Fifty-one colleges and universities across the United States were hostile to students that spoke out against the Gaza genocide, from 2024 to 2025, according to a report released on Feb. 11 by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
“DESIGNATED: CAIR’s 2025 Hostile Campus Ratings Report” found that Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bias was not specified in many of the campuses’ discrimination policy, but they had adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism (a definition that wrongly stigmatizes legitimate criticism of Israeli policies) or similar definition to target activists.
“Many of the institutions our team reviewed self-selected to be instruments of repression when it came to Muslims and others who held anti-genocide viewpoints,” said CAIR Research and Advocacy Director Corey Saylor, in a press statement.
“This report is a warning to potential students and staff that these places will take your money and then punish your viewpoints,” the statement continued.
“Columbia University and the City University of New York were rated the most ‘Hostile Campuses,’ each with an extremely low percentage score of just 2%. The University of Michigan was the other school with a one-digit percentage score at 7%. The University of Chicago and Case Western Reserve University round out the bottom five hostile campuses,” the report noted.
The report was completed in early December 2025 and reflects developments through that date. It is part of CAIR’s Unhostile Campus Campaign, and focuses on fostering campus environments where students, faculty, and staff enjoy free speech and academic freedom without being subjected to state force or violence based on their viewpoints.
“The most striking is, obviously, Columbia University,” said Maryam Hasan, Ed.D., Unhostile Campus Campaign Specialist in CAIR’s Research and Advocacy Department. She reflected on the April 2024 student occupation of Hamilton Hall to call attention to and protest the Gaza genocide.
Students renamed it Hind’s Hall, after five-year-old Hind Rajab, who, according to the Hind Rajab Foundation online, was “murdered, alongside her family, in a brutal act of genocidal violence by the Israeli Defense Forces.”
Hind, the report continued, “survived the initial attack but was left trapped in the wreckage, surrounded by the dead bodies of her family members. Her cries for help, captured during a live call to emergency services, were broadcast worldwide. The inhumanity of this calculated act reverberated globally, showing Israel’s systematic and indiscriminate targeting of civilians in Gaza.”
The genocide in Gaza perpetrated by Israel after October 7, 2023, sparked nationwide outrage, recalled Dr. Hasan. Police were called in and violently arrested students at Columbia University in New York.
Campus administration did not protect the students or their free speech rights, but faculty came out and stood next to them, Dr. Hasan argued. “It really alarmed me. It just alarmed me as an educational leader, as a teacher, myself,” Dr. Hasan told The Final Call.
In March 2025, Columbia University’s Judicial Board decided the disciplinary cases of students who participated in the occupation of Hamilton Hall. Twenty-two students received expulsions, suspensions, or degree revocations for their alleged involvement in pro-Palestinian protests.
For its part, Columbia University’s “Hostile Campus” rating sank from 100 to 2 points for institutional policies for Islamophobia, adoption of the IHRA definition or similar ones to target activists, biased statements and actions, and major policy changes/excluding input from students and faculty, student experience and campus climate, civil rights violations; free speech and political expression.
Key findings of CAIR’s “Hostile Campus” report are that:
• 51 campuses were investigated in response to civil rights concerns. No campus amongst the 51 that were investigated earned a “Unhostile Campus” rating.
• Six campuses earned an “Under Watch” rating, with the University of Alabama leading at 87%, just 3 percentage points from an “Unhostile” rating. The next five were the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Montclair State University, Colorado State University, the University of Central Florida, and California State University, Northridge.
• The average score was 37.667%, well below the passing grade for a college course. Almost 75% of the campuses investigated scored below 50%.
• More than half of the colleges and universities investigated in the report did not specify Islamophobia and/or anti-Muslim bias in their discrimination policy.
• Twelve university administrations adopted the controversial IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, including Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, City University of New York, Northwestern University, New York University, George Mason University, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio State University, Colorado State University, Pomona College, and Wayne State University.
• Title VI complaints were reportedly filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights for alleged discrimination against students and/or faculty at half of the colleges and universities.
• Over 75% of the campus administrations investigated reportedly called on police to arrest students, staff, and/or faculty members for protesting the genocide in Gaza after October 2023.
• 90% of campus administrations made significant policy changes without involving input from student and/or faculty leadership.
CAIR also released a hostile report on how campuses were responding to those protesters with violence and police force, noted Dr. Hasan. “We continued this campaign by designating universities as hostile campuses where we found and investigated that the campus administrations were using violence, using state force, using disciplinary actions to repress students from speaking out about the Gaza genocide,” she said.
Newly designated as a “Hostile Campus” for targeting anti-genocide voices were: University of California, San Francisco, University of Missouri, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Oregon, University of Texas at Dallas, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin, Virginia Commonwealth University, Yale University, Georgetown University, Montana State University, Ohio State University, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of California, San Diego, University of Kentucky, and University of Minnesota.
“Bottom line, I hope that administrators across the U.S. will read this report and review the actions that they took against students who are protesting the Gaza genocide and review their policies, review the complaints that have come in, review the lawsuits, discrimination complaints, and take it seriously.
And really adjust their program, adjust their adoptions of definitions of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, so that all students and faculty can express their free speech, their academic freedom, and enjoy those specific actions on campus that they want to take to express their viewpoints,” stated Dr. Hasan.
The ratings are used to mainly give students and parents information on which college campuses are supporting their free speech rights and faculty in their academic freedoms, and those which are not, she said.
Dr. Hasan explained that her investigation was conducted via an online search for publicly available reported information and accounts, documenting the alarming methods colleges and universities used to target anti-genocide voices on campus.
She plans follow-up investigations and stated that CAIR’s Report a Hostile Campus Portal Form is still available to students, faculty, and any individual who is experiencing free speech or academic freedom disciplinary issues. She continuously monitors the form and hopes to do an annual report.