The Media Line: ‘My Professors Turned on Me’: Student Program in Israel Confronts Campus Fears 

‘My Professors Turned on Me’: Student Program in Israel Confronts Campus Fears 

Hasbara Fellowships trains Jewish and pro-Israel students to respond to campus antisemitism through Israel trips, survivor meetings, advocacy tools, and support for confronting hostile university climates 

By Felice Friedson/The Media Line 

“Zionism is a death cult” appeared on a sign, and “Glory for Gaza” was written in graffiti on the Rutgers University campus as a response to the war in the Gaza Strip, which began with a Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians. 

Lillian Russ, a recent graduate of Rutgers, said the graffiti was removed within days, only to be painted again and later partially reappear as the cleaning materials wore off. 

“Yes, there is security, but I don’t think there’s enough security,” she said, adding that she was worried particularly about Hillel and Chabad and felt nervous about wearing a chai necklace because of campus harassment. 

Even Jewish faculty members were being targeted. “There has been a professor who got doxxed, and he had to flee the country, even though that’s in regards to academic freedom,” Russ said, adding, “For a Jewish student, it doesn’t feel like there’s enough, and I don’t know if there will ever be enough. But it’s just important that every day I keep going outside and saying to myself, okay, I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine.” 

Russ turned to federal civil rights law after months of graffiti, disruptive protests, and what she described as a climate of fear for Jewish students on campus. She worked with Hillel and filed a Title VI complaint against the university after seeing repeated incidents, including a “fake encampment” used as a daily protest site, and demonstrators storming academic buildings and a dining hall. “Enough was enough, and I felt very unsafe,” she said, recalling how close a BDS resolution came to passing. 

With assistance from a Hillel rabbi, Russ connected with attorneys at Arnold & Porter and began collecting student testimonies and evidence. “Something needs to be done,” she said she told them. “It’s not acceptable having to live in fear and having to walk around and see graffiti everywhere.” 

Her courage to stand up against antisemitism on campus paid off: “The reaction, I feel the university has taken a step forward in addressing things.” 

Russ said recent leadership changes have helped move the institution in what they see as a more constructive direction. “Our former president resigned, and we have a new one, President Tate, and I feel that he has addressed things in a very appropriate way.” 

Federal involvement was an important factor in shaping the university’s response. “The resolution from the government, the Office of Civil Rights, they clearly stated that there’s a poll outline that needed to be followed,” she said, adding that she is “very happy that this outline has been implemented.” 

“No Zionists allowed” was written on a sign at UC Santa Barbara and was reposted on a university account. The sign was removed, and the administration attempted to repair the situation, at least from a public relations perspective. A statement declared neither antisemitism nor Islamophobia would be tolerated on campus. 

Alan Levine, who heads the campus advocacy group Hasbara Fellowships, criticized the response as minimizing antisemitism and diluting the message. He told The Media Line that the administration “had to condemn Islamophobia in the same sentence. Not on the same page, same sentence. … They “couldn’t possibly say, ‘We condemn antisemitism,’ period. It had to be, ‘We condemn all forms of antisemitism and Islamophobia and all forms of hate.’” 

The criticism was simply about parsing words in an official statement; Levine recalled that the sharp criticism directed at those who responded “All Lives Matter” to the slogan “Black Lives Matter” was that they were minimizing the topic of race. And yet, generalizing in the face of antisemitism and deflection seems to be accepted policy in some administrations. 

As antisemitic incidents have reached epidemic proportions on campuses, Levine notes that many administrations have “not demonstrated any ability or desire to really help their students and clamp down on antisemitism.” Meanwhile, students report harassment, intimidation, belittling, and even death threats. One solution is to empower students to advocate for Israel and to address the problem of antisemitism on their campuses. That is where Levine’s Hasbara Fellowships plays a crucial role. 

Hasbara Fellowships is a North America–based nonprofit that trains university students in Israel-focused advocacy. Operating on more than 95 campuses, it runs summer and winter study trips to Israel that include briefings, site visits, and workshops on history, media literacy, and public engagement. 

Participants receive follow-up support, materials, and guidance after returning to their campuses. The program’s stated aim is to equip students with the knowledge and communication skills to assume leadership roles and engage in pro-Israel advocacy throughout the academic year. 

The Media Line spoke with several Hasbara fellows about the challenges they faced on campus and prior to participating in the Hasbara Fellowship. 

A freshman at Brandeis University says she expected to find a refuge from antisemitism on a campus founded with deep Jewish roots, but instead encountered hostility, intimidation, and what she describes as academic bias. 

Ella Friedman, who is half-Israeli, says, “I’ve faced a lot of antisemitism, like the majority of the people on this trip. I faced death threats, lost friends, even had my own professors, who I thought I could trust, turn on me.” 

A communications and Near Eastern and Judaic studies major from the Boston area, Friedman said she came to Brandeis hoping to “breathe and feel free of this and just study,” after experiencing harassment in high school, but she said the situation on campus has also been troubling. 

“I wasn’t expecting to have this much at Brandeis,” she said. She described a student group calling itself the “Jewish Bund,” a name she associated with Nazism, that she said stages disruptive protests in libraries and once displayed a casket wrapped in a keffiyeh. 

Friedman also reported feeling pressure in the classroom. She alleged that some professors, including Jewish and Israeli faculty, embed anti-Israel views into coursework. One Israeli professor, she said, “would get upset or take points out of your grade if you did not agree with his political ideas of Israel.” As a result, she said, students feel “scared to speak up and say something because you know that your professor will take points off your grade.” 

