As a news report in The Gazette this week reminds us, what passes for political activism at plenty of the country’s higher-ed institutions continues to escalate, all too often, into repugnant antisemitism. Some of those campuses, unfortunately, are in Colorado.

The national Anti-Defamation League has compiled its third annual “Campus Antisemitism Report Card,” an evaluation that ranks colleges according to their responses to antisemitism. The ADL gave low marks to two of the four Colorado schools included in the study.

Colorado College and Colorado State University each were given a “C” grade, The Gazette reports. The University of Colorado at Boulder scored a “B” as did the University of Denver.

The ADL noted in a news release on its findings that some of the low grades it handed out in its report card were due to, “gaps in enforcement, limited transparency, or the absence of durable systems to support Jewish life on campus,” The Gazette reports. 

CSU received a “below expectations,” for example, under the category “Publicly Disclosed Administrative Actions.” In other words, investigations, findings or actions taken by the school’s front office in response to antisemitic incidents weren’t adequately shared with the public. That’s an important consideration in assessing whether a school has taken sufficient steps to reassure targeted students.

This year’s ADL report card evaluated the Colorado schools and nearly 150 other colleges and universities nationwide based on factors including administrative policies, Jewish life on campus, campus conduct and “climate concerns,” The Gazette reported. Former college presidents, current students and Jewish organization representatives weighed in.

The good news, as the study’s authors pointed out in the ADL’s release, is that, “Overall results show a clear upward trend.” The number of higher ed institutions nationally with the highest-rated responses to antisemitism on campus rose to 58% for the 2026 report.

But an underlying concern lurks: How did institutions whose hallmark historically has been free speech — and the tolerance of identities as well as ideas — morph into epicenters of hatred for identities as well ideas? 

Jewish students in Colorado and across the country have been harassed — insulted, shouted down, intimidated and worse — by protesters purporting to speak for Palestinians embroiled in conflict with Israel on the other side of the world. 

Fairly few of the protesters have been Palestinians or have had any other connection to that region. They’re just garden-variety college students doing what a small but vocal minority of college students always have done — embrace the latest radical fad. And that fad has been resurgent Palestinian nationalism in the wake of terror group Hamas’ heinous, Oct. 7, 2023, sneak attack on Israel, and Israel’s military response in pursuit of Hamas.

It was accompanied by a surge in campus antisemitism in the U.S., scapegoating Jewish students, including in Colorado. 

What’s as outrageous has been the tepid and in some cases even treacherous response from some higher-ed administrators who are supposed to ensure a safe and tolerant learning environment for all students. The most despicable examples occurred elsewhere in the country — embarrassingly, at some of the nation’s premier institutions — at which free rein was given to campus radicals who hounded Jewish students. 

The worst of it missed our state, but clearly, more must be done at some Colorado campuses to win back trust and assure a safe and welcoming learning environment for Jewish students as well as for all others. Political speech must never become persecution.