‘From Screens to Campuses: How Online Antisemitism Became the Norm in France’

On a Paris university campus, a WhatsApp poll on the first year’s economics students’ class simply asked: “Juifs: pour ou contre” in translation, “Jews: For or Against?” – a chilling sign of how antisemitism has quietly become routine for French students. no longer just a digital quirk but a structural failure of our academic institutions. That single, unvarnished question captures the dread and exhaustion felt by those who have spent the past three years fighting simply to be recognized as equal humans. In a place where their faith alone is enough for others to deny them basic dignity, this is the daily reality for Jewish students at French universities today.

When asked, the University stated it’s “full support for students who had been victims of antisemitic acts as they “condemned in the strongest possible terms” these “unacceptable abuses”. In need of an immediate response, I, alongside fellow members of the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF), chose to plaster “Tracking down Jewish names and removing them, doesn’t that remind you of something?” on hundreds of posters across campus walls. The Sénat’s 2024 information report on antisemitism in higher education starkly warns that we are witnessing the rise of an “antisemitism of atmosphere,” a climate where Jewish students are systematically ostracized and assimilated into geopolitical conflicts they are not responsible for, following the path of the historical scapegoating of the community.

When confronted, the author of the message justifies it as a “poll of opinion”, “a joke”, stating, “I have nothing against Jews, I just wanted to make a joke at the moment,” effectively using humor as a shield to protect against charges of racism. Platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram lend the discourse a sense of ‘inherent value and legitimacy’. Within these class chats and away from the eyes of university administration, students find a “safe haven” where racism is validated by peer reinforcement. The UEJF has repeatedly sounded the alarm on how online campaigns translate into offline reality. From the amphitheaters of Sciences Po to the walls of Nanterre, the proliferation of “Zionist = Fascist” rhetoric makes the argument a trend through the strategic use of “harmless everyday expressions”: the poll, the meme, the flag emoji to “convey hate messages, attract new supporters, and give rise to bigotry”.  My anger, therefore, goes to those defending such actions. When an antisemitic poll is framed as a “joke”, it prepares the social environment to accept the exclusion of Jewish students. It leads to 9/10 Jewish students reporting that they experience campus antisemitism, students testifying on their fear to go to class, resulting in academic struggle, as in France, in 2026, we discriminate against Jews because they are Jews.

Just days after the WhatsApp poll, another incident underscored how routine these attacks have become. Students were excluded from their class discussion groups on the grounds that “their last names” sound “Jewish”. In its press release, the UEJF quotes an “exclusion message”: “If other Zionists like the ones I’ve already removed are present, you can leave. We don’t want you here,” accompanied by a Palestinian flag. This action might seem to relate to the ongoing conflict, yet the lack of differentiation between advocates of the Israeli cause, and the students with a specific type of surname makes it clear as to what this action really is: normalized antisemitism that has already taken hold, and it is only getting stronger. When students are excluded, the statement is clear: Jewishness is inherently “oppositional”.

Nearly a year on, the courts have spoken, and dismantled the “joke” defense outright. In May 2026, the man who created the poll was found guilty of discrimination and sentenced to one year in prison, suspended, a course at the Mémorial de la Shoah, and 1,000€ in damages to the Organisation Juive Européenne. Days later, the student who had answered “contre” received a month’s suspended sentence and his own mandatory visit to the Mémorial. In June, the student behind the Instagram exclusions was convicted of harassment and incitement to discrimination, and sentenced to four months suspended, an 800€ fine, and over 8,000€ in damages to the families and associations involved. Tellingly, Paris 1’s own internal disciplinary panel had cleared her of all wrongdoing back in November 2025, it was the university itself that appealed its own panel’s ruling to keep the case alive, while the criminal case ran its course in parallel and ultimately convicted her.

Eighty-six years ago, the exclusion of Jewish students was written into law by a regime of the past. Today, the threat seems to come from within the student community, forcing the institution to act to protect its members from their peers’ hatred. We must condemn and eliminate acts of antisemitism in our society, with an aim to stop dismissing these actions as harmless jokes or as a legitimate response to the heat of geopolitics. The digital space has turned the real lecture hall into a place of exclusion. When students are removed from group chats because of their identity, they are being deleted from the community of knowledge. If we continue to allow the ‘frontstage’ of humor to shield hatred, the French educational system will no longer be a sanctuary for universal thought, but a segregated digital space where the first lesson taught is how to exclude.