Student survey points to a rise in Islamophobia on California college campuses

Muslim college students across California say they have faced an increase in harassment and discrimination on their campuses in the last year, according to a new report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The report from the Muslim advocacy organization, released Tuesday, comes amid heightened tensions at many Bay Area schools in the wake of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Protests at several campuses, including Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley and Cal Poly Humboldt, resulted in clashes with police in the spring and several student arrests and sparked a flurry of new university rules and policies attempting to crack down on student encampments.

“This past year has been extremely traumatizing for Muslim college students standing against the genocide in Gaza,” said Musa Tariq, policy coordinator at CAIR’s San Francisco Bay Area office. “The levels of…harassment and discrimination Muslim college students have had to face on their campuses throughout the state is unprecedented.”

The report was conducted in collaboration with CAIR’s Center for the Prevention of Hate and Bullying, an anti-hate organization created by the nonprofit civil rights group in 2021.

Anonymous survey responses from 720 students at 87 public and private higher education institutions during the 2023-24 school year pointed to a pattern of rising harassment, intensified Islamophobic incidents and a lack of support from university administrators.

Nearly half of the students who responded said they experienced harassment or discrimination on campus due to their Muslim identity and 92% said they experienced it after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

Iman Deriche, a third-year student at Stanford University, recalled a phone call with her father the day after the attack where he told her to stay inside, lock her doors and be careful when walking around campus.

“I didn’t understand at first, but just after one week, his suggestions became a necessary part of my daily routine,” Deriche said.

Deriche said she experienced several incidents of harassment and discrimination due to her Muslim identity last fall. She said she was followed, screamed at, verbally and physically assaulted and threatened by other students.

“Even after reporting these incidents to the university, I – along with many other Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students on campus – felt both invisible…and hyper-visible,” Deriche said.

“The university is committed to providing a safe, supportive, and harassment-free environment for our students,” Stanford said in a statement.

Only one in four student respondents who said they experienced harassment or discrimination said they reported it to their school administration or law enforcement, but 90% of the respondents who did report the harassment felt that their school’s responses failed to meet their needs.

Nearly two-thirds of student respondents said they didn’t report the harassment or discrimination they experienced because they “didn’t think it would make a difference.”

The report also highlighted several universities with particularly high response rates, including Berkeley with 31 student responses – 85% of whom said they experienced harassment and discrimination on campus due to their Muslim identity.

“UC Berkeley has an unwavering commitment to do all that we can so that every student regardless of their origin, identity or perspective feels safe, respected and welcome at all times,” said Dan Mogulof, the university’s assistant vice chancellor for executive communications. “We urge students who believe they’ve been subject to bias, discrimination or harassment to report that immediately to our Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination and we take those complaints seriously and promise to respond to all reports.”

But Zaid Yousef, a second-year law student at the university, said dismissive comments from university leaders, like university law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky, whose graduation dinner sparked controversy over a confrontation he had with a pro-Palestinian student, have made Muslim students on campus feel unwelcome.

“Berkeley has failed time and time again to protect its Muslim students,” Yousef said. “The only support we’ve been offered is lip service in the forms of emails and meetings where no serious discussions are had and no meaningful decisions are made.”

Tariq, the policy coordinator, said the organization hopes the survey’s findings will hold California colleges and universities “accountable to the very students they are tasked to protect.”

Other reports have also pointed to an “unprecedented” rise in antisemitism across college campuses in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

According to data from the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit “anti-hate” organization that fights discrimination and bias, there has been a 140% increase in antisemitic incidents from 2022 to 2023, with a total of nearly 9,000 incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism across the country.

The Jewish Community Relations Council did not respond to this news organization’s request for comment but the organization’s CEO has previously pointed to the Bay Area as a “flashpoint” for antisemitism.

Tariq said while CAIR is hopeful tensions on college campuses will subside, the organization is bracing for an increase in Islamophobia given the country’s current political climate. Shortly after taking office the first time in 2017, incoming president Donald Trump implemented a travel ban barring people from some predominantly Muslim countries from visiting the U.S.

“Though we are hopeful the climate and our college campuses can improve with time, we remain vigilant,” he said, “especially in the face of the upcoming Trump administration, whose policies may likely promote violent repression of students voices.”