Universities buck trend as antisemitism rises away from campuses

Reported instances of antisemitism at UK universities have fallen for the second year in a row despite a rise in incidents in wider society.

In the first six months of 2026, 28 incidents in which either victims or offenders were studying or teaching at a university, or which involved student unions, societies or other campus-based groups, were reported to the Community Security Trust (CST) – a drop of approximately 20 per cent from 2025, when there were 35 cases.

The most recent figures suggests that antisemitic hate has diminished within the university sector, despite the CST findings showing an overall rise in reported incidents. The charity’s report identified 1,926 anti-Jewish hate incidents in the UK in the first six months of this year – the second highest total on record.

Dave Rich, director of policy for the charity, praised universities for helping to tackle the issue but also suggested that the fall was partly as a result of a dip in campus activism relating to the Israel-Gaza war. Universities across the UK saw pro-Palestinian encampments set up on campuses in 2024.

Rich told Times Higher Education (THE): “I think on most university campuses, things are a bit calmer – not everywhere, but most.

“There are fewer of the encampments which used to be flashpoints, fewer protests, which can be flashpoints.”

But Rich also believed fatigue could be playing a part in the findings: “We feel Jewish students are less likely to report antisemitic incidents nowadays than they were two or three years ago.

“I think there are a few reasons. I think for some they are a bit disenchanted – maybe they feel they’ve reported things before and nothing was done…perhaps some Jewish students are just becoming more hardened and more resilient to the antisemitism that’s happening.”

The CST report finds that the crisis in the Middle East has continued to influence anti-Jewish hate, with 41 per cent of all incidents referencing Israel, Palestine, Hamas or the conflict.

The war has influenced the kinds of reporting emerging from universities, Rich said, telling THE: “In general, over the last three years, with the big rise since the 7 October attack, one of the big things that’s different on campuses is the number of reports either from Jewish academic staff members, or they’re coming from Jewish students but the person they’re complaining about is someone who is on the academic staff.

“It’s no longer the case that the antisemitism [reported to the CST] is all student-on-student,” he said, adding that this contributed to a “power element” in which young people potentially feel targeted by their older educators.

But Rich said that antisemitism in general was compounded by the social media age, with its impact within university networks part of this problem.

He said some of the issues originated in social media groups loosely aimed at students from one university, but were public and open to other members of the public, over which institutions have no actual power.

Nonetheless, Rich was positive about the work he felt universities had done in the past few years to protect the right to protest while managing how protest interacts with those from Jewish backgrounds.

“A lot of universities have been through a bit of a learning process…there’s more people I suppose who see the problem and want to do something about it,” he said.

“In our experience institutions don’t always hold on to the institutional memory…which can be frustrating,” he added. “But we’ve seen already, in early 2024, you had the rise of all these encampments across universities…by the following academic year, that problem was vastly reduced. Most universities had got their ducks in a row in terms of their legal rights and what their responsibilities were…they definitely in that short space of time learnt from it and sought to improve the atmosphere.”

georgia.luckhurst@timeshighereducation.com