus organizations to express emotions ranging from unease to fear regarding their personal safety as well as their right to express themselves Jewishly — from speaking or writing publicly to wearing yarmulkes or Stars of David, to participating in Jewish campus activities.
What one student calls the “massive problems at DU over the past couple months” have clearly created tension for Jewish students there, even as the university administration has acknowledged the problem and begun taking steps to alleviate it.
The Intermountain Jewish News has spoken recently with several figures who are close to the situation and concerned about it. Their perspectives are varied regarding the degree of the problem and the best ways to address it, but their comments highlight the complex and thorny questions which the Middle Eastern conflict has generated in the US, perhaps most dramatically in academia:
• Are universities prepared to deal with the potential threats, ranging from physical violence to vandalism to harassment, to Jewish students?
• How can a balance be reached between students’ rights to free speech and limitations on hate speech, or speech that might incentivize violence?
• How should professors and instructors present course material that deals with the current conflict in the Middle East, or the historical background of that conflict?
Like debates taking place in city councils and state legislatures, the collegiate disputes are hardly unique to DU. Similar arguments are taking place on other Colorado campuses, including at CU and Auraria, and on campuses large and small across the country.
All of them present daunting challenges, some reminiscent of the student unrest of the 1960s, some new and unprecedented. The Jewish community, both on and off campus, has no choice but to pay close attention.
A student’s take
Adam, an undergraduate Jewish student at DU, says that he has a pretty good idea what anti-Semitism looks and feels like. “I have been a victim of some pretty gruesome anti-Semitism throughout my life,” he told the IJN in a recent interview. “I grew up bouncing around schools in the Deep South, the Bible Belt. I’ve been chanted at in Latin, I’ve been splashed with holy water. Everything you could think of I’ve probably dealt with at one point or another.”
Now, the out-of-state student says he’s witnessing similar dynamics at DU.
Adam is not his real name. He is uncomfortable using his real name, he says, because of the possibility of hostile reactions by fellow students and, perhaps, even the university itself.
While Adam acknowledges that his earlier experiences might make him a bit over-wary about anti-Semitism, and while he says he has not been personally threatened or harassed at DU, he cannot dismiss the possibility.
He describes a process of “slow, quiet radicalization” on campus that predates Oct. 7, which he first became aware of in February of last year, when mezuzzahs on Jewish students’ dormitory doors were removed and vandalized, and pork was left at another student’s door.
After Oct. 7, Adam says, “things got blatantly worse,” with students in class making offhand remarks about smashing windows at the campus Hillel facility with no response from their instructor and other students “glaring with hostility” at his Star of David necklace, which he insisted on wearing as a statement of solidarity with Israel.
The hostility grew more focused, he says, after a student walk-out and pro-Palestinian rally on Nov. 9 in which activists and some local state legislators participated.
Participants in the rally chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and one speaker described Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7 as “this heroic Palestinian resistance,” with no mention of Israeli or Jewish civilian casualties.
A Jewish professor at DU, who wishes to remain anonymous, told the IJN that he was unsatisfied with the university’s response to the rally and worried about the safety of Jewish students on campus.
“I had a student in my office earlier today who was telling me about what is, to me, verbal anti-Semitism that he has been subjected to,” the professor said. “I suspect that where there is verbal anti-Semitism or vandalism, physical violence will follow.”
Adam is also unsatisfied with the administration’s response to Jewish students’ concerns, including his. He complained when the DU Clarion, the official student newspaper, ran an anti-Israel letter to the editor but refused to publish a letter he wrote in response.
He says he has yet to receive a response to his complaint.
“They [the newspaper staff] definitely knows how I feel at this point. I’ve raised some pretty serious hell about it. I mean, they know it, the administration knows it, and nothing’s happening.”
Although a cursory review of the Clarion’s coverage of the Gaza war showed a professional level of fairness and balance in much of its news coverage, a number of op-ed pieces did take strong anti-Israel stances.
At least one Jewish professional close to the issue agrees that the newspaper seems to have a strong anti-Israel editorial bias.
Comments in news and op-ed articles in the newspaper, Adam says, as well as statements made during the November rally, went well beyond political disagreements into the realm of what he considers anti-Semitism.
