Hostility to Jews on college campuses did not start with the October 7 massacres. It has not yet ended, despite the efforts by Donald Trump, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, and Harmeet Dhillon in the Department of Justice's civil-rights division. Jewish students and faculty members have returned to hostile environments on college campuses across the entire country.
How can they remain safe? The Lawfare Project, a think tank and litigation fund focusing on the defense of civil rights for Jews in America, has launched a new campaign at the existing platform* EndJewHatred.com. Their announcement declares this to be "the first and only grassroots civil rights movement created for and by the Jewish people." It aims to marginalize the antisemites and Islamist terror propagandists behind the violence and intimidation on college campuses, using both grassroots and legal strategies to force colleges and universities to meet their Title VI requirements to protect Jews and others on campus.
Lawfare Project senior counsel Gerard Filitti tells me that the problems faced by Jewish students and faculty predate the October 7 massacre, but the violence and intimidation campaigns certainly metastasized quickly after it. Filitti joined me yesterday to discuss the new project and its open-forum Zoom webinar tonight, which begins at 7 PM ET and is open to all.
In fact, Filitti encourages non-Jewish students and parents to join tonight's event. The hostile environments students face impact everyone. As Filitti and I mention toward the end our interview below, it always starts with Jews – but it never ends there.
Here are a few highlights from our interview, lightly edited from an automated transcript:
Q: Ever since the October 7 massacre, it's just been insane on college campuses. A lot of us have been very concerned for various reasons about this, but certainly over the safety and security of Jewish students and Jewish faculty members too, for that matter, on college campuses. There's been all sorts of threats and attacks that have taken place, some of them very well publicized, probably some of them not very well publicized.
I am assuming that part of what you're doing tonight is going to be covering what has already taken place as a way to introduce what needs to be done going forward.
A: It is. And one thing that needs to be pointed out is that even though the public became more aware of this after October 7, 2023, this climate has been hostile for Jewish students on campus and for others on campus, for that matter, for many years before that. I had a student at Columbia University, a Jewish student, Jonathan Carton; he filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights back in 2019. He was one of the first Jewish students to file a complaint under President Trump's executive order.
And he described to a T exactly what we've seen at Columbia: Jews being spit on on campus, Jews being targeted because they're wearing a yarmulke or a Star of David, a very hostile environment about Zionism. And for years, the government did nothing under the Biden administration. And what ends up happening is October 7th, and we're starting to see it, we can't escape. It. It's not something that can be buried under the rug.
...
Q: If I'm honest, I'm not Jewish but if I was Jewish and I had a son or a daughter that was considering going to Columbia or any school within the New York City ambit, I'd probably tell them to think really hard about that and look for some other place to go, maybe a southern school. Honestly, or and maybe ironically, if you have a sense of history, it's a lot safer and a lot more tolerant and welcoming [in the south].
A: It is. And you have a very good point about New York City being kind of the epicenter for this, because I think what we saw across the country is all these radical student groups were looking at what was happening in New York City. Columbia was kind of the epicenter. So when you had a school administration that did nothing, that did not enforce its rules, there were rules against all this conduct. It's a crime to occupy a building.
But when you have a school administration that backs down, that gives and that wants to negotiate with what is essentially terrorism. See other schools across the country following suit. So, this is why it spread so quickly. This is why it got to the point that UCLA was physically blocking Jewish students from going into the library, into classes. And what is that but discrimination? We saw that in the 1950s and 60s with black students as well.
I mean, that's the parallel. These people are not freeing Palestine, these people are basically discriminating against the minority group, and that's that's the terrorism there. And you're right, schools in the south have been much better because they have values that actually enforce the rules much more so than in liberal corridors.
...
Q: I really do want to talk about how we got where we are. And it's because political leadership in these areas, and I would include California in this, sympathize with the people who are perpetrating this and clearly do not sympathize with the Jewish students and faculty members who are being victimized by it.
A: You have to look no further than the DSA, whose platform includes abolishing the Senate, having a subservient president, having a subservient Supreme Court, basically having a Politburo for government. Who are they in bed with? They're in bed with radical Islamists. They're in bed with these people who are yelling, Free Palestine and globalize the intifada. This is what a globalized intifada looks like, violence on city streets, targeting not just Jews, but American values.
And so this is really the problem that we're starting to see now that was really kept hidden for so long. Because this was institutionalized. These are people who went into school boards, who went into town councils, who got elected into politics. Now we're seeing it because there are more of them. But this has been a plan, a gradual plan well thought out by these people to basically worm their way into our institutions, take them over, and change fundamentally the nature of our society.
Now, we see it more visibly with Jews because they're a visible group that's easy to recognize when they're being targeted. But these same people who are targeting Jews, they don't stop. At Jews. They want our values. They want to change our country completely.
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Filitti and I cover much more ground in the full interview, so be sure to watch it in full. Join the webinar tonight at 7 PM ET to hear from the organizers about the risks students face on college campuses, how Jewish students and faculty can push back against the intimidation and violence, and learn about all the resources available to them:
Join The Lawfare Project and #EndJewHatred for a timely Back to School 2026 conversation about the realities facing Jewish students on campus in the new academic year—and what we can do about them.
We’ll discuss the current campus climate, what students and parents should be prepared for, how to respond when Jew-hatred occurs, and the legal, grassroots, and advocacy work already underway to fight back.
Featuring Michelle Ahdoot, Yossi Hertz, Adar Rubin, Gerard Filitti, and Chloé Jo Davis, bringing perspectives from activism, mobilization, law, and community engagement.
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
7:00–8:00 PM ET | Live on ZoomWhether you’re a student, parent, educator, activist, or simply concerned about what is happening on American campuses, join us to get informed, know your rights, and learn how to take action.
Register for the webinar at this link, but even if you can't make it, be sure to remain vigilant. Their fight is our fight.
* - Originally, I wrote that the platform EndJewHatred.com had been launched for this project, but I am informed that the platform has existed for a few years. My apologies for the misunderstanding.
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