University administrators often cite high academic achievement and active Jewish societies as evidence that Jewish students are thriving. On the surface, this may look positive. But in reality, this praise often hides something much more uncomfortable: Jewish students have become so self-sufficient that universities are using our resilience as an excuse for institutional neglect.
What administrators call resilience increasingly feels like forced adaptation to a hostile environment.
Of the 2.86 million higher education students in the UK, only around 9,000 are Jewish, representing just 0.3% of the total student body. We are a tiny minority, yet we are often treated as though we can manage our own safety, advocacy, education, and defence without proper institutional support. By treating Jewish students as a self-contained group who can simply handle it, universities risk masking a culture where hostility has become so normalised that Jewish students are expected to adapt to exclusion rather than see it challenged.
This normalisation is made painfully clear in the Union of Jewish Students’ landmark Time for Change report, which found that one in five UK students would actively refuse to house-share with a Jewish peer, while nearly half had witnessed the open glorification of proscribed terror groups on campus. These are not minor warning signs. They show that Jewish students are navigating a campus culture where antisemitism is not always treated with the seriousness it deserves.
This is not just a UK issue either. It reflects a wider structural shift across universities. As student leader Jacob Vetstein recently pointed out in relation to his own university in Massachusetts, Jewish student groups are increasingly being forced to act as unpaid replacements for university administrators. When his campus faced a hostile anti-Israel campaign, the university itself remained passive, leaving the local Hillel as one of the only organisations trying to educate students and respond to misconduct.
That should worry all of us.
When students have to spend their time pushing back against intimidation and misinformation because administrators and faculty refuse to properly intervene, the traditional student experience is effectively taken away from them. University should be about learning, friendships, societies, opportunities, and growth. It should not require young Jewish students to become crisis managers just to feel safe on campus.
The line is crossed when nineteen-year-old volunteers are expected to act as amateur security coordinators, legal documenters, welfare responders, and crisis managers for their peers. Student leadership is one thing. Being left to manage institutional failure is another.
Realising that Jewish students across the Atlantic are facing the same pattern shows that we are not simply dealing with isolated incidents. We are looking at a broader problem across higher education.
Words like “safety”, “harm” and “inclusion” are increasingly applied selectively. As the AMCHA Initiative has documented, administrative language intended to protect students is often withheld depending on the target. For Jewish students, this selectivity is exhausting. It creates the impression that our safety matters only when it is convenient, uncomplicated, or politically easy to acknowledge.
When anti-Israel campus activism crosses the line from political debate into direct intimidation, something the StandWithUs UK Voice of Students report 25/26 identifies as a growing concern, it is too often excused or ignored under the language of free expression. Of course, lawful political debate must be protected. Students should be able to discuss Israel, Palestine, Zionism, and conflict critically. But political debate is not the same as making Jewish students feel personally targeted, unsafe, or collectively responsible for the actions of a state.
For Jewish students, the impact is not abstract. It means keeping a lower profile. It means thinking carefully about which seminars feel safe to speak in. It means avoiding certain spaces during political flashpoints. It means relying on external security organisations just to hold a basic cultural or religious event.
That is not inclusion. That is survival.
This becomes even more concerning when hostility is not only coming from students but is also validated, tolerated, or openly led by staff. Professors and lecturers hold real authority over a student’s academic future, confidence, and sense of belonging. When people in those positions put their institutional weight behind campaigns that leave Jewish students feeling targeted or isolated, the power imbalance becomes impossible to ignore.
It places a tiny population of Jewish students not just against some of their peers, but against parts of the very academic establishment evaluating them.
This institutional failure inside the lecture theatre is happening alongside a worsening climate outside university gates. Independent security data has shown sustained spikes in antisemitic incidents, creating a threatening baseline in everyday life. Jewish students are not experiencing campus hostility in a vacuum. They are also carrying the weight of what is happening in wider society.
The most dangerous part is that it no longer feels extreme to many of us living through it. It simply starts to feel normal. When hostility becomes the baseline, the threshold for intervention keeps rising. Universities avoid the discomfort of enforcing their own policies. Students avoid the social cost of challenging antisemitism. And Jewish students are left to carry the burden of keeping campus life peaceful. That is neither fair nor sustainable.
Jewish students deserve more than praise for coping. We deserve universities that take responsibility before we are forced to become resilient.
This article was originally posted in the Times of Israel Blogs. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CAMERA.
