Too many times since Hamas’ invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Max Weiser saw signs of hate on the campus of CU Boulder.
His campus.
“It was really heavy last year when everything in Israel after Oct. 8 started happening,” says Weiser. “It was anti-Semitism behind a facade of ‘we’re just anti-Zionist.’
“Whether it was an anti-Israel rally, or people giving you the Hitler salute, everything with Israel has continued to get more and more serious.
“The campus has done a better job about keeping it a little under wraps, but for the last year-and-a-half, it’s been a lot of anti-Zionist expressions, like ‘We’re going to write terrible things about Jews on your campus’ and stuff like that.”
So angry was Weiser, 21, a political science major who will graduate next May, that he ran for an uncontested seat on CU’s student government as a representative-at-large in November, 2023. His platform was based on an effort to allow minority groups to have a larger voice at the Boulder campus.
“Oct. 7 was the main reason to me joining the student government,” Max said. “I just felt the need, especially after seeing an immediate reaction by school boards, that we wanted some sort of representation on our student government.”
Weiser’s term ended Dec. 12, 2024.
Max’s father, Steve Weiser, took interest in his son’s response to the anti-Semitic actions on campus.
“I think it’s good that he stepped up,” says father of his son. “It means that there’s a person with a strong Jewish upbringing and background, who can represent a significant portion of the student body.”
The climate on campus has certainly been a challenging backdrop in Max’s last year in college. He’s not sure exactly what is next for him after graduation (“I can’t give you an answer on that yet.”) though Weiser is certain it will involve some aspect of law. Both of his parents are lawyers. Steve Weiser is a tax and estate planning lawyer at Foster Graham Milstein & Calisher, and Lori Weiser is the executive director of the City of Denver Board of Ethics, and a former child advocate in Denver Juvenile Court.
“With both of my parents being lawyers, it was kind of an easier (career) pick, as I’ve been around lawyers my whole life and have heard more about what they do than any other profession,” Max says.
After graduating high school from DAT in 2021, Max spent a year studying Torah at Yeshiva Orayta in Jerusalem, before returning to Colorado to attend CU. Despite the series of anti-Semitic incidents at CU, Weiser supports the school’s administration in the wake of Oct. 7, 2023.
“I have never felt like I have been in serious danger,” Max says, “but I will say that friends of mine that have encountered the exact same situations have felt that they have been in danger.
“It’s obviously not a good thing when you’re on campus and you get hit with, or being saluted, or having people yell at you, but I don’t think it makes me feel like I’m in danger as much as it might to some people.”
Especially damaging to the climate at CU came from its Ethnic Studies Dept., which in late October, 2023, after the Hamas invasion of Israel, expressed support for Palestinians as the Israel-Hamas war escalated.
The statement referred to the conflict as “an unprecedented genocidal attack on the Palestinian people, an intentional collective punishment and forced displacement with unprecedented levels of air bombings on civilians.”
That statement was later retracted, with the department stating “We . . . are staunchly against antisemitism and Islamophobia,” but the firestorm over the original statement had a lasting impact.
“That was really bad,” says Steve Weiser. “I emailed the vice president of student affairs and really got no significant response. I know they made the ethnic studies department pull that statement down, but I thought that statement was really horrible and I was not pleased with how the university responded to it.
“My biggest concern with Max was only if, say, he were going to a counter protest, that he’d keep himself out of trouble, and he did.”
Regarding CU’s stance on allowing anti-Semitic acts on campus without endorsing them, Max said:
“I am so beyond pleasantly surprised with how this campus is. It hasn’t been perfect by any means, but I think it could have been so much worse.
“They took a stance of, ‘we don’t want to deal with either side,’ which, compared to what happened at Columbia or some colleges in California, that’s something we’d be grateful for.
“So I’d say I’m definitely, very positively surprised with how it’s been handled.”
© IJN 2025