As sirens sounded from militant rocket attacks Monday morning, 93 students at Brigham Young University’s Jerusalem campus were sent to bomb shelters.
The University of Washington, meanwhile, condemned the killing by Hamas militants of a recent Ph.D. graduate, one of at least 14 Americans killed so far in the conflict.
And three Northeastern University students were evacuated from the same region over the last few days. One of them told the Boston-based university’s news outlet she woke up to sirens outside her apartment in Tel Aviv on Saturday. She spent much of the morning hiding with her parents, who were visiting, in a shelter.
“You hear rockets every couple of months, and it’s not such an unusual thing,” Joshua Einhorn, another student, told the university. “But as soon as the first sirens went off, everybody could tell that it was a different situation than usual.”
As war rages in the Middle East, American colleges have been left trying to keep students and faculty studying abroad safe.
USA TODAY reached out to more than two dozen colleges, many with a history of having a presence in Israel or large study abroad programs, in the last two days to ask how their programs have been affected by the unfolding crisis. Some schools confirmed students have safely left the area. Others said students and staff remained in the region while their institutions monitor the situation and put in place new safety protocols. A small number of schools reported that by chance, this semester, they have no students and faculty studying in Israel.
The responses demonstrate the delicate balance institutions are trying to strike between placating worried parents in a time of crisis and limiting how much they share out of concern for the safety of vulnerable students and staff.
The scale of that challenge likely touches thousands of families across the area. Nearly 1,900 U.S. students studied abroad in Israel in the 2019-20 school year, per State Department data. The year prior, 3,532 students studied abroad in Israel, according to the Institute of International Education.
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Students still in Israel ‘deeply shaken’
Despite the escalating war, now in its fourth day, and a mounting death toll of about 1,600 on both sides, some students and faculty at several colleges remain in the region.
Ayelet Cohen, dean of the Rabbinical School at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, said in an email that although the school’s faculty and staff in Jerusalem are physically safe, they’ve been “deeply shaken.”
Many of them spent the last few days waiting in long lines to donate blood, she said. Others babysat children of Israeli parents who were called on to reserve duty.
“We are in very close touch with our students studying in Israel,” she said.
An unspecified number of University of California students in university-sponsored study abroad programs are still in the region but are safe, according to Ryan King, a university spokesperson. In an email, King said the university’s policy on travel safety abroad requires not disclosing the number of students in a given location. He said parents have been notified of the situation and the university is keeping close watch on events there.
“At this time, the University is following the same practice as many other American institutions of higher education, allowing students to remain on their programs in Israel should they wish to do so,” King said in the email.
American University, a private university in Washington, D.C., has retained a “small number” of students in Israel. Administrators are working to inform students, faculty and staff about available safety resources, spokesperson Carol Wilkerson said.
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Students flee over the weekend
Eighteen New York University students were flown out of Tel Aviv this weekend, university spokesperson John Beckman said in an email. They were transported to the university’s satellite campus in neighboring Abu Dhabi.
The University of Denver, meanwhile, is working to evacuate one student who was studying in the region. The school is planning his return for later this week, university spokesperson Jon Stone said in an email.
Adam Rovner, a professor at the university, was supposed to lead a trip to Israel for alumni later this year. It was canceled this week, he said in an interview.
Rovner, the university’s director for the Center of Judaic Studies, has friends and family in Israel. He kept in touch with them this weekend as the chaos unfolded.
“They were in fear for their lives,” he said.
Some schools had no students studying abroad in Israel
Several schools with study abroad programs confirmed in emails to USA TODAY no students were studying abroad in the region at this time. They include:
- Drexel University in Philadelphia;
- Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington;
- Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles;
- Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey;
- Seattle University;
- The University of Chicago;
- The University of Florida; and
- Virginia Commonwealth University.
Harvard criticized for slow response to conflict
Another concern for colleges in recent days has been how to speak to families, staff and alumni with broad and differing views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The regional discord has long had ripple effects for American colleges. Typically, they come in the form of calls from students for academic boycotts. Recently, Palestinian students on some campuses also have alleged discrimination in study-abroad programs to the embattled region.
In a striking statement Monday, Harvard University’s former president Lawrence Summers slammed the school’s administration for its slowness in speaking out about the violence. Over the weekend, student groups called Israel “entirely responsible” for the initial deadly attack by Hamas, an Iran-backed militant group designated by the United States as a terrorist organization.
“In nearly 50 years of @Harvard affiliation, I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “The silence from Harvard’s leadership, so far, coupled with a vocal and widely reported student groups’ statement blaming Israel solely, has allowed Harvard to appear at best neutral towards acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel.”
Current Harvard President Claudine Gay issued a statement late Monday condemning the “terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas.” The university’s communications office did not respond to emailed requests for comment.
“Let me also state, on this matter as on others, that while our students have the right to speak for themselves, no student group − not even 30 student groups − speaks for Harvard University or its leadership,” Gay wrote.
Zachary Schermele is a breaking news and education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.