Students forced to hide Jewish identity on campus

Australian Jewish students are limiting how they participate in university life for fear of being targeted amid rising antisemitism, with some hiding their identity and others avoiding campus altogether.

Monash University Jewish student Maya Reef said that due to this pressure, friends from the university have been reluctant to tell their other students they are Jewish or wear anything that might visibly identify them as such.

“A lot of my peers have inherently Jewish names, and it’s really tricky to navigate that. When they introduce themselves, people are like, ‘What’s that name?’” Reef said.

She said questions about their name can lead to uncomfortable conversations about their religion and identity. 

“I luckily have a pretty Western name, so I’ve never run into that issue. But absolutely, people have been hiding part of their identity to deal with it.”

Reef recalled her mother being concerned about whether it was safe to wear a religious necklace on campus, knowing it would identify her as Jewish.

A report by the Australian Human Rights Commission found almost 90 per cent of Jewish students experienced direct or indirect racism at university, with most surveyed saying they felt the need to hide their Jewish identity. The report found experiences of racism on campus were not isolated to Jewish students. 

The report also showed that more than 90 per cent of Palestinian students experienced racism with rates above 80 per cent among First Nations, Chinese, secular Jewish, Middle Eastern and Northeast Asian students. Across the study’s more than 76,000 participants, 70 per cent experienced indirect racism and 15 per cent experienced it directly.

How antisemitism should be defined remains debated, including within Jewish communities.  Monash University uses both the IHRA definition and the Universities Australia working definition to understand antisemitism. The latter explicitly states that criticism of the Israeli government or state is not, in itself, antisemitic, but can become so when Jewish people are held responsible for Israel’s actions or when criticism relies on antisemitic stereotypes. 

Collective blame is not the answer

On university campuses, the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) found Jewish students and staff reported a rise in antisemitism directly after October 2023, including intimidation, exclusion and extremist material. The Commission also found Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students reporting hostility, threats and discrimination, demonstrating how the conflict has intensified racism affecting a wide range of communities.

Community Engagement Director of The Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), Ohad Kozminsky, said separating Jewish identity from the actions of the Israeli state is essential to addressing antisemitism.

“Jewish identity is a religion. It’s an ethnicity,  it’s not a nation-state,” Kozminsky said.

“We wouldn’t hold people of another religion responsible for the actions of a country where that religion is considered to be the state religion, and in the same way we shouldn’t be considering Jewish people responsible for the actions of another country.”

Kozminsky also draws a distinction between Jewish identity and Zionism, describing Zionism as a political ideology on which Jewish people themselves hold a wide range of views.

Kozminsky argued that treating Jewish people, Zionism and the State of Israel as interchangeable ignores those differences and risks holding an entire community responsible for a political ideology or the actions of a foreign government

“There are some Jewish organisations and Jewish people who are very supportive of Zionism as a political ideology, but it’s also very fair to say that there are many individuals who are not,” Kozminsky said.

“Like in any community or group, there are differences in views.”

Kozminsky said the Jewish Council was concerned that some definitions could blur the distinction between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel.

“We think that the IHRA definition has been used institutionally to quell what we take to be legitimate criticism of the actions of a foreign country.” 

Critics of the IHRA definition argue that some of its examples risk blurring the line between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism. While the definition says criticism of Israel is not inherently antisemitic, critics like Kozminsky argue it could sometimes be applied in ways that restrict political debate about Israel and Palestinian rights. 

While there remains disagreement over how universities should define antisemitism, Kozminsky argues the response cannot come at the expense of addressing other forms of racism or preventing difficult conversations from taking place. 

Kozminsky pointed to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s National Anti-Racism Framework, which sets out 63 recommendations for addressing racism across Australian institutions, including the education sector, as a good starting point. 

Kozminsky said the framework offered universities and governments an existing roadmap for responding to racism, rather than developing separate responses for individual communities.

“It’s a really comprehensive plan that’s been developed by the Race Discrimination Commissioner.

“And it’s just waiting, sitting on the shelf and ready to go.”

Kozminsky said protecting Jewish students and protecting political expression are not competing goals, arguing universities should be able to respond to antisemitism while still allowing students to criticise the Israeli government, advocate for Palestinian rights and participate in political protest.

“It’s really important to recognise the distinction between Jews and Israel,” Kozminsky said. “Democratic speech needs to be protected.”