“I consider the claim of Israeli colonialism, which obviously isn’t true, to be anti-Semitic,” he says, “just like I would consider a claim that a Native American wasn’t native to America to be racist.
“I consider anti-Zionism to be anti-Semitic because Zionism is just the belief that Jews have a right to self-determination in their indigenous homeland.
“There’s also misinformation that isn’t necessarily anti-Semitic by nature but can be considered anti-Semitic because it’s misinformation directed at Jews, like the claims of apartheid and genocide, which are not factually correct.”
His unpublished letter to the Clarion, Adam says, “explained what was wrong, why it was wrong, why it’s anti-Semitic and that they need to chill because this has become a pattern.”
Adam says the only response he has received to any of his multiple protests came from the president of DU’s Undergraduate Student Government, M.J. Hyde, who issued a statement in October that he and other Jewish students considered highly biased against Israel and Adam himself saw as borderline anti-Semitism.
“There was a lot of backlash from the Jewish community, as expected, and I will say to her credit that the did actually agree to meet with members of the Jewish community. Toward the end of the quarter she met with a few people and we had a very long meeting about what was wrong and why.”
Adam’s opinion is that the student body president listened to what the Jewish students had to say and took their concerns seriously. She acknowledged that her statement contained factual errors and she apologized for them.
“Her issue is definitely not that she’s anti-Semitic. It’s just that she has no idea what she’s talking about, which I don’t think excuses it, but of all of the massive, massive problems at DU over the past couple of months, she’s the only one who has made any attempts to do anything about it.”
While things at DU seem to be “calming down in terms of things actually happening,” Adam says, he doesn’t believe that anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic sentiments on campus are going away.
“More and more people are just going to Instagram and believing whatever they see there. There’s no telling what people are starting to think. Within a week of Hamas’ attack, I had lost friends because they were posting stuff in support of Hamas. Whether they know what they’re saying or not, they’re still supporting an organization whose stated purpose is to make sure I’m dead.”
Adam has repeatedly detailed his concerns in emails to various administration officials and to Jewish student organizations, he says, and the responses have not satisfied him. One school official, he says, apparently bothered by his repeated messages, threatened disciplinary action against him.
“I’ve literally just been copying and pasting the same set of questions, over and over again. They kept finding some way to ignore it, whether through directly ignoring it and not even responding, or just responding with something, like, ‘Thank you for your questions.’ There really are no systems of accountability at the university,”
He insists that other Jewish students on campus share his fears and concerns.
“Several friends expressed to me that they feel they can’t even talk about Israel for fear of being harassed and labeled some sort of participant in genocide or whatever it may be.
“Some of my friends are Israeli and they feel they can’t even discuss the fact that their friends or family are either dead or almost died.
“I guess exclusion is the word. We all have a kind of ‘us against the world’ kind of thing.”
Adam has decided that it’s time for him to leave DU and to finish his undergraduate studies at another university.
His reasons have everything to do with the climate on campus. “I feel that I am treated with less dignity and respect than I should be, because I’m a Jew,” he says. “I feel that my life here, my education, has been impeded for no other reason than the fact that I am a Jew.
“I’m not going to stop showing my Star of David and I know several people who are not going to do that.
We’re all going to display our Stars of David proudly, but we see the way that people glare at them, and we hear the things that people say about our friends and family in Israel.
“I am concerned about the way this has progressed from whispers to vandalism to mezuzzahs to full scale protests praising a genocidal terrorist organization.
“I’m really scared, not just for myself, but for the community. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I just know that something is going to happen next.
The Hillel take
Daniel Bennett, executive director of Hillel of Colorado, which oversees Hillel chapters at DU and CSU, agrees with Adam on a number of issues; on others, not so much.
“One student’s experience,” says Bennett, “isn’t that of most of our 400 or so active DU Hillel students.”
While he agrees with Adam that op-eds that have appeared in the DU Clarion have been “very one-sided” and even anti-Semitic, he doesn’t feel that Jewish students on the campus are in imminent physical danger.
“I would never tell anyone not to feel what they feel, but there is no reason for them to feel physically unsafe right now. I want to be careful here: That doesn’t mean something horrible couldn’t happen tomorrow. One of our staff got a death threat, and that will make you feel afraid, right? But it was from somebody unbalanced and we filed a police report. But you asked if there’s any justification for being afraid. If I get a death threat, I’ll feel afraid.
