This past spring, amidst the turmoil of pro-Hamas campus encampments and riots, the Freedom Center turned its attention to a glaring facet of the universities’ complicity in aiding and abetting anti-Semitism—the Jew hatred promoted by official university departments and the faculty who run them.
In a lengthy and meticulously documented report titled “The Top Ten Jew-Hating Academic Departments at American Universities,” the Freedom Center exposed the outrageous Jew hatred and pro-Hamas sentiments publicly expressed by university departments and the faculty who staff them. The report also called on university administrators at the schools highlighted in the report to immediately investigate whether the actions of these departments violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.
As the Freedom Center’s report reveals, millions of dollars in both public and private money is funneled into anti-Semitic academic departments and centers, housed at America’s most prestigious universities. These official organs of the university actively promote Jew hatred, glorify in Hamas’s violence against Israeli civilians, and spread genocidal lies about Israel being an “apartheid” and “settler-colonialist” state. These departments invite speakers and host conferences whose entire purpose is to cast aspersions on the Jews and their homeland of Israel.
The presidents of these same universities declare themselves horrified by growing anti-Semitism on campus. Meanwhile, academic departments under their charge fuel the atrocious Jew hatred that has overtaken both students and faculty on campus and turned the halls of academia into training grounds for the next generation of jihadists.
The incidents of Jew hatred perpetrated by official university departments are stunning in their flagrant disregard for both university policy and federal law. At UC-Santa Cruz, the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Department issued multiple statements on its official website condoning Hamas’ barbaric attack on Israeli civilians and asserting that October 7th needs to be “understood in the context of 75 years of settler colonial displacement, military occupation, and enclosure.” In blatant violation of university policy, the department participated in the Palestinian-led Global General Strike “to stand against Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza,” refusing to conduct classes or tend to university business on the designated day.
At the University of Pennsylvania, multiple departments came together to sponsor a Palestine Literature Festival on campus which featured numerous anti-Semitic speakers. During the event, Penn Professor Hoda Fahredin stated that “So many of us in this room have had to watch our elders die in refugee camps that aren’t fit for rodents, all so they [Jews] can have an extra country” and dismissed Jewish students’ concerns about anti-Semitism at Penn as “an old, well worn colonial script of the violent, dark, irrational and savage native.”
The University of Minnesota’s Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies released a “Faculty Statement on Palestine” in which they described the October 7th massacre as having been committed by “Hamas fighters” (not terrorists) who “brought down border fences.” The statement went on to demonize Israel and its defensive response to the worst attack in its history as “not self-defense but the continuation of a genocidal war against Gaza.”
Following up on the publication of this exposé, the Freedom Center conducted a social media campaign to target all ten of the “Jew-hating” academic departments highlighted in the report. Eye-catching graphics and posters exposing each university’s complicity in promoting Jew hatred were placed directly into the Facebook and Instagram feeds of individuals with a connection to each campus. Posters created for the campaign charged that these university departments were “Standing with Hamas” and “Complicit in Jew Hatred,” and called on the lead administrators of each university to launch an immediate investigation.
The Freedom Center’s report and subsequent social media campaign garnered press coverage in both local and nation media outlets including The Jewish Voice, the Boulder Jewish News, and a lengthy article in the Minnesota Daily, the student newspaper of the University of Minnesota.
Nearly 40,000 individuals—including many alumni and current students of the targeted schools—viewed the Freedom Center’s social media posts exposing the Jew-hating academic departments at their universities. The campaign sparked outrage among alumni of the institutions named in the Freedom Center’s report, as well as promises to forego future donations.
“Not a proud alumnus of this institution,” commented one Northwestern alum. “As a CU alum this angers me since tax dollars [are] supporting these Marxist, overpaid people who are ignorant at best,” declared an alumnus from CU-Boulder. “As a former graduate of this university, I am totally embarrassed by their actions,” stated an alumnus of the University of Maryland. “They can say goodbye to any contributions I may have contemplated sending them in the future. Good riddance!”