At least 300 students have been prohibited from registering for classes at Northwestern University because they refused to watch a controversial antisemitism training video that they said was biased in favor of Israel, contained factual inaccuracies and could inflame campus tension over Gaza.
The university’s decision puts jobs, visas, stipends and health insurance at risk, students said during a press conference in Chicago on Friday morning, but those who spoke said they were still unwilling to do the training.
“The training is not just about silencing speech, but achieving consent so that we are complicit,” said Salma Moustafa, a PhD student in sociology. “Northwestern wants its student and faculty body to pretend it is not happening and instead consume propaganda that justifies the Israeli Zionist occupation project.”
Students were required to complete the training by mid-September to be able to register.
A university spokesperson said in a statement that the training was similar to those that are required for discrimination or harassment. “As with other mandatory student trainings, failure to complete this training can result in university action, including a registration hold,” the spokesperson said.
“Students are not required to agree with the training modules but must attest that they will abide by the student code of conduct, as well as the university’s policy on discrimination, harassment and sexual misconduct,” they added.
Universities across the US are requiring students to undergo controversial antisemitism trainings in response to Trump administration threats to pull funding for institutions that, in its view, fail to adequately address campus antisemitism. It is not clear how many other universities are requiring student participation. The Northwestern training included a video on antisemitism and another on anti-Arab bias.
Students objecting to the video say it equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. At one point the narrator compares critics of Israel to former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, and uses a controversial definition of antisemitism.
The video also states that Israel was founded “on British land” and refers to the occupied West Bank as “Judea and Samaria”, the biblical name controversially used for the region by the Israeli government.
The training module’s opponents at Northwestern, many of them Jewish, say the material does little to protect Jews. Instead, it “reinforces, rather than reduces, the proliferation of discriminatory bias in our communities”, students wrote in an open letter.
The Northwestern training was produced by the Jewish United Fund (JUF) , a pro-Israel advocacy group that Micol Bez, a student organizer, said has opposed a ceasefire. In a statement, the JUF defended the video.
”There is a critical difference between criticizing policies of the state of Israel versus questioning Israel’s right to exist – and demonizing Jewish students for their connections to Israel,” a spokesperson said.
The university emailed students in March to say that the implementation of the training “will adhere to federal policy including President Donald Trump’s 29 January executive order, ‘Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism’”.
Despite the university requiring students to undergo the training, the Trump administration still cut $790m in research funding.