“But has anything that supports that fear come to fruition? No. Has anybody been harmed physically? No. Have there been confrontations at the University of Denver that have been physical? No.”
Which is not to say that hostility against Israel, and against some Jewish students, isn’t part of the picture, he adds.
“Has there been emotional intimidation? A couple of cases, yeah. There have been a couple of shouting matches.”
There is no denying, Bennett says, that there is some anti-Israel — and perhaps anti-Semitic — activism on the campus. “As there is at all universities, and it isn’t going away. We have a long battle ahead of us.
“It’s very easy to blame the university, but it’s not honest to do that in a vacuum.”
There have been at least two instances at DU in which professors have expressed incorrect facts or biased opinions on the Gaza war in the classroom and these were reported by students to Hillel, which helped students file Title VI complaints in these instances.
“We must be vigilant here, Academic freedom isn’t unlimited.”
He describes Hillel’s overall approach at DU as a combination of monitoring the potential for threats or discrimination against Jewish students, keeping an open line of communication with the school administration, organizing educational activities dealing with issues related to the Gaza war and counselling Jewish students on the best ways to react to the situation.
Bennett says it’s up to the Jewish students themselves whether or not to display or openly discuss their Jewishness, but he does advise students, however, to avoid confrontation.
“When there are protests against Israel or in favor of Hamas, in favor of terrorism, I am not of the belief that we should confront these people. We’re not going to change minds and people could get hurt if we confront them.”
His own advice: “Go have a vigil on another part of the campus, do a teach-in, an educational program, invite people over to talk. We’ll talk to anyone who’s interested in talking; we won’t talk to anyone whose mind is closed.”
Hillel has run programs on campus to discuss what terms like occupation, genocide, terrorism and apartheid mean; what “from the river to the sea” implies; the sexual violence that Hamas committed against Israeli women.
It has also protested anti-Israel campus programs that are based on misinformation. Hillel recently protested one such program, organized by a student group, that was based on the idea that Israel’s policy in Gaza amounted to “colonial genocide.” With the cooperation of the university itself, Bennett says, the program was canceled.
“There’s a lot of real anti-Semitism and then there’s a lot of what [US Anti-Semitism Envoy] Deborah Lipstadt calls covert ignorance,” he says. “A lot of people don’t know what they’re talking about.” Especially in a collegiate environment, he says, fair and honest dialogue is in itself a valuable educational goal.
Bennett is hopeful that the university seems to be taking the concerns of its Jewish students seriously. He has been dialoguing with administrators since last fall, and began that dialogue by stressing several points, including the physical safety of Jewish students, which he feels the school is handling well.
DU hired a private consulting firm to “take a deep dive into whatever anti-Semitic feelings and actions are happening at the university,” he says.
“They’ve done work at other universities and you don’t bring them in unless you really want to know what’s going on. I expect they’ll find the truth and make good remedies.”
“I feel like this is a great step,” he says. “I actually expect good results.”
The Chabad take
Along-time Jewish presence on the DU campus, Chabad has prioritized the spiritual and emotional needs of the Jewish students during the challenging aftermath of Oct. 7.
Rabbi Yossi Serebryanski, who runs Chabad of South Denver and considers the campus part of his bailiwick, shared in a recent IJN interview that while he is not in a position to analyze the DU administration’s response, or non-response, to events after Oct. 7, there are individuals in the school administration who have gone to considerable lengths to be of help to Jewish students on campus.
Shortly after Oct. 7, Serebryanski his wife hosted a Shabbat dinner with a therapist who talked to the attending students and helped them with the stress and anxiety they were feeling.
On the night before the November rally and walk-out, the head of campus security and safety, Mike Bunker, and the DU Provost, Mary Clark, sat with a dozen or so Jewish students at Serebryanski’s home.
Clark, the rabbi noted, is a frequent guest for Shabbat dinners at the Chabad house. Her late husband was Jewish and the son of a Holocaust survivor, “and the angst that the students were feeling was something that resonated deeply within her,” Serebryanski says.
Of both Bunker and Clark he says: “We’ve never had somebody in a position of influence and power who is so concerned with the security and safety of our community.”
