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Colleges and universities have hosted and encouraged a surge of radical and pervasive antisemitism in recent years and must make reforms to correct the discrimination on their campuses, according to a House Committee on Education and Workforce report.
The committee’s “How Campuses Became Hotbeds: The Rise of Radical Antisemitism on College Campuses” report, released March 17, came after numerous hearings with university leadership in 2025.
“This is not the end, but a continuation of the work our Committee has done to take on the scourge of antisemitism,” Chairman Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican, told The College Fix.
“The expectation remains unchanged—college and university leaders need to do more, and this report makes clear that too many institutions are falling short in protecting their Jewish students.”
The committee’s scope was to examine antisemitic violence on campuses following Hamas’ attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and evaluate whether universities are fulfilling their obligations to prevent antisemitic harassment under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Denise Katz-Prober, director of legal initiatives at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, told The College Fix the committee “has done important and valuable work that complements efforts of the executive branch and in the courts to address the historic eruption of anti-Semitism in higher education.”
The 59-page report’s first key finding is that “decisive, strong leadership by university presidents is critical for preventing and correcting a hostile antisemitic environment.” The absence of “such leadership allowed antisemitism to proliferate unchecked,” it stated.
Katz-Prober told The Fix in an email interview that strong leadership is vital to addressing antisemitism on campuses. Such leaders would “forcefully and publicly identify and condemn all forms of anti-Semitism; and use their own voice to assert institutional values and reject anti-Semitic rhetoric.”
A second key finding in the report is that “faculty members have played a significant role in legitimizing and amplifying antisemitism,” including cases where faculty ignored protections of Jewish students, participated in antisemitic protests, and advanced antisemitic class content.
Faculty from Sarah Lawrence College, Haverford College, University of California at Berkeley, Georgetown, Harvard, and MIT are among those flagged in the report.
Many faculty members involved in antisemitism are associated with Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, whose goal is to “purge all ties to and support for Israel from academia,” it stated.
Based on a 2024 study cited in the report, “campuses with an FSJP group are roughly seven times more likely to experience physical violence against Jews.”
A third key finding in the report is that student groups “have consistently acted as ringleaders for the antisemitic harassment” and universities have “failed to meaningfully discipline students for this violence and even acceded to their antisemitic demands.”
Students for Justice in Palestine is the most prominent of these groups, with the report noting the group has been involved in numerous protests that have taken over campus buildings, turned violent, and refused to follow peaceful protest guidelines.
The report’s fourth key finding flagged Northwestern and Georgetown’s satellite campuses in Qatar as “failing in critical ways to fulfill their stated goal of promoting Western values and liberal education abroad.”
Both satellite campuses, NU-Q and GU-Q, are contractually required to abide by Qatar’s laws, the report states, adding the campuses have also “faced requests from the Qatar Foundation (QF) on messaging.”
For example, “Northwestern’s Evanston campus faced backlash from its Qatar campus about the U.S. campus’s statements on the conflict,” it stated.
The report also highlights cases of faculty and student groups at the Qatar campuses perpetuating antisemitism, such as when NU-Q’s Liberal Arts Program Director, Sami Hermez, retweeted a post in 2025 claiming, “Zionist Jews are disgusting liars.”
Financial incentives associated with foreign campuses, including management fees and access to grants from the Qatar government, are also a concern, according to the findings.
Katz-Prober told The Fix that “weak anti-discrimination policies that do not address anti-Zionism and contemporary forms of anti-Semitism” and “failure to enforce university rules and conduct codes equitably and without double standards” are also factors contributing to campus antisemitism.
The committee provides a series of recommendations to universities to combat antisemitism, including examining the online presence of faculty applicants, reforming protest policies, enforcing school policies in response to antisemitic speech, and implementing stronger oversight of foreign campuses.
The report also called for Congress to pass the Civil Rights Protection Act and DETERRENT Act to increase transparency about universities’ “procedures for investigating complaints of alleged Title VI violations” and “gifts and contracts from foreign sources.”
“Antisemitism continues to spread like wildfire at schools across the nation,” said Chairman Walberg in a news release. “Over the past several years, we’ve seen university leaders surrender to the radical demands of terror-supporting mobs targeting Jewish students and faculty. This weakness has emboldened hatred and allowed campuses to devolve into hotbeds of radical antisemitism.”
Katz-Prober agreed.
“The report is an important reminder to universities that they cannot close their eyes to the myriad root causes of anti-Semitism on their campuses and must take decisive action and use a comprehensive approach to fix those issues,” Katz-Prober told The Fix.
“It should be a wake-up call to faculty members and student groups that their efforts to normalize anti-Zionism as a justification for the targeting, marginalization and exclusion of Jews on campus will be addressed for what it is – unlawful discrimination and mistreatment in violation of civil rights law.”
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