Content warning: This article contains descriptions of antisemitism.  

On April 25, a group of Jewish students hosted an empty Passover Seder in front of the Trousdale North Entrance to honor and raise awareness for the more than 130 people still held hostage by Hamas as of April. Every spot at the table had its own untouched place setting, and on every empty seat, organizers taped a photo of a hostage with the words “KIDNAPPED” or “MURDERED” written in bold letters above their face. 

Less than 24 hours earlier, the Los Angeles Police Department arrested 93 protesters for participating in the pro-Palestinian “Gaza Solidarity Occupation” at Alumni Park. 

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Sabrina Jahan, one of the students who arranged the Seder and a senior majoring in business administration with an emphasis in finance, said she and her friends “felt that it was more important than ever” to host the empty Seder because she felt the presence of the “Gaza Solidarity Occupation” was contributing to students experiencing “more harassment, just because of their Jewish, pro-Israel or Zionist identities.”

After the organizers finished setting up the empty Seder, pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel students began arguing in front of the display. Jahan said she witnessed a woman who appeared to be a student spitting at the feet of one of the Jewish organizers. A video from the Seder appeared to show the incident.

The same day, a man who did not appear to be affiliated with the University approached Jahan and her friends and proceeded to perform the Nazi salute. Jahan also caught this incident on video.

USC’s chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace also held a Seder for Palestine the day after Jahan and her friends held their empty Seder for the hostages in Gaza. JVP’s event featured various speakers, singing and a Seder plate painted on a white tablecloth.

During the Seder, a man who did not appear affiliated with the University interrupted a speaker from the organization Southwest Asian & North Afrikan – Los Angeles to yell, “Fuck you, Jews. Go home. This is America.” 

The man initially left but not long after returned and said, “Go home. Go fucking home,” to which a Seder participant said, “We are home.” The man then threatened to break the nose of a member of the Seder’s safety team and attempted to break through the team to reach the protesters. He also hit a participant’s drink out of their hand. 

Since Oct. 7, the Department of Public Safety received four reports they classified as antisemitic hate crimes, a rise from the one report DPS received during the same period last year, according to DPS Assistant Chief David Carlisle. Several Jewish students told the Daily Trojan they felt increasingly unsafe on campus this past year. 

Hana Masrour, a junior majoring in business administration, was one among numerous other students who said she went home early because she “did not feel safe as a Jewish student walking around on campus” after the encampment began April 24. 

Another student, who spoke to the Daily Trojan on the condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety, also said he felt that going home was the “only way” he could finish the semester and do well in his classes. 

Paul Lerner, a professor of history, said while some signs in the encampment also made him feel uncomfortable as a Jewish man with many loved ones living in Israel, he did not see student protesters as the true threat to the Jewish community on campus. 

“I am really concerned about antisemitism, but I’m much more concerned about antisemitism coming from the Christian nationalists than I am about antisemitism coming from the encampment,” Lerner said. “Whatever they are — Christian nationalists, white supremacists — they’re not our friends as Jews.” 

Lerner and — at the time — 48 other USC Jewish and Jewish studies faculty and staff signed a letter May 8, condemning the arrests and forced removal of encampment protesters. The group’s letter states that antisemitism had been nationally weaponized in order to silence protesters and that the University needed to hear from the students, “many of them also Jewish,” who condemned Israel’s actions against Palestinians. 

“Far from fighting antisemitism — a serious problem that, like all forms of bigotry and racism, requires a rigorous approach — the university’s actions have distorted principled, peaceful protest and demonized encamped students,” the letter reads. 

After classes and finals came to an end, arguments between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel community members continued online. For some students, however, hateful comments and messages had been a regular occurrence since the war began.

The anonymous student shared screenshots of death threats he and his pro-Israel co-organizers received this year, with one man calling the students an antisemitic slur and saying he hoped they got “caught in the next school shooting.”

“Hitler did nothing wrong [sic] Israel will be destroyed,” the message read. 

The student said the protests, on top of the threatening messages he and his friends were receiving online, were also taking a toll on his mental health. 

“When they’re vandalizing statues and ruining graduation and harassing students, it’s extremely frustrating,” the student said. “As someone who’s lived in Israel, as someone who has family and friends in Israel, as someone who has lost friends and family in this conflict and Oct. 7 specifically, it is extremely frustrating that I’m not able to engage in a productive dialogue that moves the needle forward towards peace.” 

Protesters vandalized the Tommy Trojan statue April 27, spray painting “SAY NO TO GENOCIDE” on the base. Protesters also vandalized the Youth Triumphant Fountain at Alumni Park, spray painting “FREE GAZA” and “STOLEN LAND” on the fountain. 

