PHOTO: Eliot Hall at Reed College. (Rockne Roll/The Jewish Review)

By ROCKNE ROLL
The Jewish Review
As the academic year comes to a close on college campuses around the Portland metro area, Jewish students and the professionals that support Jewish life on campuses are taking stock of all that’s happened. What was already a challenging environment post-Oct. 7 rose to a near-boiling point as a wave of campus occupations that began at Columbia University in New York reached the West Coast.
Garnering the most headlines was a four-day occupation of Portland State University’s Miller Library. The takeover was broken up by Portland Police, but only after causing at least $750,000 of damage to the library. 
Hannah Sherman, Executive Director of Greater Portland Hillel, said the occupation of the main library on a commuter campus like PSU’s poses a particular challenge for Jewish students, many of whom were preparing for mid-term examinations at the time and looking for a place to study. 
“What if you’re a Jewish student or faculty, staff member, anyone walking through campus and you’re seeing signs in front of the library that say, ‘All Zionists are bastards,’ ‘May Zionists be forgotten’ and ‘Globalize the Intifada?’” Sherman said. “They need access to campus spaces like the library to use the books in the library, the computers in the library, the technology that the library provides that these students might not have access to outside of campus.”
The Miller Library will remain closed until Fall term, PSU has announced. And while the library occupation has ended, sporadic protests continue to occur on campus and the culture that prompted the occupation remains. 
“While the physical encampment might be gone, the virtual encampment is still very much living on,” Sherman said. “When I say that, I mean that it lives in the online social media space where classmates are still posting things related to sort of messaging that they shared during the encampment. “Also, it’s living on in the classrooms; we have students who are coming to us and sharing things that their professors are saying, like denying the fact that women were raped on Oct. 7. That is something that a student told us that their professor told them in a class that had absolutely nothing to do with the Israel/Palestine conflict in any way, shape or form.”
Across town at Reed College, individuals entered a dormitory building on campus and destroyed the mezuzah on the door of a Jewish student who had been filming an anti-Israel protest organized by Students for Justice in Palestine early that day, Sunday, May 5. The next day, several rocks were thrown through the student’s open window, striking the student as they were in bed. 
“This is a clear act of antisemitism directed at a student on our campus, and that is unacceptable and unlawful behavior,” Phyllis Esposito, vice president and dean for institutional diversity, and Karnell McConnell-Black, vice president for student life, wrote in an email to the Reed community following the assault. 
The student has left Reed College and does not plan to return, according to Bob Horenstein, Director of Community Relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland. Sherman described the assault’s impact bluntly.
“It is absolutely terrifying,” she said. 
Meanwhile, a protest occupation, also organized by SJP, had established itself in the administrative area of Eliott Hall at Reed over a 10-day period before the end of the academic year. The building also houses the campus chapel and classrooms, making access to these spaces difficult for Jewish students. 
“Jewish students who wanted to access that, they didn’t feel safe entering that space and having to walk past people who were going to ask them if they were a Zionist,” Sherman explained. “If you’re a Zionist, then you’re not really welcome in these other spaces on campus and so Jewish students who do hold Zionism as a part of their identity are just looking for safe spaces, and it’s really, really hard to do.”
A short-lived encampment at the Lewis and Clark College has disbanded with the end of classes for the academic year. 
“One of [the signs at the Lewis and Clark encampment] specifically said ‘keep Zionists out’,” Sherman recalled. “We did get the university to take down that sign because we told them that that was completely exclusionary.”
Sherman and the staff at Hillel are hoping the situation will ease in the coming weeks. 
“We’re hoping for a quieter summer, especially in places like Reed and Lewis and Clark where most, if not all, of the students have left,” she said. 
PSU’s academic year does not end until mid-June, however, and the downtown campus’ summer programs are more robust than many of the smaller liberal-arts colleges in the area, so Sherman acknowledges issues may persist there through the summer months. 
If you or someone you know has experienced antisemitism on a college campus in the Portland area, contact Hannah Sherman at hannah@pdxhillel.org or Bob Horenstein at bob@jewishportland.org.