Minouche Shafik, president of Columbia University, said that four students have been suspended from the university for an event held in March at which the speakers praised Hamas and other terror groups. The suspension was f irst reported in the Columbia Spectator, the campus newspaper.

The student-led event, titled “Resistance 101,” drew harsh criticism for alleged antisemitism on campus. The suspensions marked a significant step in Columbia’s response to anti-Israel activities that have rocked the campus since Oct. 7, when Hamas staged an attack on Israel, murdering civilians and taking hundreds hostage, many of them still in captivity.

The president acknowledged in a statement that the “Resistance 101” event featured speakers who “support terrorism and promote violence” and that administrators had already twice prohibited the event. “I want to state for the record that this event is an abhorrent breach of our values,” she said, noting that other suspensions may be forthcoming.

Despite the ban on the event, students held the discussion in a campus residential facility.

In a subsequent event, on April 18, Columbia’s president was forced to call in the help of New York City police to quell another demonstration that, the president said “was in violation of university policies and trespassing.” The demonstrators had interfered with the operations of the university, refused to identify themselves, refused to disperse, and damaged campus property, according to a statement.

A rabbi linked to the Ivy League school has recommended that Jewish students return home as soon as possible and remain home amid the demonstrations. The atmosphere is so charged that school officials said students could begin attending classes online rather than in person.

• In a new ranking from the Anti-Defamation League, only two U.S. universities — Brandeis and Elon — have earned a top grade of “A” for being “Jew-friendly.” With the sole exception of Dartmouth, all Ivy League schools earned al “D” or a failing “F” grade.

• Ten Jewish students have filed a lawsuit against Cooper Union for allegedly failing to protect them and their classmates from antisemitism. The complaint stems from an Oct. 25 incident in which the students were locked in the campus library as pro-Palestinian protesters marched nearby.

• Several university leaders — including at Pomona, Columbia and Vanderbilt — began cracking down in recent weeks on anti-Israel disruptions on campus.

• A former student at Cornell University pleaded guilty to posting threatening statements against Jews on campus shortly after the start of the war in the Middle East this fall. He faces up to five years in Federal prison.

• Demonstrations and arrests spread across some of America’s most influential universities, as administrators have struggled to defuse tensions on campuses over pro-Palestinian protests. Nearly 50 people were arrested at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., on April 22, following the arrests the previous week of more than 100 protesters at Columbia University. The arrests unleashed a wave of activism across other campuses, including M.I.T., the University of Michigan, Stanford University, and others, as protesters sought their universities’ divestment from companies with ties to Israel and a cease-fire in Gaza. Pictured, a pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia.                      Getty Images

More than 250 Holocaust survivors have joined an international initiative to share their stories of loss and survival with students around the world. With antisemitism on the rise following the devastating Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the New York-based Claims Conference, which has organized the Speakers’ Bureau, hopes that firsthand accounts of the cruelties endured during the Holocaust will help counter disinformation and denial.                                                                                                                      AP Photo

Rabbi Levi Raskin, director of the JCrafts Center for Jewish Life and Tradition, playfully adds flat discs of dough to  the oven to cook into matzah, as prepared by first graders from Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School of the  Nation’s Capital, during a “Model Matzah Factory” field trip to the center in Rockville, Md., on Thursday, April 18, 2024. To be kosher for the Passover holiday, the dough has to be prepared and cooked in 17 minutes and not allowed to rise.

(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The number of antisemitic incidents more than doubled in 2023, surging after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s annual audit, which pointed out that more than half of last year’s incidents took place in the last three months of the year.

The report, published in early April, tabulated 8,873 incidents in 2023, 5,204 of them occurring after Oct. 7. By contrast, the League tallied 3,697 in 2022. Incidents included assaults, vandalism, harassment, and painted swastikas. Ten percent of the incidents in 2022 happened on college campuses.

ADL researchers compiled the data using information from victims, law enforcement, the media and partner organizations.

The co-chair of a task force set up by Harvard University to combat antisemitism has resigned. It is the second high-profile resignation in the university’s efforts to address complaints by Jewish students  that they have felt uncomfortable on campus since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel. In that attack, scores of citizens were slaughtered and nearly 200 taken as hostages, some of them children and seniors.

The co-chair, Raffaella Sadun, a professor of business administration, did not give a reason for stepping down, but a colleague said she appeared to be frustrated at how long it was taking to make

Hillels of Westchester filed a Title VI complaint Tuesday against Sarah Lawrence College on behalf of Jewish students over “persistent and pervasive” antisemitism.