When Meira Fiber-Munro chose to enroll at Emerson College in Boston in 2023, she was drawn to the school’s celebrated journalism program and vibrant downtown campus. But after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel thousands of miles away from Boston, the response on campus gradually eroded her sense of safety and belonging.
Pro-Palestinian protests erupted weekly on nearby Boston Common. Those peaked in April when student activists erected an encampment in a public alley, which Boston police forcibly cleared, arresting more than 100 people.
But even before that chaotic scene garnered national headlines, Jewish students said the campus climate had become hostile. Fiber-Munro said students’ behavior toward her changed. She found messages about Jewish “colonization” on her dorm room floor.
“Certain people had started to conflate Judaism, or even just having an Israeli identity, with being violent or supporting genocide,” said Fiber-Munro. She said she supported a ceasefire in Gaza, but found it difficult to speak with other students about the conflict. “There were people who didn’t want to hear me out or be my friend or work with me in class.”
Fiber-Munro transferred to the University of Oregon in Eugene. She wasn’t alone — at least ten of her Jewish friends left Emerson, too. GBH News spoke to five of them, and each had similar stories of feeling ostracized or harassed because of their identity.
Emerson saw its enrollment drop 6% this fall, despite undergraduate enrollment being up 5% nationwide. And with an undergraduate student body of only about 4,000, the enrollment drop has hit hard. The college cut its budget by $10 million and laid off staff.
While it’s difficult to quantify the extent of this problem nationwide, higher education experts warn the perception of a toxic campus culture can have a long-lasting effect. They say they’ve already seen a shift in where Jewish students are considering attendance.
“The biggest issue amongst our population [in 2024] was the rise in antisemitism,” said Alyse Levine, a private college counselor in North Carolina who works with a lot of Jewish families across the political spectrum. “It’s not just the students, it’s also parents drawing some lines of where they feel comfortable sending their students and where they feel comfortable sending their money.”
Brian Rosenberg, former president of Macalester College in Minnesota, said the campus “vibes” students pick up when they visit a campus can significantly impact admissions.
“Unless you’re a Harvard or a Columbia with enormous enrollment strength, unhappy students can make for fewer students the next year,” he explained. “If you look at a place like Emerson, they’re in a much more vulnerable position.”
That’s because Emerson, which has a relatively small endowment, relies on high tuition from a small student body, so it needs to maintain strong appeal for the degrees it offers in programs like journalism that don’t clearly lead to high-income careers.
“So, you’re facing headwinds to begin with, and then you layer on top of that this issue with the protests and with the perception of antisemitism — and it doesn’t take a lot to tip the scales 5-10% against you,” Rosenberg said.
Looking forward, he cautioned, public perception is notoriously hard to reverse.
“Colleges’ reputations are powerfully subject to forces that are beyond their control, and so I think you have to be open about the fact that it is a challenge,” he said. “But you also have to try to provide evidence that this is not the widespread environment on campus.”
Emerson declined multiple requests for an interview about its campus climate but provided a statement saying that the college has “zero tolerance for antisemitism and all forms of discrimination and is dedicated to fostering a caring and safe learning and teaching environment.”
Over the summer, the college adopted a policy of institutional neutrality, pledging not to take official positions on issues not directly related to the school’s mission. It also launched a program called EmersonTogether to foster what administrators describe as “unity” on campus.
Miriam Berkowitz Blue, executive director of the Hillel Council of New England, noted that the climate at Emerson has generally improved.
“It’s been a lot quieter,” she said.
Berkowitz Blue said Emerson has also strengthened its policies on protests and free speech and doubled down on its partnership with the Jewish campus organization Hillel.
“We really believe that if people choose an exit strategy of transferring out or of deciding not to enroll because they think that the grass is going to be greener somewhere else, that is really doing a disservice to the already small Jewish population on campus,” she said. “Because if they’re not there to help make that community more vibrant and more vocal and more active, then there aren’t that many students left.”
For students who’ve already transferred, though, they said they do not regret leaving.
“I did not expect to go through what I went through at Emerson,” said Mia Blachman, who had been studying journalism and acting in Boston. She described feeling ostracized by classmates and being removed from a theater production.
“The message [at Emerson] was basically any violence that’s happening is Israel’s fault,” she said.
Leaving, she said, wasn’t an easy decision. “It was my dream school, and all of this happened so quick,” she said.
But in the end, she chose to transfer to the University of Central Florida, back in her home state. Now, she said, she feels safer in Orlando than she ever did in Boston.
Fiber-Munro, now in her second semester at the University of Oregon, echoed that sense of relief.
“At Emerson, I felt like you were either with them or against them,” she said. “Here it doesn’t feel like there’s two teams and you have to be on one of them.”
Brian Bull and Jon Marcus contributed reporting.
For more on how the breakdown of civility on campus is affecting how students and their families choose a school, listen to our podcast, College Uncovered .
