Mia Blachman began her journey at her dream school, Emerson College, in the fall of 2023. It was exactly what she hoped for—a new city, interesting people, a chance to pursue both theater and journalism, and an accepting community. But less than two months after she arrived, her new adventure quickly soured.
“On October 6th [2023], I was friends with everyone,” said Blachman. “On October 7th, everything changed.”
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas, a Palestinian militant group, carried out an attack on the Nova Music Festival and towns in the southern border of Israel. The attack killed 1,200 people, most of whom were civilians, and 251 people were taken hostage. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war on Hamas in response, saying that “the enemy would pay an unprecedented price.” Israel’s ongoing ground and air offensive in Gaza has killed over 50,000 Palestinians to date.
Over the course of the rest of the 2023-24 academic year, Blachman and three other Jewish students who spoke to The Beacon said they received threats online, lost friends, were physically and verbally assaulted, and excluded from social groups because of their Jewish and Zionist identities.
Reported antisemitic incidents on North American college campuses spiked from 135 in the fall of 2022 to 1,083 in the fall of 2023, a nearly ten-fold increase that has continued into this year, according to Hillel, the world’s largest Jewish campus organization.
Following last spring’s pro-Palestine encampment on campus, at least 10 Jewish students who ended the school year as Emersonians chose not to return to campus in the fall.
“The College regrets when a student transfers out for any reason and does everything possible to support its students during their Emerson journey,” a spokesperson for the college wrote in a statement to The Beacon, adding that the College has taken “many steps to support Jewish students at Emerson” since last spring.
Blachman said in the days following the Hamas attack, students started writing what she called “anti-Israel” slogans, such as “globalize the Intifada,” a contentious phrase used by pro-Palestine activists, on whiteboards attached to their dorm room doors. Many Jewish and Zionist people interpret the phrase as a call for a violent global uprising against Israel.
Blachman lived and taught English in Israel in the 9 months prior to coming to Emerson. She said that when she tried to engage in conversations with the people who wrote the statements, she was immediately met with hostility.
“I explained to them, ‘From the river to the sea,’ means that you want my whole family and all my friends essentially erased from existence,” Blachman said, referencing another contested phrase.
Some Pro-Palestinian activists say the phrase, often paired with “Palestine will be free,” advocates for Palestinian freedom and peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine, but some Jewish and Zionist people interpret it as calling for the elimination of the state of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish people living there.
“They were like, ‘Yeah, that’s fine with us,’ and slammed the door in my face,” Blachman said.
Blachman’s tie to Oct. 7 is personal. Her ex-girlfriend and Israeli friend group all attended the Nova Music Festival. While some of her friends were able to escape the bombing and gunfire by running and hiding under dead bodies, others did not return home that day, Blachman said.
“There’s footage of them getting raped and murdered,” Blachman said, adding that her ex-girlfriend told her not to look at the videos and lists of names circulating online the day after.
“That’s the scariest feeling ever, because I don’t know if she’s talking about one of my best friends, my cousin, or someone else that I know,” Blachman said. “It was horrifying, and then I walked by my neighbors, and they’re celebrating it and thankful that it happened, as if it was a good thing.”
Blachman said that while she was trying to grieve, the anti-Israel sentiment on campus started to grow. One night, at a dorm party, a group of students entered the suite screaming “Death to Israel!” When Blachman, shaken up, confronted the group, explaining that she had lived there only a few months prior, they called her “a terrorist, just like the rest of them,” Blachman said.
Multiple Jewish and Israeli students interviewed by The Beacon recalled having assumptions made about them and their families based on their identities.
“I kept feeling like there was something wrong with me inherently,” said Meira Fiber-Munro, who transferred to the University of Oregon in the fall of 2024. At the time of the encampment, Fiber-Munro was a first-year student, excited to begin her enrollment in Emerson’s journalism program.
Fiber-Munro said people would assume she was “anti-Palestine,” simply because she was a member of Emerson’s branch of Hillel, an organization that she said had been a “really important outlet to find Jewish community” at Emerson.
“It was almost like there were two teams … you’re either pro-Israel or pro-Palestine,” she said. “I felt like I was standing there in the middle.”
Even among the Jewish students on campus, there was heavy tension, Fiber-Munro said. The unaffiliated campus group Jews Against Zionism joined other campus groups in calling for the elimination of Hillel on Emerson’s campus.
During this time, Fiber-Munro received direct messages on Instagram, telling her to justify her participation in Hillel, including a message calling her a “dirty Jew.”
“That was a moment where I was like ‘Oh, I think this actually goes deeper,’” she said. “There are people who are fighting for social justice and change, and then there are people who are using this as a scapegoat to be awful to people.”
Margaux Jubin, a former Emerson journalism student and a former writer for The Beacon, said each time she posted about her support for Israel and Zionism on social media, she received hate messages from her classmates.
“I lost all of my non-Jewish friends … as someone who is simply a Zionist, which means you believe Israel has the right to exist,” Jubin said.
