The BDS Movement is Fueling Antisemitism in Higher Education

The BDS Movement is Fueling Antisemitism in Higher Education

The BDS movement has been an issue on college campuses for years, but after the October 7th attacks, the activists behind it saw an opening and exploited it.

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin writes at the Washington Times:

Academic BDS is fueling campus antisemitism

Antisemitism on U.S. college campuses has surged to crisis levels. Jewish students are being harassed, excluded and even physically assaulted for expressing support for the Jewish state. In response to this growing hostility, a bill introduced in Congress, the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act of 2025, represents a serious and timely step forward.

Unlike previous federal efforts that have focused on protecting students from overt acts of harassment, this bill targets a structural driver of today’s toxic campus climate: the academic boycott of Israel.

This boycott effort, commonly referred to as the academic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, or BDS, is promoted by faculty members, departments and academic associations seeking to isolate Israeli universities and scholars from academic life. Its most immediate impact is felt on U.S. campuses.

There is no way to implement an academic boycott of Israel without directly and substantively harming U.S. students and faculty by severing research collaborations, canceling programs and restricting academic freedom based on political identity. More than that, academic BDS has become a powerful engine of campus antisemitism, inciting hostility toward students and faculty who express any connection to Israel or Zionism.

The bill’s approach is to confront academic BDS through a financial lens, prohibiting universities from engaging in boycott activity with measurable commercial impact, such as terminating institutional agreements with Israeli institutions or refusing to participate in jointly funded academic programs. That’s a meaningful advance, and the bill brings much-needed attention to a problem that has long been ignored.

The bill frames the boycott as harmful primarily because it targets Israel, a strategic ally of the United States. What it fails to address is the central harm of academic BDS: the discriminatory and exclusionary impact it has on American students and faculty right here at home.

Academic BDS is led globally by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and its U.S. affiliate, the U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel. These groups call on faculty and academic institutions to cut off all ties with Israeli universities and, increasingly, with individuals who are Israeli or Zionist.

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