OXFORD, U.K. – With students now back on campuses across the U.S., the fierce debates – and disruptive protests – over the Israel-Hamas war that sparked so much controversy last semester appear to be returning, fueling a renewed discussion of how college administrators, faculty and Jewish students should combat the documented rise in antisemitism.

From new university policies to refrain from taking official positions on such polarizing issues or commemorating contentious events, including Hamas’ massacre of Israelis on Oct. 7, to political threats over accreditation for academic institutions if antisemitism is not addressed and even dismissals for presidents, faculty and students, the tide does seem to be turning when it comes to confronting anti-Jewish hatred – and unfair treatment of Israel and Israelis – on college campuses.

Yet for Charles Asher Small, founder and executive director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism (ISGAP), who has been researching and writing about antisemitism in the academic world and beyond for more than two decades, these steps are “a drop in the bucket.”

“I’m afraid we’re at a tipping point,” he told eJP in a recent interview. “Faculty and students are being intimidated at universities around the world, particularly in the United States, and the demonization of Israel in academia has gotten to the point where this stuff is coming out of the university classrooms into these encampments and from there onto the subways, the streets and the airports, and even in front of the homes of Jewish leaders and journalists.”

But Small, who over this summer convened ISGAP’s 10th annual summer institute in Oxford, England, to explore the root causes of today’s antisemitism, remains hopeful. 

“The good thing is that in every crisis, there is also tremendous opportunity,” he told eJP, describing how in the face of adversity, young Jewish life is being rejuvenated, with “more going more to synagogue, putting mezuzahs on their doors and they want to be proud and more engaged than ever.”

Working with some of the world’s leading universities, including Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge, Small also believes that the taboo and silence around the normalization of antisemitism in academia is beginning to break and that raucous events post-Oct. 7 on college campuses provide a unique opportunity to confront and re-educate when it comes to discrimination against Jews.

With funding from several U.S. and Canadian family foundations, ISGAP, which has also worked with the Israeli government on some projects, brought together around 100 academics from across the world in its recent conference to discuss ways to tackle discrimination and hatred against Jews – especially when it crosses into ambiguous zone of anti-Zionism – and provide them with a forum to learn together how to better teach others about the implications of discrimination against the Jewish people.

“Our goal is to educate professors and help them to create courses,” Small explained, noting that more than 600 academics from 35 countries have already gone through a similar training program over the past decade.

Participants received lectures from the likes of former Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky, Israel’s Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism Michal Cotler-Wunsh and David Harris, former head of the American Jewish Committee. Also presenting at the conference was Daniella Kahane, the Peabody Award-winning filmmaker whose 2004 documentary “Columbia Unbecoming,” captured the roots of that campus’ antisemitism and who told attendees she is currently working on a follow-up film looking at the events of the past 11 months.

“Scholars come from different disciplines, and we provide them with materials on antisemitism from an interdisciplinary perspective and help them to create courses based on their own expertise with our materials,” Small said. 

At the conference, Small told eJP that Oct. 7 was “a shock for Jewish organizations, as well as the [U.S.] government and the universities,” because “they didn’t have best practices or the right policies in place and they were really caught off guard.”

Calling it a “strategic catastrophe” for American Jews, he noted that when a similar wave of antisemitism began sweeping over Europe in recent years and Jews there were “marginalized, maligned and attacked, the American Jewish community said, ‘You know, we’re different, Europe is deeply antisemitic but it’s not the same here.’”

“They saw it only as a problem of the Middle East and believed that if there was a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict then the antisemitism that goes with it would subside,” said Small, adding, “so, when it started happening in Canada and the U.S., the American Jewish community wasn’t prepared.”

Less than two weeks into the new college semester and already some Jewish students have reported a return of the unruly and threatening protests they experienced over the past 11 months. Haaretz reported last week that Jewish students moving into their dorms on the Columbia University campus already faced harassment, and despite a report by the university’s antisemitism task force highlighting hundreds of antisemitic incidents on the campus, new protest guidelines issued by the university were criticized as vague and inadequate.

While Small does not believe the processes, which he sees as a convergence of extreme Islam and the ultra-liberal West that has been growing stronger over the past few decades, can now be reversed, he does note that the Jews have some supporters out there and emphasized that through education there is a chance to embolden the Jewish community.

“I do think we have friends in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, as well as in the West,” he said, noting that some of the participants in the summer institute came from Morocco, Bahrain and even China, and adding that “if the Jewish people stay strong then we will be OK and people respect us.”

“It is when we’re weak and we’re ashamed and we don’t speak out proudly about who we are… if we don’t respect ourselves, then nobody else will respect us,” Small said. “I think there’s a consciousness reemerging in the Jewish people, we’re connecting to our wisdom and to our identity, and that’s a beautiful thing.”