In an interview with The Beacon, Jonathan Falk, the vice president of the Israel Action and Addressing Antisemitism Program at Hillel International, said that the root of some conflict is that people “don’t actually understand” what Zionism is.
“We get stuck when people think one term means one thing, and other groups think [the same] term means another thing,” he said. “I think [Zionism] is really misunderstood.”
Zionism is an ideology and movement that calls for the protection of a Jewish state on the land that is now Israel.
When asked what Zionism means to them, students interviewed by The Beacon defined it as “a safe place to live for their families,” “equal rights for Jews,” and the recognition of Jews’ “ancestral and historical ties to the land of Israel.”
Ari Mei-Dan, who currently works as a Beacon photographer and lived in Israel until age eight, transferred to Emerson this year for the school’s film program, but also to try to escape antisemitic experiences she said she faced at the University of Vermont.
“Some people would outwardly say that they didn’t want to hire me because I’m Israeli. Some people would ice me out, but they were very vocal about their political beliefs, so [I] kind of connected the dots.” Mei-Dan said.
The more harassment Mei-Dan faced for her Israeli identity, the more she realized how important Zionism is, she said.
“[Israel] is the only place I feel truly safe being Jewish,” Mei-Dan said.
“There were so many moments at Emerson where it felt like people weren’t able to distinguish between Jews and people who are high up in the [Israeli] government, like Netanyahu,” Fiber-Munro said. “It’s almost like they want random Jewish college students to answer for these terrible decisions that the government is making.”
After Blachman’s first semester at Emerson, her parents told her that she couldn’t return to campus in the spring, but she insisted, because Emerson was her dream school.
A study done by Hillel last year found that 87% of Jewish high school parents said that rising antisemitism since Oct. 7 was impacting their kids’ college decisions, and nearly 64% of Jewish high school families have eliminated colleges from consideration due to perceived antisemitism.
In January, while Blachman was on her way to class in the Paramount, she was physically attacked.
“This girl grabs me by the shoulders and pushes me onto the ground,” she recalled. “She looks at me and she’s like ‘You need to stop or I’m gonna make you stop,’” likely referring to Blachman’s outspoken support for Israel. Nothing happened to the girl after she reported the incident to the school, Blachman said.
In a statement to The Beacon, a college spokesperson wrote that Emerson “vigorously investigates all reports of discrimination and harassment, including antisemitism,” but cannot publicly discuss reports made to the office.
Last spring, Emerson’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) erected a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus, which occupied the 2 Boylston Place Alleyway, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and demanding the college divest from Israel.
Jubin said that when she would pass through the alley, people would often follow behind her very closely.
“Someone spit in my hair, people tried to blow cigarette smoke into my hair,” she said. “I have videos of people trying to throw keffiyehs over my camera … because I was documenting things. People said, ‘You don’t belong here.’ People said ‘No Zionists allowed here.”
One night during the encampment, Jubin came home from her rabbi’s house from a Passover Seder at 2 a.m. and was unable to get to her room for a while because protesters were linking arms and blocking the entrance.
“I remember my heart was racing because I was out there with all these people that hate me,” Jubin said. “They had chalk written all over the alley, ‘fuck Zionists’, ‘fuck Israel’, ‘Zionists off our campus’, ‘student intifada,’” Jubin said. “Being at such a small school, everyone knew I was a Zionist.”
The following day, Jubin emailed Emerson President Jay Bernhardt, stating that the situation on campus had become a safety threat for Jewish students, she said. She and other students later received college-sponsored housing in surrounding area hotels.
After 118 protesters were arrested and the encampment was removed, Jubin paid to live in an Airbnb for the remainder of the school year, saying she did not feel safe on campus.
“It would have taken them killing me for [the administration] to do something,” Blachman said. “I didn’t want to take that chance. I didn’t want to die to stay at a school that clearly didn’t want me there.”
Blachman said her friend allegedly received death threats from her neighbors and was no longer able to speak to her parents in Hebrew. “My other friend left Florida because … he was getting targeted for being trans. He moved to Emerson, and now he couldn’t be Jewish in public. He had to hide his kippah underneath his hat,” Blachman said.
By the end of the school year, Blachman had become exhausted from bearing witness to the suffering of her Jewish friends and knew it was time to leave, she said.
Blachman’s final straw was allegedly being shown pictures of the “Jude” star, used to identify Jewish people during the Holocaust, painted on doors of Jewish students living in the Little Building. “I heard a student’s account of finding it on their door, and I was like, ‘I can never come back here,’” she said.
Fiber-Munro said what hurt her most was the social isolation that the campus tension brought, which also affected her academic performance. Now, at the University of Oregon, she has found a community that is less divided and more open to conversation, she said.
Blachman is now at the University of Central Florida, and Jubin at George Washington University, where she said she has found a Jewish community that is “strong,” “vibrant,” “driven,” and “passionate.”
“I knew that I was not looking for an oasis when I was leaving Emerson,” Jubin said. “I was looking for a place where I wouldn’t have to fight alone.”
