By: Justin Winograd

On a mild September night in 2024, the kind of evening that ordinarily dissolves into memory without consequence, Mathew Nezaria walked alone along Easton Avenue toward his apartment near the edge of Rutgers University’s New Brunswick campus. The pre-law student had spent the evening with friends. He was, by his estimate, only minutes from home. It was a short walk—one that countless students make every night without incident.

But as NJ.com reported on Tuesday, even the most ordinary moments can now carry extraordinary risk for Jewish students on American college campuses.

Four men walked ahead of Nezaria. Suddenly, one of them turned around and accused him of following them. The confrontation escalated quickly and ominously. “What’s your ethnicity?” the man demanded. The question, heavy with implication, marked a turning point. “This wasn’t going to go well,” Nezaria later recalled in an interview cited by NJ.com.

What followed was not a random outburst, but a chilling illustration of how geopolitical conflict has seeped into the daily lives of Jewish students far from the Middle East. The men steered the conversation toward the war in Gaza, demanding that Nezaria offer his “solution” to end it. For several tense minutes, the exchange remained restrained, even intellectual. Then, as quickly as it had stabilized, it collapsed.

As Nezaria turned to leave, one of the men shouted after him: “I have a solution for you. All you motherf—ers should die! I think all your people should die!”

The words echoed down Easton Avenue. The threat was not abstract. It was personal, targeted, and unmistakably antisemitic.

According to the report at NJ.com, Nezaria’s experience is not an anomaly but part of a growing pattern that has come to define Jewish life on campuses across New Jersey and the United States since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel. The ensuing war in Gaza did not merely inflame passions overseas; it poured accelerant onto ideological fault lines already fracturing American society.

For Jewish students, those fractures have become deeply personal. More than one-third of Jewish college students reported experiencing antisemitism at least once during their time on campus, according to the American Jewish Committee’s State of Antisemitism in America 2024 Report, figures highlighted in NJ.com’s extensive coverage. Nearly as many students said they felt uncomfortable wearing clothing or symbols that would identify them as Jewish.

“It took me off guard,” Nezaria told NJ.com of the September incident. “I was actually impressed at first because we were able to have a genuine conversation — like a calm, intellectual conversation. And then things just went straight downhill.”

Nezaria did not come to Rutgers intending to become a Jewish activist. Like many students, he came to study, to prepare for law school, to build a future. Yet by June 2025, he found himself standing before dozens of attendees at a screening of the documentary October 8 in East Brunswick, recounting not one incident of antisemitism, but several.

As NJ.com has reported, Rutgers University has become one of the most visible flashpoints in the national debate over Israel, Hamas, and the boundaries between protest and harassment. Alongside institutions such as Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Montclair State, and the University of California, Berkeley, Rutgers came under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights for alleged violations relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination.

In January 2025, following that federal investigation, Rutgers was found to have “likely operated a hostile environment based on national origin/shared ancestry in university programs or activities,” according to a statement from OCR officials cited by NJ.com. The university agreed to a series of remedial actions, including reviewing complaint procedures, issuing an anti-discrimination statement, and providing training.

Yet for many Jewish students, these administrative responses have done little to change the lived reality on campus.

NJ.com’s analysis of Anti-Defamation League data paints a stark statistical picture. New Brunswick, home to Rutgers’ flagship campus, now joins Lakewood, Teaneck, and Cherry Hill—towns with large Jewish populations—at the top of New Jersey’s list for reported antisemitic incidents.

The escalation has been dramatic. In 2021, Middlesex County recorded just nine antisemitic incidents. By last year, that number had surged to 54, encompassing harassment, vandalism, and assault. NJ.com reported that the spike coincided with sustained pro-Palestinian protests that engulfed the Rutgers campus following October 7.

The incidents themselves range from disturbing to outright dangerous. According to the report at NJ.com and federal reports, allegations include eggs thrown at a Jewish fraternity during Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day; online posts declaring “Die Jews Die”; and claims that Students for Justice in Palestine shared social media posts denying that the October 7 massacre occurred at all.

Other incidents crossed into unmistakable criminality. A swastika was drawn on a Rutgers-Camden dorm room door. A mezuzah—a sacred Jewish symbol affixed to doorframes—was defaced. In one particularly alarming case covered by NJ.com, a Rutgers student posted on an app: “Palestinian protesters, there is an Israeli at AEPi go kill him.” The student was subsequently charged with bias intimidation, terroristic threats, and false public alarm.

For Nezaria, who was a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi), the Jewish fraternity frequently referenced in NJ.com’s reporting, the hostility did not remain confined to words or online threats. In late 2024, a dispute with another fraternity spiraled into antisemitic violence.

According to Nezaria, rival students rushed into the AEPi house, hurling antisemitic slurs and triggering a physical brawl. “My friend had to go to the hospital. He got a concussion,” Nezaria told NJ.com. The violence was not isolated to a single moment. It lingered.

For days afterward, masked students reportedly sat in cars outside the fraternity house late into the night. At one point, around 3 a.m., four or five individuals knocked on the door while roughly 30 fraternity members gathered inside, uncertain of what might happen next.

“We didn’t know what was going to happen,” Nezaria said, describing an atmosphere of siege that NJ.com has documented in similar incidents at campuses nationwide.

This was not the first time AEPi had been targeted. NJ.com previously reported on a 2022 incident in which protesters leaving a Students for Justice in Palestine rally went directly to the fraternity house, shouting antisemitic slurs and spitting on members.

The escalation has not gone unnoticed by state and federal authorities. Gov. Phil Murphy issued a blunt statement in response to the incidents: “Antisemitism has no place in New Jersey.” His words echoed the sentiments of many officials, but for affected students, declarations alone feel insufficient.

The FBI has also taken notice. James E. Dennehy, the former special agent in charge of the FBI’s Newark office, told NJ.com last year that since October 7, there has been “a whole lot of hate speech going on,” particularly among young people on college campuses.

“They may be adults over the age of 18,” Dennehy said, “but they’re still young, and they’re now fully engulfed in hate speech, something that we get very involved in from an outreach standpoint, as it relates to hate crimes.”

As the NJ.com report emphasized, hate speech often spills into action. Threats, vandalism, and assaults are not theoretical risks—they are documented realities.

One of the most troubling aspects of the current climate, as highlighted repeatedly by NJ.com, is how quickly political discourse can morph into dehumanization. Nezaria’s encounter on Easton Avenue began as a conversation about geopolitics. It ended with a call for the death of an entire people.

That transition—from debate to hate—is at the heart of what many Jewish students describe as the new campus reality. Criticism of Israeli government policy, they argue, has increasingly served as a gateway to antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation, particularly when directed at individual students who have no role in policymaking whatsoever.

For Nezaria, the September night could have ended far worse. Alone and outnumbered four to one, he turned back to face his aggressors after one of them wished death upon Jews and Israelis. The moment teetered on the edge of physical violence.

It did not cross that line. But for many Jewish students in New Jersey and beyond, the line feels thinner than ever.

As NJ.com continues to report, the situation remains fluid. Universities pledge reforms. Law enforcement monitors threats. Students organize, protest, and counter-protest. Yet beneath the headlines and official statements lies a deeper question: whether Jewish students can once again feel like ordinary participants in campus life, rather than symbols, targets, or proxies for a distant war.

For Mathew Nezaria, the answer is not yet clear. His story, like so many others chronicled by NJ.com, is a reminder that antisemitism is not a relic of history or a problem confined to faraway places. It is present, immediate, and, for too many students, unavoidable.

A short walk home should never become a test of identity or endurance. Yet on campuses across New Jersey, it increasingly has.