Provost Santiago Schnell represented Dartmouth at a Sept. 8 discussion at Vanderbilt University on campus antisemitism and free expression, where Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., announced a new bipartisan congressional caucus focused on combating antisemitism at colleges and universities.
The event brought together Vanderbilt chancellor Daniel Diermeier and leaders from Dartmouth, the University of Alabama, the University of Kentucky, the University of Texas at Austin and Washington University in St. Louis. Participants discussed institutional neutrality, campus safety, academic freedom and universities’ responses to antisemitism, according to a Vanderbilt University news release.
Schnell wrote in a Sept. 20 email statement to The Dartmouth that he spoke in a panel at the event about “the importance of open dialogue and our policy of institutional restraint,” a policy adopted by College President Sian Leah Beilock in December 2024 that limits institutional statements on political and social issues. He added that he believes Dartmouth’s institutional restraint policy is “a precondition for genuine dialogue and free expression.”
The Dartmouth was unable to obtain a recording of the panel. Schnell declined a request for an interview and instead provided a written statement.
Vanderbilt vice chancellor Darren Reisberg, who moderated the panel, wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth that Vanderbilt was “proud to be selected” by Gottheimer and Stefanik as the site for the announcement and to host a discussion about how institutional neutrality, free expression and civil discourse can foster a campus that is “safe, welcoming and vibrant for all students.”
At the panel, Gottheimer and Stefanik announced the launch of the Combating Antisemitism on College Campuses Caucus to coordinate congressional oversight of university responses to antisemitism, promote federal legislation addressing campus antisemitism and highlight universities they believe have adopted effective practices.
After Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza, campuses across the country saw pro-Palestinian protests and disputes over how administrators should respond to allegations of antisemitism while protecting political speech.
Since taking office in 2025, the Trump administration has opened or expanded Title VI investigations into five universities over reported antisemitic harassment. By March 2025, the Department of Justice had warned 60 colleges and universities already under investigation that they could face enforcement action if they failed to meet their obligations to protect Jewish students. The administration has also reviewed or withheld federal funding from Columbia University and Harvard University over alleged antisemitism.
“Since Oct. 7, Jewish students on too many campuses have been harassed, intimidated, and made to feel like strangers in their own school,” Gottheimer wrote in a Sept. 9 press release about the event. He wrote that the caucus aims to “hold universities accountable” while supporting institutions “getting it right.”
Reisberg wrote that Gottheimer and Stefanik engaged university leaders they viewed as taking “constructive approaches” to combating antisemitism while protecting free expression. Gottheimer specifically described Vanderbilt as a university “getting it right.”
Diermeier tied that approach to universities’ role as places for disagreement rather than institutional consensus.
“Our job at a university is not to settle debates, but to encourage them,” Diermeier said during the event, according to a Sept. 10 Vanderbilt University news release.
Dartmouth’s invitation placed the College alongside institutions that Gottheimer and Stefanik believed had useful approaches to share, according to Vanderbilt News coverage of the event. Three members of Dartmouth’s Jewish community, none of whom attended the event, told The Dartmouth that they generally view the College’s response to antisemitic incidents favorably, but antisemitic rhetoric and social pressure to avoid conversations about Jewish identity still remain present on campus.
Chabad at Dartmouth executive director Rabbi Moshe Gray said Dartmouth “does not seem to have an antisemitism problem.”
“What we do have are individuals who are antisemites, who do not like the Jewish people, who do not like the Jewish homeland, who do not like the land of Israel,” he said.
Gray said he knows of “a number of instances” in which Dartmouth students have encountered verbal insults he characterized as “outright, blatant antisemitism.” In those cases, he said, the College was prepared to intervene if students chose to report what happened.
“The greatest thing that Dartmouth has done over the last three years has made it known to the Jewish community that they are not going to tolerate outright antisemitism; they’re not going to tolerate bullies,” he said.
Jacob Markman ’27 pointed to the swastika drawn outside a Jewish student’s dorm room in September 2025 as one example of overt antisemitism on campus. The incident prompted a police investigation and a campus-wide condemnation from Beilock, who wrote in Sept. 27, 2025, email to campus that “antisemitism has no place at Dartmouth.”
Jun Chakravarthy ’29 said campus’s reaction to the swastika “made” him “feel safer” as a Jewish student on campus.
“If one person does it, that’s a hate crime,” he said. “But when it becomes antisemitism as a whole, that’s when you have an entire society who turns a blind eye towards them when they perform these kinds of acts.”
Gray also praised the College for drawing boundaries between protest and conduct that interferes with shared campus spaces.
“I think they’ve done quite a job of allowing for free speech,” Gray said. “But free speech doesn’t mean I get to pitch tents in perpetuity.”
He pointed to the College’s response to the May 1, 2024, pro-Palestinian protest on the Green, when police arrested 89 students, faculty members and community members after administrators ordered demonstrators to dismantle an encampment.
Gray argued that the response should be understood in the context of pro-Palestinian encampments at universities across the country that spring, which he described as “toxic and horrible” and said left some students feeling intimidated or unable to access shared campus spaces. By arresting the 89 protestors, Dartmouth administrators sent a clear message about what forms of protest the College would permit, he said.
“You want to do civil disobedience? Do civil disobedience,” Gray said. “There’s repercussions to civil disobedience.”
Markman also said he believes Dartmouth compares favorably with other universities based on conversations he has had with Jewish students elsewhere.
“I think Dartmouth is leaps and bounds better than most other schools,” Markman said.
He cited institutional restraint and senior administrators’ presence at Jewish community events as indications that College leaders take Jewish students’ concerns seriously.
Markman said the more difficult problems are cultural rather than administrative. He described Dartmouth as an environment in which some students feel hesitant to voice opinions on Israel or other politically charged subjects around peers and professors.
“There’s a lot of Jewish students who will not speak on these things outside of Hillel or outside of other Jewish spaces,” he said.
Both Gray and Markman distinguished criticism of Israel from rhetoric they believe crosses into hostility toward Jewish people. Gray noted that problems arise when individuals treat Jewish or Israeli people as personally responsible for the actions of the Israeli government.
“I think we have to be very careful how we criticize” Israel, Gray said, adding that Israelis and Jewish people are often held to a “giant double standard.”
Markman recalled writing an opinion piece supporting Beilock’s decision to call the police on May 1, 2024, because he believed this perspective was not sufficiently represented in campus discourse at the time. Afterward, he said several acquaintances stopped interacting with him.
“I lost a few friends,” Markman said. “It wasn’t a particularly positive experience for me.”
Markman said national conversations about campus antisemitism can become too narrow if they treat Jewish students’ experiences as separate from broader questions about intellectual culture.
“What we’re seeing with Jews is not a particularly unique problem,” he said, arguing that the pressure some Jewish students feel reflects a wider reluctance on campuses to engage seriously with unpopular or dissenting views.
Gray said policymakers and administrators seeking to change colleges’ climates should listen directly to Jewish students rather than assuming they understand their experiences.
“They need to have a little bit of humility in understanding they don’t know everything,” Gray said.
Stefanik did not respond to a request for comment. Vanderbilt University and Dartmouth administrators did not provide additional responses by publication time.
Haley S. Rodriguez ’29 is a reporter with roots in New York City. She is studying history and biology and enjoys long-distance running, reading and sailing.