Bunker offered the students assurances for their physical safety, while also explaining that “we have to allow other students to express themselves” freely on campus. He made sure they were escorted back to their dorms after the Shabbat dinner and even provided each of them with his cellphone number.
On the day of the rally, Serebryanski and his wife Chanie brought matzah balls to the campus, away from the demonstration. At least 15 students showed up, after being notified via social media. The rabbi was amazed that they were not “Chabad or Hillel regulars, just regular students feeling anxiety and who needed to come together as a community. It was a fun event.”
That illustrates the rabbi’s, and Chabad’s, approach to the DU campus unrest.
“Our job is not to fight anti-Semitism but to live joyful Judaism,” he says, illustrating his point with a chasidic story of a bricklayer and a firefighter visiting a village — one who builds houses and the other who tries to save them when they’re in peril.
“We’re the bricklayers,” Serebryanski says, “and the Johnny Appleseeds.”
The rabbi adds that his wife has been the mainstay of Chabad’s response at DU.
“She has been the rabbi since Oct. 7. Most of the students who have come in have been suffering from different levels of stress and anxiety. They needed a Jewish mother, a Yiddishe mama. And she has been a champion of the next level.”
The students’ stress since Oct. 7 has been deep and complex, the rabbi says, describing the Jewish identity of many American youths as a tripartite mixture of “support Israel, never again, and social justice, or tikkun olam.
He explains their emotional trauma this way: “On one day, on Oct. 7, all three of the ways that they express their Judaism were attacked. Those at the rally not only denied the genocide against the Jews but called Israel the people who were committing genocide. On that one day, the three parts of their Jewish identity imploded.”
As to those who are leading the anti-Zionist, or anti-Semitic activism on campus, Serebryanski says that naivete and ignorance are major components for many of them. He notes that one of the most strident critics on campus had been the student body president, M.J. Hyde, who agreed to meet with a number of Jewish students after making an anti-Israel statement.
The rabbi believed her when she expressed shock that the students would consider some of her words as anti-Semitic. “She was so disturbed that the Jewish community on campus would believe that she was anti-Semitic. She was expressing intersectionality in a progressive space. I believe it was more a progressive orthodoxy that led her to her beliefs” than anti-Semitism.
In addition to progressive-inspired outrage and “intellectual laziness,” Serebryanski refers to what he calls progressive orthodoxy. As a self-described “ultra-Orthodox” Jew himself, he says he can understand the phenomenon of believing in something without questioning it.
Progressive activists, he continues, have their own set of unquestionable beliefs, relating to such issues as global warming, immigration and homelessness. When it comes to foreign policy, it comes down to “Free Tibet, free Darfur, free Palestine,” he says, “but they might not even be able to find those places on the map, nor tell you what leader, or form of leadership, they would want to have there.
“It’s part of their ultra-orthodoxy, which is not to say that they’re not passionate about it, but to say that intellectually they’re lacking.”
Reaching out to progressive students, and to non-Jewish students in general, is something the rabbi considers a responsibility.
One of his actions after Oct. 7 was to meet with the members of a campus fraternity, some 90% of whose members are non-Jewish. He asked them to text people they knew who were Jewish and simply ask them how they are holding up. The frat members thanked him for the suggestion and most of them did just what he requested.
“It opened their eyes,” he says. “I told them that if they want to be an ally, take the affirmative action to tell your Jewish friends that you see them and that you support them. And they got it. It made the point to them.”
Five months after October, things appear to be simmering down at DU, Serebryanski says, especially after the long seven-week winter holiday break.
“I’m not hearing the anxiety that I heard before,” he says, “and the university seems much more sensitive. Their antennae are up. I’m not concerned about the physical safety of anyone at this university, but the emotional safety is more complicated. That will take more time.”
The chancellor’s take
DU Chancellor Dr. Jeremy Haefner, and Provost Clark, responded to a set of questions posed by the IJN in a recent email exchange. When asked whether they were concerned with the level of anti-Israel or anti-Semitic activism on campus, they replied:
“The significant increase across the United States in both anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate is upsetting and should not be accepted.
