February 2nd, 2026 – The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) and the American Jewish Medical Association (AJMA) express their concern regarding a disturbing trend of agenda-driven programming on campuses that subordinates scholarly rigor to partisan indoctrination. This pattern of programming with pre-ordained ideological outcomes was recently on display at Harvard University’s medical school with a January speaker series on Gaza and is set to repeat itself at the upcoming “Conference on the Jewish Left” at Boston University.
The institutional sponsorship of the Boston University conference adds the University’s imprimatur to this elevation of extremist ideology under the guise of academic scholarship. When Boston University lends its name and resources to a slate of speakers who minimize the scope of antisemitism and spin the Oct. 7 massacre as a moral indictment of Israel and its supporters in the Jewish community, it suggests university support for rhetoric that targets the identity and safety of Jewish students.
Boston University Jewish leaders have told CAMERA that they fear for their safety as Jews on campus. These concerns have also been echoed by the University’s Hillel chapter. A Boston University working group established shortly after the Oct. 7 attack concluded that Jewish and Israeli students have been the target of aggression from other students and faculty members, and charged that there were insufficient protections for Jewish faculty, staff, and students. And last year, adjunct professor Douglas Hauer-Gilad said he was forced to resign from the BU School of Law because he is Israeli and spoke out against anti-Jewish rhetoric.
A member of Boston University Students for Israel, a campus group that partners with CAMERA, voiced his alarm about the lopsided, anti-Israel panel: “After everything that has happened on campus this year, it’s hard not to see this conference as part of a pattern. Jewish students are repeatedly told these events are ‘academic,’ even when the rhetoric involved mirrors the hostility we experience day to day.”
On a campus where the Hillel building was recently vandalized by “pro-Palestinian” activists, and where pro-Palestinian student groups endorsed violence against Israelis and Jews by celebrating the “intifada,” it is all the more essential that the university ensure Jewish and Israeli students are treated fairly, and that university-affiliated programming is evenhanded, driven by the pursuit of truth, and motivated by scholarship rather than activism.
CAMERA is not calling for the cancellation of this event or the silencing of extremist speakers. We believe in a robust marketplace of ideas. We do, however, challenge the lopsided pattern of programming that elevates slates of partisan, anti-Israel activists, often with institutional backing.
Boston University is not alone in hosting indoctrination masquerading as scholarship. At Harvard Medical School earlier this month, a multi-day event framed around the anti-Israel “genocide” libel featured a uniformly anti-Israel lineup, including a speaker who defended two student groups at Columbia that explicitly celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.
American Jewish Medical Association President Dr. Yael Halaas expressed concern about a recent seminar series organized by Harvard Medical School student groups. The conference, titled “Genocide, Racism, and Health in Sudan & Palestine,” falsely casts the spurious “genocide” slur as fact. “Such events exemplify a growing national trend of one-sided discussions on healthcare in Gaza, where biased reports frequently misrepresent Israel,” Dr. Halaas noted. Dr. Halaas emphasized that these conferences risk promoting indoctrination over education and contribute to rhetoric that undermines the safety of healthcare providers and patients. This is part of a troubling pattern across the country. The Boston area, in particular, has seen an uptick in antisemitism and the expression of toxic and discriminatory anti-Israel sentiment in healthcare in the US. The American Jewish Medical Association, the only Jewish medical association in the United States, remains committed to monitoring and addressing antisemitism in healthcare, while supporting Jewish medical students and faculty.
Reflecting on the Boston University and Harvard Medical School conferences, CAMERA CEO Kurt Schwartz explained: “The core mission of a university is the pursuit of truth, but we are seeing that mission give ground to a culture of anti-Israel indoctrination. When universities replace rigorous, balanced inquiry with one-sided activist showcases, they fail their Jewish students and the very standards of scholarship they claim to uphold.”
CAMERA remains concerned that the hostile atmosphere for Jews on U.S. campuses is intrinsically linked to hiring practices in academia that increasingly elevate activism, and specifically activism hostile to Israel, above traditional scholarly credentials. When ideological commitment replaces rigorous inquiry as the primary metric for recruitment, the university ceases to be a sanctuary for objective truth and instead becomes a platform for partisan indoctrination.
# ENDS #
To arrange additional quotes and media interviews via CAMERA, please contact: (+44) 7495 545174, [email protected]
To arrange additional quotes and media interviews via the American Jewish Medical Association (AJMA), please contact (410) 491-9360, [email protected]
For further information on the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, please visit camera.org
For further information on CAMERA’s work in Higher Education, please visit cameraoncampus.org
For further information on the American Jewish Medical Association please visit theajma.org/about