The Jewish Agency for Israel has expanded its campus emissary program for the coming year by 20% in the United States, up to 90 representatives at American universities, in response to growing antisemitism on college campuses, the organization said.

The expansion was made possible by a number of donations “large and small” from a variety of sources — all from the United States — including “federations, foundations and individual donors,” Nati Szczupak, the director of the Jewish Agency’s Campus Israel Fellows program, told eJewishPhilanthropy.

Six of the 15 new Campus Israel Fellows were funded through a “very generous challenge grant” that the Jewish Agency was able to match “in a matter of weeks,” Szczupak said.

Over the past two years, the program has grown by 50% as the Jewish Agency and its funders have seen the importance of maintaining a presence on college campuses to support Jewish students, even more so after the Oct. 7 terror attacks in southern Israel and the accompanying rise in antisemitism across the globe.

“The Jewish Agency will not stand idly by as Jewish students in North America and worldwide continue to shoulder much of the load when it comes to the wave of antisemitism associated with the Israel-Hamas war,” Mark Wilf, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency said in a statement. “By dramatically expanding the presence of the Israel Fellows, we are bolstering one of Jewish students’ first lines of defense against hate and allowing them to feel safer expressing their identity, while also enabling campus communities to discover an accurate picture of Israel.”

The Campus Israel Fellows program is run in partnership with Hillel. After training at the Jewish Agency’s Adelson Shlichut Institute, the fellows spend one to two years on the campus, leading programs related to Israel and Jewish identity. 

“Meaningful connections between world Jewry and Israelis are a key component to fostering and cultivating Jewish identity,” Szczupak said in a statement. “Since Oct. 7, the urgency to connect and support one another has intensified, especially on college campuses.”

In total, the Jewish Agency now has 106 Israel Fellows worldwide. Representatives will now be present at all eight Ivy League universities. (Brown University and Dartmouth College received their first fellows this year; Harvard got its first fellow last year.)

Other campuses that are receiving Jewish Agency shlichim (emissaries) for the first time include: New York University, American University, University of Colorado at Boulder, Florida State University and Arizona State University. 

“The Jewish Agency prioritizes the placement of Israel Fellows on campuses where they are needed the most, as the Fellows now serve at the top 19 public institutions as well as 16 of the top 20 private schools that Jewish students choose to attend,” the organization said.