The Bridge of Sighs at Oxford University. Photo Credit: Michael D Beckwith/Flickr.

Universities continue to reject demands for divestment from Israel. In the latest case, Smith College trustees rejected a proposal to divest from weapons manufacturers.

At the same time, Qatari influence buying in American universities remains high, despite media reports that the Qatar Fund International is sunsetting. Recent lobbying disclosures show that the Fund gave $1.2 billion to American colleges and universities in 2025. Tens of millions of dollars have also been invested in American public school districts. These and other expenditures are part of an estimated $400 billion in Qatari investments in the US.

Reports also indicate that the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development will be investing in study abroad programs for three Historically Black Colleges and Universities — Hampton University in Virginia, Xavier University of Louisiana, and Prairie View A&M University in Texas. The grants represent an obvious effort to propagandize a new demographic.

The Federal government continues to take legal action against universities regarding antisemitism. The Justice Department expanded an earlier lawsuit against Harvard alleging violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The suit alleges the school was “tolerated antisemitic mobs of students, faculty, and visitors allegedly expressing their opposition to Israel by assaulting, harassing, and intimidating Jewish and Israeli students with perceived racial, ethnic, and national connections to Israel.”

Locally, universities continue efforts to downplay allegations of antisemitism and to manipulate internal processes in order to minimize publicity.

In one case a University of Toronto law professor resigned a fellowship at Massey College after the institution demanded an advisory committee vet participants for a planned conference on antisemitism. He stated there had been concerns from “undisclosed senior members of the College about whether the subject of antisemitism is being curated in an appropriate fashion, (and) about whether the salient issues are being framed in a politically and socially appropriate way.”

In another case MIT refused to provide a faculty member routine funding to promote a book critical of the institution’s response to campus antisemitism after October 7, 2023.

Faculty agitation against Israel and Jews continues to be strong despite the end of the semester. In Belgium, thousands of academics signed a petition calling for local institutions to end ties with Israeli universities.

In contrast, the Modern Language Association rejected an anti-Israel resolution, which received support from only 6.7% of the members. The organization’s Executive Committee rejected a similar resolution 2025 noting that the measure would contravene state anti-BDS laws and lead to significant loss of revenues.

Elsewhere, the University of Arkansas trustees upheld the dismissal of the director of the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies over social media postings. Among other things, Saeidi had praised Ayatollah Khameini as “the leader who kept Iran intact during the Israeli attack, May god protect you” and called Israel a “terrorist state” and a “genocidal state.”

With the semester over, the number of student disruptions has dropped accordingly. Commencements were disrupted by pro-Hamas protestors at Carleton University and at Stanford, where several hundred students walked out as Google CEO Sundar Pichai began his talk while chanting “free free Palestine.”

A position paper issued by the National Students for Justice in Palestine makes it clear that their political program is aimed at Israel but also the United States, “targeting universities as “as pillars of colonial domination and imperialist conquest. To not just achieve divestment, but to weaken US imperialism, we must unite with disenfranchised sectors of the university to develop the structures and capacity to weaken the power of the war profiteers as a whole.”

In strategic terms the paper argues for “confronting Zionism” materially and ideology, politicizing Arab, Muslim and Palestinian students, and  “working in joint struggle with decolonial and anti-imperialist organizations on campus and confronting the local face of imperialism—policing, surveillance, and militarized control.”

Tactically the paper calls for confronting trustees as well as “regulatory and disciplinary systems, social structures such as fraternities, sororities, societies, and associations, as well as preparatory labor structures that condition students to enter the capitalist economy as wage laborers or managers.”

The impact of this ideology and the deep penetration of Muslim and Palestinian students into the infrastructures of student life, were seen in a survey which reported 28% of British university students regard the Hamas massacres of October 7 as defensible. Similarly, the president of the

Oxford Union, Arwa Elrayess, was quoted as saying that October 7th was “proportional” and that Hamas should be “Lauded as heroes.” Elrayess, the first Palestinian woman to head the union, stated she would remain in the position despite calls for her to resign and a police investigation.

In another example, pro-Hamas students at the University of Washington promoted a webinar with Hussein Mughniyeh, son of former Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh. The younger Mughniyeh is also under US terror sanctions.

Alex Joffe is the Editor of SPME’s BDS Monitor and  director of Strategic Affairs for the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA). A completely different version of this article was originally published by SPME.