Anti-Israel genocide claims on US campuses linked to preexisting BDS activism, study says

Accusations of genocide against Israel on U.S. college campuses following the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, attack were overwhelmingly concentrated among academics who had already supported the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, according to a new study released Wednesday.

Titled “When Political Advocacy Acquires Academic Authority: BDS and the Genocide Accusation on US Campuses,” the study examined 278 academic events held on 51 U.S. campuses during the 2024-2025 academic year. The research found that events featuring speakers with a history of BDS activism were 40 times more likely to include accusations that Israel was committing genocide than events without such speakers.

The study was released by the AMCHA Initiative, a nonprofit organization that investigates, documents and combats antisemitism at U.S. academic institutions. Its findings suggest that scholars who had already advocated for isolating Israel helped give academic legitimacy to genocide accusations that became increasingly common on college campuses after Oct. 7.

The study assessed that the strong link between pre-October 7 BDS advocacy and genocide accusations was “not simply a broadly shared feature of academic discussion about Israel and Gaza.”

“Rather, its use was overwhelmingly concentrated among speakers who entered the post-October 7 period with a preexisting commitment to taking action against Israel,” the report concluded.

Of the 278 events analyzed, 93 featured speakers who had embraced the BDS narrative before the Oct. 7 attack. Researchers identified prior support for BDS through social media posts, calls for boycotts against Israel, pro-BDS writing and signatures on BDS petitions.

Among events featuring BDS speakers, 85% included accusations that Israel was committing genocide, compared with just 2% of events that did not feature BDS speakers.

The study also found that events featuring speakers who advocated BDS were nine times more likely to be backed by an academic unit whose director supported the anti-Israel movement. Such directors were associated with 56% of events featuring BDS speakers, compared with 6% of events without them.

The report found that genocide accusations against Israel were being made even before Israel launched its large-scale ground operation in Gaza.

For example, the report documented a “Gaza in Context” online event held on Oct. 20, 2023, and co-organized by Middle East studies departments at six universities. During the event, speakers used terms including “clearly a genocidal war,” “genocidal intent,” “genocidal machine” and “the realities of genocide in real time.”

Israel launched its large-scale ground operation in Gaza on Oct. 28, 2023.

The universities involved in the event were Georgetown University, George Mason University, Rutgers University, Harvard University, Brown University and the University of Chicago.

The report said a central goal of the genocide accusation was to demonize Israel and make any engagement with the country “morally unacceptable.”

“The findings reveal a strong connection between the genocide accusation in academic programming and a preexisting political effort to boycott and isolate Israel,” the study said. “That relationship suggests the genocide accusation is functioning as a form of anti-normalization within the BDS movement.”

The report also said genocide accusations harmed pro-Israel students by portraying them as supporting an “extraordinary moral crime” simply for backing Israel’s right to exist and defend itself.

The study found that 96% of promotional materials containing a genocide accusation were backed by an academic department led by a pro-BDS director.

“To describe a state as committing genocide is not merely to criticize a government policy,” the AMCHA Initiative study stated, but “casts continued engagement with it as potentially complicit in an extraordinary moral evil.”

The findings come amid broader concerns about antisemitism on U.S. college campuses since Oct. 7. A November 2023 study by the Network Contagion Research Institute reported a link between rising campus antisemitism and undisclosed donations from Middle Eastern countries including Qatar and Saudi Arabia.