On the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus, the spring of 2024 was difficult for Jewish students: antisemitic graffiti, pro-Palestinian encampments, terrorist flags being waved, and a general unease in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
This school year, other than the October 2024 takeover and vandalism of Morrill Hall, things were outwardly better. But in the classroom, that wasn’t necessarily the case.
“I realized very quickly after last spring and early summer that while we might not face the same type of encampments and the same type of student-to-student inappropriate rhetoric, that it was going to be a bigger problem in the classroom,” said Alex Stewart, Minnesota Hillel’s student president for 2023-24 and a Jewish leader on campus. “I had a feeling about that. Other people had a feeling about that, and then it came true.”
Stewart, who is a graduating senior, said she didn’t face much classroom antisemitism herself. But in speaking to peers, she heard many of them say they dealt with anti-Zionist rhetoric from professors and classmates.
“If there are classroom problems, it’s much harder to pinpoint and bring to whoever is a higher up in somebody’s college,” she said.
Rabbi Jill Avrin, the JCRC’s new director of campus affairs.
As a response to the challenges on campus, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas announced the hire of Rabbi Jill Avrin as its first director of campus affairs. The position is jointly funded by the Minneapolis Jewish Federation and donors Byron and Shirley Frank.
In this role, Avrin will lead JCRC’s efforts to “disrupt antisemitism on campus by empowering students, educating stakeholders, and fostering critical relationships with university staff and faculty,” according to the JCRC news release. The position will support campuses around the state, with a primary focus on the UMN Twin Cities campus.
“This role provides an opportunity for me to…bring together my skills and my passions – building relationships, showing up for students, and collaborating with partners – in order to help create a safe, proud, and vibrant Jewish life on campus,” Avrin said.
Avrin had spent most of her rabbinic career at Bet Shalom in Minnetonka, leaving in 2024 to start YourJewish, a nonprofit focused on education, rituals and lifecycle events. She is a board member at Minnesota Hillel, a graduate of the University of Minnesota, and has been a leader in the Minnesota Rabbinic Association.
“Rabbi Avrin’s passion, wisdom, and compassion make her the ideal person to step into this important new role,” said Steve Hunegs, JCRC’s executive director. “She is already a trusted presence on campus, and her ability to build relationships and respond with clarity and care is precisely what this moment demands.”
Avrin said in an email that she will continue some of the duties of YourJewish, including working with families and couples preparing for an independent life cycle celebration like a wedding or b’nai mitzvah.
“I’m so honored to accompany families through these sacred milestones who wouldn’t otherwise have a path toward marking these moments,” she wrote.
Avrin’s hire was met with excitement from Jewish organization leaders on campus.
“Rabbi Avrin has long been a powerful advocate for Jewish students at the University of Minnesota,” said Executive Director Emily Boskoff of Minnesota Hillel. “Her presence in this role sends a clear message to students: you are not alone, and our community stands with you.”
Said Rabbi Yitzi Steiner, the director of Chabad at the University of Minnesota: “Rabbi Avrin is a trusted partner and a calming presence during challenging times. Her leadership will help students feel supported, proud of their Jewish identity, and empowered to stand up with strength and dignity.”
Ethan Roberts, the deputy executive director of the JCRC, said that having someone like Avrin will be important for relationship building.
“The idea of having somebody from JCRC, with the resources and experiences and relationships that we have, but working closely with… stakeholders, we believe is going to make a material difference,” he said. “We’d like to go from just doing our best during a crisis to actually having it be something really positive.”
Climate change?
At the end of the 2023-24 school year, Stewart and other student leaders were front and center, speaking to the media at multiple press conferences to talk about the climate on campus, as well as speaking to the Minnesota Board of Regents in May 2024. At that meeting, Stewart and current Hillel President Charley Maloney detailed how Zionist Jewish students were harassed without the school stepping in to protect them.
Izzy Lundquist, Halle Wasserman, Alex Stewart, and Benjie Kaplan speak a Thursday, May 2 press conference.
