On June 30, Brandeis Center President Alyza D. Lewin testified before the New York City Council Committee on Higher Education. Lewin, along with many others, spoke before the council to demonstrate the prevalence of anti-Semitism on college campuses and the threat that it poses to Jewish students all over the country. In addition to Lewin, numerous students including Adela Cojab and Ofek Preis bravely gave their own accounts of anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist behavior that they had personally experienced on college campuses in the state of New York. . In her testimony, Lewin highlighted the fact that self-proclaimed ‘progressive’ spaces on campuses marginalize Jewish students. University administrators do not recognize the discrimination that is happening right under their noses: “The reason that anti-Semitism is increasing and not decreasing on these campuses is because university administrators are misdiagnosing the problem,” said Lewin. . Universities don’t recognize how Jewish Zionist students are being ostracized on campus. They mistakenly treat the marginalization of pro-Israel students as a speech issue. Time and time again, administrators choose to take a step back and do nothing when Jewish students are excluded, often claiming that the groups who are shunning the Jewish students are simply exercising their right to free speech, rather than acknowledging the harassment and discrimination that is taking place. . Lewin explained that Zionism is the glue that has held Jews together for millennia, even if not all Jews would describe themselves as Zionists: “Judaism is not only a religion,” she explained. “Jews also share a sense of Jewish peoplehood with a common ancestry and ethnicity.” Jews have been praying for the return to Jerusalem for centuries, and this shared sense of ethnic and ancestral identity, this “Zionism,” is as integral to the identity of many Jews as observing the Jewish Sabbath or keeping a kosher diet. . The majority of university administrators do not yet understand these facts about Jewish identity and anti-Semitism. Therefore, when Jewish students are forced to shed the Zionist component of their Jewish identity to participate on campus, administrators fail to take action to protect them. . For example, as SUNY New Paltz Israeli international student Ofek Preis described in her testimony before the NYCC hearing, she was excluded from an advocacy group that fights against sexual violence on campus because of her Israeli national origin and Jewish ethnic identities: “I am an Israeli student, a political science and sociology major, and a prominent member of advocacy and activist spaces on and off campus, and a survivor of sexual assault, who was denied the right to fight against rape culture as a result of anti-Zionism,” stated Preis. . After Preis reposted to her personal Instagram account an infographic expressing pride in the Jewish people’s ethnic and ancestral connection to Israel and refuting the claim that Israel is a colonial state, she was told that she was no longer welcome to participate in a student group dedicated to combatting sexual violence. Despite fighting against injustice her entire life, and being a sexual assault survivor herself, Preis was castigated as an enemy in the fight against oppression and cast out of the student group she had been part of. As a result of the harassment she faced, Preis spent the rest of her semester feeling isolated and fearful. . At the NYCC hearing, Preis echoed Lewin’s message that university administrators’ misdiagnosis of the problem was to blame: “This is the result of promoting dialogue instead of directly denouncing anti-Zionism. It is not a matter of difficult conversations, but an issue of hostility, isolation, and discrimination.” . Another student, NYU graduate Adela Cojab, described for the NYCC hearing how she took legal action against her former university for refusing to address incidents of campus anti-Semitism. Cojab filed a Title VI complaint against NYU for “failing to protect the Jewish community against discrimination and harassment.” Since 2004, OCR guidance has clarified that Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects members of faith based groups, including Jews, Sikhs and Muslims, from discrimination based on their ethnic or ancestral background. .. During her time at NYU, Cojab experienced anti-Semitism when she saw that Zionism was equated to Nazism and racism by a governance council of minority students. When Jewish students wished to publish a response simply explaining why this was so offensive, they were told not to by mentors because it would “only make the problem grow.” Within just three months the problem grew significantly worse: there were anti-Israel boycott resolutions raised in student government, movements to boycott NYU’s Tel Aviv campus, harassment of Jewish students, and Israeli flags burned. . This all led to Cojab leaving her position on student government because she was being bullied: “Had that happened to any other minority group, the university would have responded,” claimed Cojab. According to her, the university was aware of the flag-burning incident, yet later gave an award to the very group that burned the Israeli flag. . This all circles back to Lewin’s point that Jewish students are held to a severe double-standard on college campuses. When a Jew is forced to shed the Zionist component of their Jewish identity, Lewin says that “it is comparable to demanding that a Catholic disavow the Vatican or a Muslim shed their connection to Mecca.” . Lewin’s testimony, along with those of Preis and Cojab, emphasize the need to hold universities accountable. When Jewish students are marginalized on campus, action needs to be taken, or the problem will simply worsen, like we saw on NYU’s campus. The Brandeis Center works to do just that and is always willing to listen to students who feel that they have experienced anti-Semitism. . Universities need to acknowledge the struggles of their Jewish students. As Lewin stated: “No community other than the Jews is being charged such a high price for admission, and excluding an individual in this manner on the basis of their identity is discrimination and has to be recognized as such.”