In March 2026, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce released one of the most comprehensive federal investigations into campus antisemitism in American history, identifying National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) as a central agitator in the systematic harassment and intimidation of Jewish students across the United States. The report, spearheaded by Committee Chairman Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), documented how radical student organizations and their faculty allies have transformed American universities into environments of fear for Jewish students. Advocacy organization Combat Antisemitism Movement immediately flagged the findings as a "vital must-read," amplifying congressional calls to protect Jewish students from what it described as "antisemitic venom" being spread by groups like National SJP. The publication marks a defining moment of federal accountability for a crisis that has been building since the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist massacre in Israel.
From October 7 to American Campuses
The explosion of campus antisemitism in the United States did not emerge spontaneously. Following Hamas's October 7, 2023 massacre of approximately 1,200 Israeli civilians—the deadliest single-day killing of Jews since the Holocaust—anti-Israel agitation rapidly metastasized across American universities. National SJP, which operates chapters at hundreds of institutions nationwide, quickly emerged as the organizational backbone of encampment protests, divestment campaigns, and coordinated intimidation tactics directed at Jewish students and pro-Israel voices.
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce, under Chairman Walberg's direction, launched an extensive multi-year investigation into how universities were responding—or catastrophically failing to respond—to the wave of antisemitic incidents engulfing their campuses. Committee investigators reviewed institutional policies, collected testimony from Jewish students, and examined the interconnected roles of both student organizations and faculty networks in fueling and legitimizing Jew-hatred on campus. The result was a damning portrait of institutional cowardice and ideological complicity.
Key Findings: Documented Incidents and Patterns
- The committee report concluded that faculty members associated with Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) are actively "legitimizing and amplifying antisemitism on college campuses," providing organized ideological cover and institutional credibility to radical student groups, including National SJP chapters.
- At Haverford College, faculty member Tarik Aougab labeled pro-Israel students "racist genocidaires" and praised the October 7 Hamas massacres as "a historic moment of resistance"; at MIT, Professor Michel DeGraff accused a Jewish student of harboring a Zionist "mind infection"—rhetoric that the committee characterized as a normalized academic pattern, not isolated incidents.
- DePaul University student Michael Kaminsky was attacked by masked assailants for his efforts to promote dialogue about Israel and Jewish identity, suffering a fractured wrist while a friend was knocked unconscious—testimony he delivered in person before the House Committee.
- At Columbia University, antisemitic demonstrators stormed a library, disrupted studying students, and chanted genocidal slogans such as "from the river to the sea," with faculty members standing alongside rather than intervening to protect Jewish students.
A Network of Radicalism: SJP and Its Faculty Allies
The committee report is not merely a catalog of outrageous incidents—it constitutes a systematic indictment of institutional failure enabled by a nationally coordinated radical network. As Rep. Walberg wrote in a March 2026 op-ed, university presidents summoned before the committee "hedged, equivocated, and failed to enforce even their own rules." The pattern reveals an ideological monoculture in higher education in which anti-Israel activism is normalized and Jewish students are effectively rendered second-class members of their campus communities.
National SJP's role in this ecosystem is particularly alarming because it operates not as a collection of independent local chapters but as a nationally coordinated network with standardized rhetoric, shared organizing resources, and documented ties to organizations that have openly celebrated Hamas. The committee's findings confirm longstanding warnings from Jewish advocacy groups that SJP chapters do not merely criticize Israeli policy—they traffic in classical antisemitic tropes, denying Jewish peoplehood, celebrating violence against Jewish civilians, and framing Jewish identity itself as inherently oppressive and deserving of elimination. As Walberg stated plainly, "for many Jewish Americans, Israel is central to their identity. When students are targeted under the guise of 'anti-Zionism,' the line between activism and antisemitism is not just crossed—it's erased."
The faculty dimension documented in the report represents a critical escalation of the crisis. Students who are radicalized by professors praising terrorist attacks and denouncing Jewish peers as "genocidaires" carry that ideological conditioning into the broader public sphere long after graduation. This academic normalization of antisemitism constitutes a pipeline from campus radicalism to real-world violence—a connection made devastatingly concrete when, just days before the report's publication, a terrorist drove an explosives-laden vehicle into a synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan, a suburb of Rep. Walberg's own district, targeting a building filled with children. Only the intervention of on-site security personnel prevented a catastrophic loss of life.
The Broader Significance for Democracy and Jewish Safety
The release of the House Committee's report represents a watershed moment in the federal government's willingness to confront the organized antisemitism that has been allowed to fester under the institutional cover of American universities. For years, administrators hid behind invocations of free speech to avoid confronting ideological movements that weaponize that very freedom to silence, harass, and terrorize Jewish students. The committee's documented findings now provide a legislative foundation for federal enforcement action, funding conditionality, and direct accountability measures targeting universities that continue to shield antisemitic actors.
The broader implications extend beyond campus gates. The exposure of National SJP as a vehicle for spreading what Combat Antisemitism Movement rightly called "antisemitic venom" confirms that the threat to Jewish life in America is not merely the product of fringe extremism but of organized, well-funded, and institutionally protected radicalism. As Fox News reported upon the report's release, the investigation found that universities across the country had become environments in which antisemitism was not simply tolerated but actively amplified by those entrusted with educating the next generation. Confronting this reality—with the rigor, legislative resolve, and moral clarity that Rep. Walberg and the Education and Workforce Committee have demonstrated—is not merely a political imperative. It is a civilizational one.