One in five students would be reluctant to share a house with a Jewish student

It’s organised around three core findings. First, that antisemitism has become normalised on campus – 23 per cent of students say they’ve seen behaviour targeting Jewish students, and 25 per cent don’t care “very much” or “at all” whether Jewish students can be open about their identity.

Second, that glorification of terrorism is prevalent and unpunished – 49 per cent say they’ve heard slogans or chants in support of Hamas, Hezbollah or other proscribed groups, and 47 per cent say they have witnessed justification of the October 7th attacks.

Third, that protests are disrupting students’ education – 65 per cent report disruption to learning, 30 per cent say teaching has been interrupted, and 40 per cent say they have changed their route through campus to avoid protests.

Jewish students’ testimonies describe physical assault, social ostracisation, verbal abuse, having their home addresses shared on protest group chats, and anonymous student groups that have celebrated the October 7th attacks and called for the removal of “Zionists” from campus.

The testimonies are genuinely disturbing. They describe behaviours that the law and the regulatory framework in England clearly treats as actionable. The polling deserves a closer look.

Cross tabs

It was conducted by JL Partners – a nationally representative sample of 1,000 UK university students across 170 institutions, weighted to reflect the demographic profile of the student population. That is a credible methodology for headline figures. But the full cross-tabulated data reveals context that the report’s presentation does not always convey.

Some of the headline numbers aggregate response categories in ways that matter. The 49 per cent who say they have heard chants supporting proscribed groups combines “very often” (6.7 per cent), “fairly often” (16.2 per cent), and “not very often” (25.9 per cent). The “not very often” category does most of the work. Over a two and a half year period since October 2023, “not very often” could represent a single encounter. That does not make the finding trivial – even occasional exposure to such content is a legitimate concern – but it is a different picture from the one the headline implies.

The 65 per cent disruption figure works similarly. It is derived from a multi-select question where students could tick all forms of disruption they had experienced – teaching interrupted, buildings inaccessible, exams cancelled, and so on. The underlying data shows that 30.8 per cent selected “none of these”. The 65 per cent figure is effectively the complement – everyone who ticked at least one disruption, even if it was a single incident across the period.

The Russell Group comparisons that both the report and the press coverage lean on (42 per cent encounter weekly protests versus 26 per cent overall, 79 per cent find the Israel–Palestine conversation toxic versus 61 per cent) rest on a subsample of just 80 unweighted respondents with a margin of error of ±11 per cent. Apparent differences of this scale may not be statistically significant.

And the housesharing question – the one generating the biggest headlines – explicitly frames the scenario around “recent geopolitical events”. That primes respondents to think about the Israel–Palestine conflict rather than about Jewish people as potential housemates. There is also no comparator question about other groups, and no “not applicable” option for students who do not houseshare.

The cross-tabs show that the reluctance is not evenly distributed across the student population. Muslim students show the highest rate of reluctance at 37.5 per cent, followed by Asian students (32.6 per cent) and Black students (29.8 per cent). White students are at 15.8 per cent and students with no religion at 11.5 per cent.

Those patterns may reflect conflict-shaped inter-community tensions rather than a uniform hostility across the entire student body. Sociological research on student housing regularly finds patterns of homophily – people clustering with those they perceive as culturally similar. But that does not necessarily make the finding less serious. Reluctance to live with Jewish students remains a concerning form of prejudice whatever mixture of political hostility, social distance or community tension sits behind it.

One other design choice is worth flagging. The battery asking students whether various behaviours are antisemitic places items of very different legal and moral character on the same chart – from “a Star of David intersected with a swastika” to “criticising the actions of Israel or the Israeli government”. Presenting them on a single scale creates an implied continuum between political disagreement and unambiguous antisemitism that the regulatory framework requires providers to treat as distinct.

Three categories, not one

The report presents its evidence as a single escalating phenomenon – normalised antisemitism leading to glorification of terrorism leading to protest disruption. But the OfS free speech framework requires English providers to sort these behaviours into distinct categories and respond differently to each.

Some conduct clearly falls outside free speech protection altogether. The assaults, threats, stalking, sharing of home addresses, vandalism of Leeds Hillel House, and the masked invasion of a lecture theatre at City all fall into this category. Conduct amounting to harassment, criminal threats or intimidation is not speech “within the law”, and universities have no duty to protect it.

Some of the rhetoric cited in the report – such as praise for the October 7th attacks or references to Hamas – may in some contexts cross legal thresholds relating to encouragement of terrorism or support for proscribed organisations. But these cases are fact sensitive and require careful assessment. The law sets a high threshold, and universities would normally rely on legal advice or police guidance before classifying speech as unlawful.

Another category covers protest activity that is lawful in substance but creates operational disruption. Encampments, blockades of buildings, disruption of lectures, and protests outside teaching spaces fall into this group. Under OfS guidance, universities must protect the viewpoint expressed in protests but may regulate the time, place and manner where necessary and proportionate.

That means universities can move protests away from lecture theatres, limit frequency, or restrict locations without restricting the political message itself. OfS Director for Freedom of Speech Arif Ahmed made this point directly in a UJS podcast discussion of the issue – universities can say protests cannot happen outside particular lecture spaces or every day in the same location.

