Accusations of Israeli genocide at US universities linked to BDS supporters, AMCHA report finds

A report from the AMCHA Initiative claims that accusations of genocide against Israel in university academic programming are overwhelmingly concentrated among speakers and department leaders with prior support for boycotting or sanctioning Israel.

The AMCHA Initiative, which monitors antisemitism and anti-Zionism on US college campuses, investigated how claims of genocide in Gaza entered academic spaces after the Israel-Hamas war began. Researchers found that between October 10 and October 24, 2023, before Israel's major ground invasion of Gaza, 14 academic units across 12 US campuses sponsored events or issued statements accusing Israel of genocide. Notably, every one of these units was led by a senior official who had publicly supported an academic boycott of Israel before October 7.

The study analyzed 278 recordings of Israel-related events held during the 2024-2025 academic year across 51 US campuses popular with Jewish students. Events were categorized based on whether speakers had documented pre-October 7 support for boycotting Israel or the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The findings revealed a significant disparity: events featuring a pre-October 7 BDS-supporting speaker were approximately 40 times more likely to contain an accusation that Israel was perpetrating genocide.

Specifically, 85% of events with BDS-supporting speakers included the genocide accusation, compared to just 2% of events without such speakers. Among the 83 events that did contain the accusation, the number of references ranged from one to 53, with a median of seven per event. Furthermore, events with BDS-supporting speakers were nearly nine times more likely to be sponsored by an academic unit led by a pre-October 7 academic-boycott supporter. When the genocide accusation appeared in an event title or promotional material, 96% of those events had at least one sponsoring unit leader who supported a boycott.