The USC Divest from Death Coalition posted pictures of the two vandalized statues on its Instagram account later that day, accompanied by the caption: “After students reclaimed Alumni Park, DPS and LAPD have begun circling campus and parked outside school gates. Following their failed attempts at repression on Wednesday, though, the cowardly pigs are threatened by the students’ power and are too scared to enter campus! Show up to Alumni Park to support USC students in their Gaza solidarity occupation!” 

On April 28, however, the coalition released a statement on Instagram that stated that the graffiti violated their “no desecration of the land” and “no autonomous action endangering the collective” community guidelines. The post stated that “the person who spray painted was not a member of the occupation.” 

On May 3 — two days before DPS and the LAPD cleared the encampment from Alumni Park for the second and final time of the semester — President Carol Folt released a Universitywide statement that read, “Free speech and assembly do not include the right to obstruct equal access to campus, damage property, or foment harassment, violence, and threats.” 

Folt did not directly name the USC Divest from Death Coalition or encampment protesters in her condemnation of “harassment, violence, and threats” or elaborate on the instances that had taken place. 

In a written statement to the Daily Trojan, the coalition wrote that they were “deeply disappointed” with Folt’s “continual mischaracterization” of the encampment. 

“From our community guidelines to the consistent support of faculty and staff, our camp has been a space of collective unity. In stark contrast, Folt’s administration seems to default to unleashing police forces to torment, brutalize and repress USC students,” the statement read. 

The USC Divest from Death Coalition had 10 community guidelines, which included “no desecration of the land,” “respect[ing] personal boundaries,” “not engaging with Zionist counter-protesters” and “approaching confict [sic] with the goal of addressing and repairing.”

The coalition also condemned Folt and her administration for failing to acknowledge or punish the “countless documented cases of harassment against our Gaza Solidarity Occupation.” 

“If Folt were actually to care about USC students, she would have to first acknowledge the excessive police violence her administration enacted on the student body — which she has not,” the statement read. “The harassment our occupation faced highlights the growing contradictions of the Folt administration’s weaponization of racist & classist notions of safety to evade genuine accountability.”

The Daily Trojan was not able to review the cases of harassment the coalition referred to in their statement by the time of publication. 

Among the chants used by protesters at the encampment, some used the word “intifada,” which directly translates from Arabic to “shaking off,” but in the context of Israel and Palestine, refers to two major Palestinian uprisings that took place from 1987 to 1993 and from 2000 to 2005. Protesters also used the phrase, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which the U.S. House of Representatives classified as antisemitic in April. Several Jewish students told the Daily Trojan that hearing the phrases made them feel unsafe.

“People can say it means ‘shivering off’ or ‘shaking off’ or whatever the connotation of it is, but the first and second Intifada killed thousands of Israelis,” the anonymous student said. “It literally means calling for violence against Jews.”

Other Jewish students expressed similar sentiments, saying the phrase was painful for them to hear from their classmates. 

“What they’re chanting is extremely violent,” Masrour said. “If you simply do a quick Google search of what the Intifada is, the first thing will pop up is that it is terrorism, so it’s kind of disturbing to hear that chanted at school.”

In a written statement to the Daily Trojan, JVP wrote, “For many American Jews, ‘intifada’ does indeed invoke images of historical violence and terror,” but the chapter wrote that the use of the word was “employed in direct and intentional solidarity with Palestinian resistance movements.” 

“We choose to remember the entire Intifadas as they occurred between 1987 and 2005: the disproportionate use of force and violence by the Israeli military against demonstrators, the unequal death toll of Palestinians as compared to Israeli Jews, and the suppressive and illegal tactics used by the Israeli government to squash peaceful protest in occupied Palestine,” the statement read. 

Lerner said while he didn’t like slogans that referenced the abolition of Israel or the phrase “from the river to the sea” and preferred ones that called for the end of Israel’s war in Gaza and the return of the hostages held in Gaza, he was “very reluctant to classify certain kinds of slogans as hate speech, unless they’re specifically threats.”

“I shouldn’t control what another group says, and it’s not my place to tell people, ‘Protest the way I want you to protest because your words make me uncomfortable,’” he said. 

To Lerner, the administration’s first priority should have been to heal divisions on campus, and the University’s decision to bring in the police and lock down campus only divided the community further. Facilitating an open dialogue would, in his eyes, be the first step toward fostering understanding and compassion between people on both sides of the war.

“What I’ve barely seen at USC at all — and this is where I think there’s a real failure of leadership — is having these difficult conversations,” Lerner said. “There’s a lot of ignorance on both sides of this issue, and as faculty, we have a lot of people at this University who could be helpful in bridging some differences and having conversations, and I see … that there are students who are having these conversations, but they’re not really getting leadership from the University.”