Campus antisemitism incidents rise for second year, CST reports

Antisemitic incidents affecting students, academics and staff at UK universities increased in the latest academic year, according to monitoring by the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that tracks antisemitism in Britain.

The CST recorded 95 "university-related" incidents during the 2025-26 academic year, up from 83 in 2024-25. The figure represents a renewed upward trend after a year-on-year decline, and it prompted fresh calls from the charity, the sector body Universities UK and the government for tougher action on campuses.

The rise is significant but remains well below the extraordinary peak recorded in the year that followed the Hamas attack on Israel. In 2022-23 — the final academic year before 7 October 2023 — the charity logged 53 incidents. That number surged to 272 in 2023-24, a more than fivefold jump, before easing to 83 the following year.

Even so, the CST said the current level of reported incidents remains "substantially higher" than it was before the conflict that began in October 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage. Israel subsequently launched a mass military offensive on Gaza, which the Hamas-run health ministry says has killed around 74,000 people.

The charity's definition of a "university-related" incident covers any antisemitic act involving a student, member of staff or academic at a UK university acting "in their academic or student capacity" — meaning it can occur on campus, in university property, or online. The scope has been steadily widened in the way such incidents are counted and reported, a point that makes year-on-year comparisons broadly meaningful while underscoring that recorded figures capture reported conduct rather than all that occurs.

The CST report, which examines the past two academic years, found that the most common category of incident was abusive behaviour. That includes verbal abuse, hostile comments made either face to face or online, and antisemitic graffiti — the latter suggesting that hostility is expressed not only in speech and social media exchanges but in the physical fabric of campus life.

Violence, though rarer, also featured. The report recorded, for the first time, two occurrences of extreme violence in 2024-25. Across the two years combined there were six reported assaults, eight incidents of damage or desecration against Jewish property — five of which took place in student accommodation — and ten separate threats.

A significant share of the reported incidents were tied to the Israel-Gaza conflict and wider Middle East fighting. The CST found that around two-thirds of incidents over the two-year period involved antisemitic language or targeting appearing alongside explicit references to Israel, Gaza, Hamas, the 7 October attack and subsequent regional conflicts.

The charity cautioned that the nature of this targeting matters. "While criticism of Israel and Zionism is not inherently antisemitic, the data in this report continue to demonstrate that anti-Zionist language is frequently deployed in conjunction with hostility towards Jews and Jewish organisations," it said.

Mark Gardner, the CST's chief executive, said Jews remained "very serious campus antisemitism problem" victims — "Jews are still facing a very serious campus antisemitism problem" — and singled out a particularly troubling trend. It was "particularly troubling that a growing proportion of the anti-Jewish actions involve university staff", he said, pointing to a shift from hostility aimed solely at students toward conduct by those in senior professional or academic roles.

Gardner said universities had "a duty to ensure that Jewish students and staff can study, work and participate on campus the same as anyone else" — language that implies a question of equal standing within the university community, not merely the absence of outright violence.

Universities UK, which represents more than 140 institutions, said its members needed to "protect Jewish students and staff", describing the CST findings as a "serious concern". Its chief executive, Vivienne Stern, said: "The rise in antisemitic incidents in the UK, including on university campuses, is a serious concern."

Stern acknowledged that universities must protect students and staff from abuse, but framed the challenge as one of thresholds as much as enforcement — helping students and staff understand "where the expression of a strongly held view becomes antisemitism and harassment". She said UUK had worked with organisations including the CST on guidance for universities, but conceded there was "more to do, particularly in building confidence in the effectiveness of disciplinary processes" — an acknowledgement that formal sanctions have not, in members' view, delivered visible or timely results.

Raphi Leon, president of the Union of Jewish Students, said the report "must be a shot in the arm to boost action to support Jewish students and tackle antisemitism", arguing that student representatives would judge universities by what they do next rather than by statements of intent.

Lucy Powell, education secretary in England, said the findings in the CST report were "deeply troubling". She said: "We expect universities to take a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism, and are providing training to help university staff identify and respond to incidents swiftly."

The CST report was published as the debate over campus safety and free expression continued to intensify, with all three parties — the charity, the sector body and the government — converging on the same point: recorded abuse is climbing again, its character is increasingly violent, and the gap between policy and enforcement on disciplinary processes remains the part of the system students say is least convincing.