The AHRC Respect at Uni report reached a similar conclusion, stopping short of recommending a specific definition and instead calling on universities to improve racial and religious literacy, ensure procedural fairness and address racism holistically.

The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has also put universities under scrutiny, dedicating a week of hearings to the experiences of Jewish students and academics and how institutions have responded to antisemitism. The Commission has also examined the contested question of how to define antisemitism, with its final recommendations due in December. 

Conditional Acceptance

Associate Professor David Slucki, Director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation (ACJC), says policies, definitions and reporting mechanisms are only part of the response. 

Slucki argues the challenge for universities is not to prevent difficult political conversations, but to create an environment where those disagreements do not become assumptions or attacks on students because of their identity.

“We come with an adversarial attitude into classrooms and campuses, rather than with a constructive and human attitude towards one another,” Slucki said.

Slucki has undertaken research with university students into campus safety and community wellbeing. The research found Jewish and Muslim students’ feelings of safety and belonging were significantly lower than other students, which he said suggests experiences of racism can have broader consequences for students’ sense of belonging, wellbeing and participation in university life.

This year has seen multiple racist attacks on religious centres, including Islamophobic graffiti attacks on Monash University’s Clayton campus in March. 

The incidents follow 52 reports of racism made to Monash University’s Safer Community Unit in 2025. Of those, 20 met the threshold for a formal university response, representing 18 separate incidents.

Antisemitism was the most commonly identified category among those incidents, accounting for eight cases, while three were primarily categorised as Islamophobia. Verbal incidents were the most common, accounting for 13 of the 18 cases.

“Racism is often underreported, and formal complaints do not capture the full extent of the lived experiences within our community”, Monash University Vice-Chancellor Professor Sally Pickering stated in a foreword to the report.

Slucki said some Jewish students' experiences of distress were being heightened within the classroom, particularly during discussions about Israel, Palestine and Gaza.

Slucki said while Jewish people should not be held responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, Israel can still hold deep personal significance for many Jewish students.

“For a lot of those Jewish students who have these deep attachments to Israel, there’s very clear cultural, political, historical, religious reasons why they have that.”

But Slucki said that attachment should not be treated as automatic support for the Israeli government or its actions, and there needs to be a line drawn between antisemitism and criticism of the Israeli government.

“I think if people are angry about what they see in Gaza, I see that as a perfectly human reaction to seeing suffering. I don't think there's anything antisemitic about being upset and angry about that, about wanting to do something about it,” Slucki said.

For Slucki, the line can be crossed when anger towards the Israeli government is redirected towards Jewish people, or when they are expected to answer for the actions of the state.

“They’re actually held responsible for the actions of Israel.”

“There are students who feel unable, maybe unwilling to sort of declare that they’re Jewish or to speak and bring an alternative viewpoint,” Slucki said.

“This becomes kind of an isolating thing for Jewish students who feel like they have to pass some kind of litmus test when it comes to their attitude towards Israel to be socially accepted.”

Slucki said this sense of conditional acceptance can change how Jewish students move through campus and how they feel about others and themselves. “It has a big impact on their wellbeing, their mental health outcomes, their academic performance, their willingness to show up to uni at all and go to class.”

Hiding in plain sight 

Maya Reef said the impact can extend beyond how students express their identity and affect whether they participate in university life at all.

“There are so many students on campus, not just Jewish, a super wide range of students who feel discriminated against and who don't want to go to classes or only sit with people they know because they're scared of that discrimination,” Reef said.

“University should be a place where everyone comes to learn and meet new people, and when your learning is disrupted by worries of being discriminated against or not being yourself, then it becomes really tricky.”

Universities have responded in various ways to Jewish students' reports of harassment and discrimination. Some universities, such as Monash, have committed to reviewing their own racism policies in response to the report. This includes contributing $2 million dollars to their program of initiatives designed to combat racism on campus and strengthen inclusion. 

But beyond definitions, policies and institutional responses, Reef believes meaningful change ultimately comes down to whether students feel safe enough to participate fully in university life. 

“I think just be open to listening to what other people have to say and think about what your intentions are, and what change you're trying to make and just realise that everyone is going through some sort of non-acceptance in society,” Reef said.

“We come to university to learn, and if people don't feel safe doing that and comfortable doing that because of their identity, then we need to make a change.”

Monash University provided a link to its anti-racism and social cohesion initiatives when approached for comment.