One of the requests that the majority of Jewish students had of the administration was to take part in the Hillel International Campus Climate Initiative. The purpose of the program is to help college and university presidents and campus administrators counter antisemitism and build a campus climate in which Jewish students feel comfortable expressing their identity.
President Rebecca Cunningham, who started the role on July 1, 2024, has committed the school to participate in the 2025-26 cohort with 17 other colleges, including fellow Big Ten schools the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
At the March 24 kickoff breakfast at Minnesota Hillel, Cunningham said that none of the challenges that she faces as a university president are greater than making sure students in the University of Minnesota system feel safe.
University of Minnesota President Rebecca Cunningham speaking at the kickoff of the U’s participation in the Hillel International Campus Climate Initiative on March 24, 2025 (Lonny Goldsmith/TC Jewfolk).
“We have an inclusive community and we are proud of that community, and I am here to try to improve that and foster that welcoming community for all,” Cunningham said. “[The Jewish] community has specific challenges in this time that we are in. Antisemitism is real, antisemitism is spiky, and we have more than ever to do to educate peers in our community and your peers as students in what vibrant Jewish life looks like…and how it is an important part of our community for people to be able to live that fully and openly and respectfully.”
Roberts said there has been an improvement under Cunningham’s leadership,
“You’re seeing a difference…in terms of the responsiveness and sensitivity, and falling through their own policies this academic year as opposed to last academic year,” he said. Roberts said that while Interim President Jeffrey Ettinger struggled with policy enforcement last year, he wasn’t alone.
“I think that collectively, higher education was a metaphorical deer caught in headlights,” he said.
The decision to join the CCI was not cheered by all Jewish students.
Tzedek UMN, a new “social and social justice organization for antizionist Jews at the University of Minnesota,” was one of the organizations that signed onto an open letter to Cunningham and Provost Rachel Croson calling out the administration “for uncritically accepting the Trump administration’s framing that draconian measures restricting curriculum and controlling campus life are now justified under the cloak of complying with Title VI obligations and the insulting pretext of ‘protecting Jewish students.’”
The letter demanded the school withdraw from the Campus Climate Initiative, calling the program a “Trojan Horse to criminalize Palestine liberation activism on campus.”
The letter asserted that while “anti-Jewish hate is a serious and growing threat in America and around the world,” the signatories believe that “conflating any critique of Israel with antisemitic hate crimes is a smokescreen for silencing authentic public debate over national and international affairs.”
The letter, which was signed by Jews and non-Jews, asks the administration to “meet with anti-Zionist Jewish students, faculty, staff, and community members in the Twin Cities and listen to our concerns about the so-called ‘Campus Climate Initiative.’
“Zionist pressure groups funded by the state of Israel, and/or those driven by the interests of the state of Israel and its expansionist project, do not represent the Jewish people among us. They do not make Jewish people safe.”
Representatives from UMN Tzedek did not respond to a message seeking comment.
In response to the letter, the Minnesota Rabbinical Association penned their own letter saying that the “Trojan Horse” accusation “misrepresents the initiative.”
“[It] conflates it with the real, but separate concern regarding the current threat to constitutional rights on college campuses,” the MRA letter read. ”The CCI is not a Trojan Horse. Instead, it is a broad-reaching initiative to create a campus climate that ensures Jewish students – like all students – feel safe and fully included in campus life. The impact has already been felt.”
The MRA letter asks Cunningham to continue to resist the “pressure campaign” from Jewish Voice for Peace, UMN Tzedek, and others.
“Though Hillel, like any other Jewish institution, cannot possibly speak for every Jew, Hillel is widely embraced on college campuses around the country, including at the University of Minnesota, representing a broad and diverse swath of Jewish voices,” the rabbis wrote.
“Hillel supports Jewish students, as well as Jewish staff and faculty, who have been the recipients of targeted harassment and intimidation. It is critical that the University continues to follow Hillel’s lead as you work to combat harassment and bias on campus in all its forms.”
