Campus antisemitic incidents rise for a second year, CST reports

Antisemitic incidents affecting students and staff at UK universities increased during the latest academic year, according to the Community Security Trust, a charity that monitors attacks on Jewish communities. The CST recorded 95 university-related incidents in 2025-26, up from 83 in the year before. The charity stressed, however, that the figure remains far below the extraordinary peak reached immediately after the Hamas attack on Israel and the start of the Gaza war, while still sitting "substantially higher" than levels recorded before that conflict began.

The annual figures trace a sharp rise and partial retreat. In 2022-23 — the final academic year before the 7 October 2023 attack — the CST logged 53 university-related incidents. That number surged to 272 in 2023-24, before falling back to 83 in 2024-25 and climbing again to 95 this year. The charity's report, which examines the past two academic years in detail, indicates that reported incidents dropped in 2024-25 but grew once more in 2025-26 — a pattern campaigners describe as a problem that has been suppressed rather than resolved.

The CST applies a broad definition in counting these cases. It classifies an incident as "university-related" whenever it concerns a student, member of staff or academic at a UK university acting "in their academic or student capacity". That definition deliberately extends beyond the physical campus to include online activity, social media posts, messages and other conduct taking place in connection with university life.

Abusive behaviour was the most commonly recorded category of incident across both years covered by the report. That category includes verbal abuse, hostile comments made either in person or online, and antisemitic graffiti appearing on university property. The charity said its data showed, for the first time, two occurrences of extreme violence during the 2024-25 academic year.

Alongside the abuse, the report documented six reported assaults spread across the two academic years, eight incidents of damage or desecration targeting Jewish property — five of which occurred in student accommodation — and ten separate threats. The clustering of property attacks in halls of residence has been a particular point of concern for student campaigners, who say that attacks on personal space can feel pervasive and isolating in a way that campus-wide incidents do not.

A significant share of the recorded cases appear to be tied to the ongoing Middle East conflict. Around two-thirds of reported incidents involved antisemitic language or targeting combined with references to Israel, Gaza, Hamas, the 7 October attack, and the subsequent conflicts across the region. The war in Gaza was triggered by the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage. Israel subsequently launched a mass military offensive on Gaza which, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, has killed around 74,000 people.

The charity cautioned that criticism of a country's government is a protected form of speech. In its report, the CST said that while criticism of Israel and Zionism "is not inherently antisemitic", the data it has gathered show that anti-Zionist language "is frequently deployed in conjunction with hostility towards Jews and Jewish organisations". That distinction, the report implies, has not been consistently drawn in debates on campuses where political expression and targeting of individuals often overlap.

Mark Gardner, the CST's chief executive, said Jews remain "very serious campus antisemitism problem" victims — using his own framing that the community is still confronting a very serious campus antisemitism problem. He said it was "particularly troubling that a growing proportion of the anti-Jewish actions involve university staff", pointing to a shift from purely student-on-student hostility towards a climate in which employees are also targeted. Gardner added that universities have "a duty to ensure that Jewish students and staff can study, work and participate on campus the same as anyone else".

Raphi Leon, president of the Union of Jewish Students, said the report must serve as "a shot in the arm" to boost action supporting Jewish students and confronting antisemitism. His remarks suggest student representatives see the renewed increase as evidence that existing commitments on campuses have not translated into a visible reduction in harm.

Sector body Universities UK, which represents more than 140 institutions, said its members needed to "protect Jewish students and staff", describing the findings as a "serious concern". Its chief executive, Vivienne Stern, said universities carry a responsibility to protect Jewish students and staff from abuse and to make clear where "the expression of a strongly held view becomes antisemitism and harassment". Stern said UUK has 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" — suggesting that reporting procedures exist but are not always trusted to deliver results.

Lucy Powell, education secretary in England, called the findings "deeply troubling". She said the government expects universities to take a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism, and that it is providing training to help university staff identify and respond to incidents swiftly. Her comments indicate that campus security and complaints handling are now being treated as a government-level priority rather than solely an institutional matter.

Taken together, the responses from the charity, student representatives, the sector body and the government share a common diagnosis: reporting is rising, trust in university disciplinary systems is low, and the burden of preventing abuse increasingly falls on individual students and staff. With the CST's most recent figures showing a second consecutive annual increase, the pressure for universities to demonstrate that sanctions are both swift and visible is likely to intensify.

The figures published on Monday are drawn from a charity monitoring antisemitic incidents rather than from official government statistics, and campaigners acknowledge that reporting levels can be influenced by student willingness to come forward. Nonetheless, the trend line — from 53 incidents before the Gaza war, to 272 at its height, to 83 and then 95 in the two years since — is being presented by the CST as evidence that the campus environment has not returned to its pre-conflict baseline, whatever the underlying drivers of the change.