Gabriela Rubin, 21, from Bergen County, New Jersey, said conditions at Rutgers University in New Brunswick have improved somewhat but remain troubling. “No matter where we are, we just feel like we’re in constant danger on campus,” she said, describing protesters as “very violent” and “aggressive.” 

Sara Weinstein, a senior at the University of Maryland studying international relations and global terrorism, said serving in student government has placed her at the center of repeated anti-Israel initiatives that she believes have reshaped the campus climate for Jewish students. 

Several Jewish student representatives, she noted, stepped away from student government because the environment felt too hostile. Weinstein observes divisions within the Jewish student body. “There’s pro-Palestinian Jews, there’s indifferent Jews, and then there’s the advocates for Israel,” she said, arguing many students lack a deeper understanding of why Israel matters beyond religious connection. As a result, she said, many retreat into Hillel rather than confronting what she calls misinformation. 

On some campuses, antisemitism may seem more muted, but the silence can be deafening. 

Tehila Bendaat, a 19-year-old sophomore at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, said there are no large protests and relatively little overt antisemitism. Instead, she sees what she views as a different problem: silence. “I think silence is worse,” she said. “Jews being silent, people being silent.” She noted that an October 7 memorial on campus drew only one student. 

While she describes the general atmosphere as positive, Bendaat said students often feel uncomfortable discussing Israel—even within Hillel. “I have a friend who feels uncomfortable talking about the fact that she’s Israeli at our Hillel,” she said, adding, “If we’re going to keep on being silent, then something God forbid can happen.” 

Michael Eglash, co-founder of Israelambassadors.com and a longtime campus activist, said the surge of antisemitism after October 7 pushed student advocacy into what he called “an unbearable situation” across North American universities, but also galvanized pro-Israel students to respond more forcefully. 

“I’ve always been involved in Israel activism,” Eglash said, recalling his own days as a student activist in Milwaukee, a city he associates with Golda Meir through family connections. After October 7, long-standing campus hostility toward Jewish students intensified everywhere. “Even if there aren’t Jews on campus, you’re going to find antisemitism,” he said. “On October 7th, everything was elevated and amplified.” 

He described the post-attack encampments as the most troubling development. Students who denied the events of October 7, set up protest camps, creating a climate that was “very intimidating” for Jewish and pro-Israel students. Still, he said, “the pro-Israel students did fight back, and now we’re at an advantage on many of those campuses.” 

Eglash said the Hasbara Fellowship, in partnership with his organization, equips student leaders with “the tools, the techniques, the knowledge, and the content” to return to campus prepared. During a 10-day program in Israel, students visit sites such as Kibbutz Be’eri and the Nova festival grounds, meet survivors, hear from soldiers, and travel north to understand the security threats from Lebanon and the Golan Heights. “They can tell what they’ve seen,” he said, rather than rely on secondhand narratives. 

The challenge, he noted, is countering what he called misinformation. “A refuted lie is a difficult thing,” he said, describing how students struggle to answer claims they see as distorted or false. 

Over decades of work, Eglash said he remains in contact with alumni who now serve as community and business leaders. “That seed was planted within them,” he said. “It’s never going to get out of their system.” 

He also advises students facing campus dilemmas, from swastikas on dorm doors to BDS votes and professors making anti-Israel claims in class. Strategies range from filing complaints to mobilizing alumni and community pressure. 

Levine said his group focuses on bringing student leaders to Israel to counter what he called widespread misinformation online. “We have 80 students here now meeting with October 7th survivors, meeting with hostage families, released hostages,” he said. “We live in a world of lies. … You just step on the ground here, and it empowers you so much.” 

For example, Levine cited the 2021 campaign surrounding Sheikh Jarrah. Social media portrayed the neighborhood as “an occupied Palestinian village,” amplified by celebrities and activists. But when students visited, the reality was different. “You get off the bus, and in one second you realize, wait a second … there’s an ancient Jewish holy site here,” he said, referring to the tomb of Shimon HaTzaddik, where Jews have prayed for centuries. “It’s five minutes from the Old City of Jerusalem. It is Jerusalem, it is Israel, it is Jewish.” While Arab families live there, he argued, describing the area as a Palestinian village from which residents were being expelled “is a lie.” 

Levine said the program, which has brought more than 3,000 students from the US and Canada since 2001, trains leaders to counter BDS efforts, build alliances, and respond to campus hostility. 

“The core issue really goes beyond campus,” Levine said. “There’s a propaganda war against Israel. … I think it’s time for really all Western societies to wake up.” 

After attending the fellowship, Bendaat reported that she recently helped start a Students Supporting Israel chapter and, as the incoming vice president of social action at Hillel, plans to apply what she learned on the trip. 

Friedman said that participating in a Hasbara Fellowship trip to Israel helped her develop knowledge and communication skills to address what she observes on campus. Visiting locations discussed in class, she said, allowed her to “see for myself” what she had previously learned through opinion-driven lectures. “I definitely think skill-wise, it taught me how to be a better advocate, better with social media, better with talking communication.” 

Simone Schwartz, a 20-year-old student at Washington and Lee University, said the trip helped her understand places often portrayed differently in the media. “I came here to learn the truth about the land of Israel,” she said. Meeting families in Judea and Samaria, visiting Hebron, and speaking with journalists, soldiers, and survivors from Kibbutz Be’eri, she said, provided a perspective she could not gain from afar. “These are just regular people trying to raise a family in their homeland.” 

The experience, she said, strengthened her resolve to be “an Israel advocate on campus and … in my life.”