“The University of Denver will never tolerate calls for genocide or acts of violence, anti-Semitism or Islamophobia. Our Policy on Discrimination and Harassment prohibits discrimination and harassment based on protected statuses including religion, race, ethnicity, shared ancestry and national origin, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. And our Student Honor Code prohibits additional forms of harassment, including bullying, intimidation, coercion and retaliation. These behaviors have no place at DU, and we have robust systems in place to investigate claims of such behavior.”
Haefner and Clark emphasized that it is a university priority “that all students are safe and do not experience hate,” and detailed educational presentations to “help the community better understand complex and contentious issues.”
On the subject of alleged editorial bias at the Clarion, the official response was: “The Clarion has served as a student run publication for over 100 years. For this reason, leadership at DU does not become involved in the publication’s editorial decisions.”
It added, however, that students who feel that the newspaper has discriminated against them may request an investigation at DU’s Equal Opportunity and Title IX office.
The administrators similarly adopted a hands off policy when it comes to professors or instructors who may express anti-Israel sentiment in their classrooms.
“Equally important to fostering an environment free from hate is our commitment to freedom of expression. Community members make their own determinations and can freely share them within the bounds of our policies on discrimination and harassment. We intentionally foster an environment of pluralism in this way because we know diversity of thought provides better learning outcomes for our students — and better outcomes for society. This is essential to the very soul of higher education.
“DU brings a variety of perspectives together to debate complex issues and model how it can be done in a civil manner. One example was our January event — “Israel/Hamas War: 100 Days Later” — and in November, with Colorado Governor Jared Polis and Utah Governor Spencer Cox in attendance. DU students modeled how to debate a controversial issue with civility that fosters understanding.”
Haefner and Clark also referenced Clark’s close ties to both Hillel and Chabad on campus, and security chief Bunker’s efforts to help Jewish students feel secure.
“All this to say that we absolutely have Jewish students who feel uneasy based on world events, and we collaborate with them daily to ensure DU is a home they can feel safe in.”
The administrators did not allude to the consulting firm to which Hillel director Bennett referred.
The ADL take
Mountain States regional director Scott Levin noted the “surge in anti-Semitic incidents on college and university campuses across the nation” since October, and noted that 73% of Jewish college students surveyed have experienced or witnessed some form of anti-Semitism since the beginning of the current school year.
“A plurality of Jewish college students reported that they do not feel physically safe on campuses after Oct. 7, and even fewer feel emotionally safe. The University of Denver is no exception, as there have been rallies, posters, chants, articles and statements that students have found hateful and anti-Semitic.”
Levin says that ADL has been in communication with and supported students and parents and has kept in touch with Hillel and Chabad leaders at DU.
“We have certainly assisted Jewish students who have felt intimidated on campus and have, hopefully, provided them with resources to advocate for themselves and/or to alleviate their concerns,” he told the IJN.
“Additionally, ADL has been in communication with campus administration to call on them to speak up forcefully in condemnation of anti-Semitism; enforce student and faculty disciplinary rules and non-discrimination and anti-harassment policies; [and] investigate anti-Israel and anti-Zionist student groups that glorify terrorism.”
Nationally, in partnership with Hillel International, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, and the Gibson Dunn & Crutcher law firm, the ADL has helped form the Campus Anti-Semitism Legal Line (CALL), which Levin describes as “a free legal protection helpline for students who have experienced anti-Semitism.”
While Levin says he cannot say “that what is happening at DU is worse than what we are seeing around the country,” he is encouraged by the level of cooperation from the administration and the work that Chabad and Hillel are doing there.
“There is always more that can be done on any campus. For instance, I would like to see the creation of a task force or advisory group focused on campus anti-Semitism. It should be composed of Jewish student leaders, faculty, staff and other concerned stakeholders, including but not limited to representatives from Hillel and Chabad.
“I would also like DU and all schools to update their security protocols and to enforce time, place and manner restrictions. Finally, I want to be sure that they are conducting trainings and incorporate anti-Semitism awareness in their diversity, equity, and inclusion programming.”
Levin acknowledges that colleges are places where differing views on many subjects should be aired, and that First Amendment rights, academic freedom and tenure “mean that students are often confronted by challenging and uncomfortable ideas.”
But, in a straightforward caveat, there must be reasonable limitations, Levin says.
“Students who increasingly feel unsafe and unsupported should not be subject to anti-Semitism and hate on campus.”
Chris Leppek may be reached at IJNEWS@aol.com.
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