Note of the editors: This contribution of the political scientist from dr. Eliyahu Sapir (Maastricht University) is the private view of the author and do not reflect the views, policies, or positions of Maastricht University, its staff members, or its students. We are very grateful to dr. Sapir for answering our questions on the background and the contents of his recent presentation in the United States!
You recently participated in an international conference. Could you describe the event and your contribution?
I recently took part in an international conference titled "Campus Culture and the Jews: Before and After October 7," organized by the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University under the leadership of Professor Alvin Rosenfeld.
My presentation, "Between Protest and Intimidation: The Normalization of Antisemitism in Dutch Higher Education," examined how antisemitism in the Netherlands has shifted from overt hostility to something far more embedded in the daily functioning of universities.
My central argument was that we are no longer dealing primarily with open hatred. Instead, we are facing a quieter but more pervasive process: the way antisemitic language, forms of exclusion, and intimidation have become part of the ordinary routines of academic life, often unintentionally, and sometimes even under the mask of academic freedom or inclusion.
What empirical work is your analysis based on?
The analysis is grounded in systematic empirical work. Over the past two years, my colleague, Dr. Amanda Kluveld and I, supported by a team of students and researchers, as well as the Onderwijs Community Nederland (OCNL), have been examining the lived experiences of Jewish and Israeli students and staff across Dutch higher education.
Part of this analysis draws on the 165 open-ended testimonies we collected for our 2024 report Unsafe Spaces: The Rise of Anti-Semitism in the Dutch Academic World.
We are currently working with teams of student-writers at various Dutch higher education institutions to produce a separate, forthcoming book, The October 7 Effect. In this book, we document, university by university, the events following October 7, 2023, their impact on academic life, and the institutional responses. Our findings show how antisemitism circulates today not as isolated incidents but as an atmosphere shaping daily academic life.
What is your main argument about the rise of antisemitism in Dutch higher education?In my presentation, I argued that the rise in antisemitism across Dutch higher education should be understood as more than a temporary spike or a statistical anomaly; it represents a process of normalizing antisemitism. Normalization can be understood as the social, institutional, and affective processes through which antisemitic discourse and behavior cease to provoke outrage, lose their moral visibility, and become integrated into the ordinary functioning of public life.
Where do you see this normalization most clearly?
One of the clearest places where normalization occurs is in the shifting language of campus discourse. Overtly antisemitic expressions have become rare, yet certain forms of hostility now surface through academic or moral framing. A notable pattern is the use of the word "Zionist" as a proxy for "Jew," regardless of a student’s actual political views. Zionism itself is a mainstream political position held by people from diverse backgrounds, but the term is increasingly weaponized much as "Jew" has historically been used as a slur.
Slogans such as "Zionists not welcome," or comparisons of Zionism to Nazism, which also trivialize and minimize the Holocaust, something virtually unheard of in academic settings until recently, have appeared on several campuses and are defended as legitimate political speech even when clearly aimed at Jewish identity rather than ideas. This rhetorical shift blurs the boundary between criticism of policy and hostility toward a group, enabling prejudiced speech to be presented as principled dissent.
In some contexts beyond the Netherlands, the boundary is eroding in even more alarming ways. At a recent university event in the UK, for example, a speaker presented to students the medieval blood libel, claiming that Jews use the blood of non-Jews for ritual bread. We have not seen rhetoric of this explicitness in the Netherlands yet, but I am no longer certain that such language would be considered categorically unacceptable in the current academic climate.
How do institutional attitudes contribute to normalization?
A second dimension lies in institutional responses. When antisemitic incidents occur, administrative communications typically resort to very neutral language: statements about "polarization," "dialogue," or "safety for all." While intended to calm tensions, this vocabulary has the effect of erasing what actually happened.
Jewish and Israeli students repeatedly told us that when they reported threats or targeted slogans, the university’s response was so general and symmetrical that the specific nature of the harm disappeared.
What role does the emotional climate on campus play?
A third dynamic is the emotional climate on campuses. Many Jewish and Israeli students and staff described a profound sense of emotional invisibility. Their grief after October 7, their fear during certain protests, and their discomfort in the classroom often went unacknowledged.
This is not because people are indifferent, but because empathy has become redistributed along political lines. On several campuses, students told us that expressing sorrow for Israeli victims was viewed as a political act, while solidarity with Palestinians was understood as a moral obligation.
One student said she didn’t sense extreme hostility from fellow students, but felt they didn’t think her feelings counted. This emotional asymmetry reinforces a sense of marginalization even in institutions that pride themselves on inclusion.
Are academic frameworks also influencing this process?
Yes. Popular theoretical approaches, such as decolonial theory or some strands of critical race studies, are sometimes applied mechanically to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In these contexts, Jewish identity is flattened into a position of power or privilege, while the long history of Jewish vulnerability, migration, and minority experience is ignored.
We received reports on classroom situations in which Jewish and Israeli students felt that the theoretical lens predetermined the conclusion, leaving no space for their lived experience.
This intellectual flattening also manifests at the institutional level, where so-called "ethical committees" and advisory bodies have considered or recommended boycotting Israeli academic institutions based on these same theoretical assumptions. What is presented as a principled stance on human-rights concerns often relies on a selective or willfully simplified and, in some cases, distorted reading of the law and the data, effectively framing all academic ties with Israel as morally compromised.
Notably, this scrutiny is applied exclusively to Israel, despite evidence that Dutch universities collaborate with countries where human rights violations are well-documented, such as China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and many more.
For many Jewish and Israeli students and staff, this transforms their professional identity into a political liability. The result is a subtle but powerful form of epistemic exclusion, where Jewish perspectives are treated as politically suspect or insufficiently "critical," and where even collaboration with Israeli scholars is framed as ethically dubious.
How do these patterns come together?
Together, these patterns form what we can call a 'moral ecology'.
Antisemitism becomes normalized not through dramatic incidents but through everyday habits, linguistic conventions, administrative procedures, emotional hierarchies, and intellectual frameworks. The result is a campus environment where Jewish identity is increasingly framed as politically problematic, and where institutional responses unintentionally reinforce that framing by translating concrete antisemitic incidents into vague appeals to balance and dialogue.
Does this dynamic extend beyond academia?
Yes. A recent example from cultural life is the Concertgebouw Hanukkah concert controversy. Under political pressure, the institution sought to distance itself from a Jewish cultural event, officially for procedural reasons, but in reality reflecting discomfort with Jewish visibility in public space.
What was presented as a neutral scheduling decision was widely experienced as another instance in which Jewish cultural expression was treated as politically sensitive or risky. This illustrates that the same logic we observe in universities, the instinct to manage Jewish presence rather than embrace it, now shapes decisions across different sectors of Dutch society.
How should academic life also become at least bearable for Jewish/Israeli staff and students?
My conclusion was that addressing these developments requires moral clarity and institutional honesty. We need to name antisemitism directly rather than dissolve it into euphemisms, recognize the uneven emotional landscapes our institutions create, and reflect critically on the academic languages and bureaucratic habits that contribute to the marginalization of minority groups.
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