And a third category involves political expression that universities are legally required to protect. BDS campaigns, calls for academic boycott, criticism of Israel, and condemnations of Zionism all fall into the realm of political speech unless they cross legal harassment thresholds.

OfS guidance repeatedly warns providers not to collapse offence into unlawfulness. Speech may be controversial or distressing and still be protected.

The hardest cases sit on the boundary between these categories. “Globalise the intifada” is an example. Some police forces have indicated it may be arrestable depending on context. Eighty-two per cent of students in the UJS polling consider it at least somewhat antisemitic. Others read it as protected political speech. Ahmed himself acknowledged that “it might depend on context”. Universities need a workable framework for making these judgments, and neither the report nor the regulator offers much operational clarity.

Regulatory machinery

The report makes six recommendations. These include enforceable standards for investigating hate crime, stronger regulation of students’ unions through the Charity Commission, a national counter-extremism strategy focused on campuses, new public order guidance, formalised coordination between police and universities, and sector-wide best practice on Jewish inclusion.

The theory of change is largely enforcement based – new statutory frameworks, regulatory investigation, and police powers. The difficulty is that much of the machinery already exists.

OfS Condition E6 came into force on 1 August 2025 and covers harassment across all protected characteristics including race and religion.

It requires universities to maintain a single comprehensive source of information for students, offer multiple reporting routes including anonymous options, train staff to receive and investigate reports, ensure fair investigation procedures reflecting natural justice, provide support to both complainants and respondents, and collect prevalence data rather than relying only on complaints.

The report’s evidence on underreporting – only around a fifth of students who witness antisemitism using reporting channels – mirrors findings from the OfS prevalence survey on sexual misconduct published in September 2025.

That survey found that only 13.2 per cent of students who experienced sexual harassment formally reported it to their institution. The gap between prevalence and reporting is therefore a structural problem across different forms of harassment, not unique to antisemitism.

The Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA), which reviews student complaints in England and Wales after university processes are exhausted, was also consulting on updates to its Good Practice Framework on handling harassment and sexual misconduct complaints during the period when the UJS polling was conducted.

The OIA does not investigate incidents itself but assesses whether universities followed fair procedures in their handling of complaints. The consultation addresses many of the procedural issues the UJS testimonies describe.

If these routes are not working for Jewish students – and the report’s evidence suggests they may not be – the question is whether new structures are needed or whether the existing ones need to be implemented more effectively.

One other regulatory tension concerns reporting tools. E6 requires universities to reduce barriers to reporting and provide multiple accessible mechanisms. But OfS Regulatory Advice 24 warns against systems that allow anonymous accusations about identifiable individuals if they create a “surveillance or denunciation culture” that discourages lawful discussion of controversial topics.

In practice this has made some universities cautious about how their “Report and Support” platforms operate. Providers can still operate reporting tools and collect incident data, but there is uncertainty about how those tools should handle anonymous allegations involving identifiable individuals.

The result is a regulatory environment where universities are encouraged to expand reporting mechanisms while simultaneously being warned about the chilling effects those mechanisms might create.

Protected belies and culture on campus

The report’s recommendation that universities adopt antisemitism awareness training inevitably raises the question of where antisemitism ends and protected political belief begins.

In February 2024 an employment tribunal ruled that David Miller’s anti-Zionist beliefs met the Grainger criteria for protection under the Equality Act.

That does not mean all anti-Zionist expression is protected in every context. Conduct that amounts to harassment can still be regulated. But it does mean that training programmes must distinguish carefully between antisemitic conduct and protected political belief.

Ahmed acknowledged in discussion with UJS that “Zionist” can function as a euphemism for “Jewish” in some contexts. Determining when that is happening requires careful contextual assessment – something courts themselves approach cautiously.

Recommendation three of the report calls for investigation of “Islamist extremist student networks” and scrutiny of funding sources. Universities already operate under the Prevent duty created by the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015.

A consultation hosted at St George’s House in February 2024 reported Muslim students and academics describing self-censorship and anxiety about engaging in political debate around Palestine and global justice.

Any expansion of counter-extremism measures therefore raises questions about how universities balance protecting Jewish students from harassment with ensuring that Muslim students do not experience disproportionate scrutiny for lawful political participation.

One other feature of the report is how little attention it gives to educational or dialogue-based responses.

Fifty per cent of students in the polling say they feel socially pressured to hold particular views on Israel–Palestine, and a third say they feel unsafe engaging in political debate. Similar patterns appear in wider research on campus speech climates.

A King’s College London study found that 43 per cent of students say they feel unable to express their views because they fear disagreement from peers.

Several universities have experimented with programmes aimed at building students’ capacity for disagreement and dialogue, including SOAS’s Communities of Inquiry and UCL’s Disagreeing Well campaign.

Those initiatives focus on the underlying dynamics of polarisation rather than relying solely on enforcement.

The report documents serious problems. Some of the incidents described – physical assaults, threats, harassment and doxxing – are already actionable under existing law and regulatory frameworks and should be investigated where they occur.

The question for the sector is whether creating new enforcement structures is the most effective response, or whether the machinery that already exists – properly implemented and properly resourced – could do more to protect Jewish students without creating new tensions for other communities on campus.