New School Student Senate Sanctions Hillel After Report Links Programs to Israeli Military in Gaza

The New School University Student Senate voted to sanction Hillel at The New School after a 38-page report detailed Hillel’s participation in programs with the Israeli military during Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“RELEASE: Gottheimer Speaks at Rutgers Hillel to Combat Rising Antisemitism on Campus & Across New Jersey Stresses Importance for U”

House.gov

Truthout reported that Ryder Glickman told the student senate, “I laid out the facts of the report,” and said, “This is one of the most principled acts that you can make while you’re in the Senate.”

House.gov

The resolution passed with a majority, designating Hillel at The New School “not in good standing” and making it ineligible for student funding, while the USS created a Registered Student Organization Compliance Committee to monitor student groups potentially in breach of policy.

Truthout said the RSOCC launched an investigation into Hillel at The New School on April 17 following a vote by the University Student Senate, and the report’s findings focused on volunteer programs at Israeli military bases.

The New School Student Senate’s decision, as described by Truthout, signaled a shift in campus strategy for Palestine by using student-government power to restrict funding tied to Hillel’s military-linked activities.

Truthout said the RSOCC report concluded Hillel’s support was “not tangential or incidental support” and instead a “direct material contribution to the operational capacity of an institution engaged in what multiple international bodies have characterized as the gravest violations of international law of the 21st century.”

The report described programs including “Hillel on Base,” with Instagram content cross-posted by Hillel at Baruch and Hillel at The New School showing students clad in Israeli military uniforms at military bases performing manual labor and socializing with soldiers who had recently returned from Gaza.

Jewish Insider

Truthout also described a program called Onward Israel, where students have the option to join Sar-El Volunteers for Israel and “directly assist Israel’s defense efforts, from organizing supplies to supporting essential logistics for the IDF.”

The RSOCC report identified two Israeli bases where Hillel students volunteer: Hatzerim airbase, located 19 miles from Gaza, and Tze’elim Army Base, described as an urban warfare training center in the Negev region of Israel.

In a statement to The Times of Israel, Hillel International CEO Adam Lehman said the USS was “[d]emonizing Hillel with false charges rooted in age-old antisemitic tropes.”

The New York Post said the New School retained a faculty member, Corinna Mullin, who was arrested for her role in an April 2024 encampment at the City College of New York’s campus in Harlem that led to a science building catching fire and $3 million in damages.

The Post reported that the New School student senate voted May 1 to end funding for Hillel, claiming its participation in trips that sent students to volunteer on military bases in Israel tied it to “grave violations of international law.”

Hillel responded that targeting its apolitical organization amounted to attacking Jewish identity on campus, and the Post quoted Michael Valdes saying, “People are entitled to their opinion about Israel, the war and international politics.”

The Post also reported that Hillel said the Israel trips were funded by private donations, not through student fees, and that only a small source of Hillel’s funding came from student fees distributed by the student senate.

In the House.gov release about campus antisemitism, U.S. Congressman Josh Gottheimer said, “When the Jewish community at Rutgers is confronted by hate or intolerance, this is an attack on all of us,” linking campus safety language to the broader political climate described across the sources.