College student groups across America are organizing a “day of resistance” against “the Zionist enemy,” as campus support for Hamas’s war grows louder and university leaders’ condemnation of the violence is muted. 

The reaction of the nation’s most elite schools to the violence unfolding at Gaza is much more tempered compared to prior geopolitical crises. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2020, administrators showed no hesitation in standing with Kyiv, with some even joining an international coalition aimed at advancing the role of universities as global actors. 

The National Students for Justice in Palestine is calling on its more than 200 student chapters at American and Canadian universities to host a day of protest across campuses in New York, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Arizona on Thursday. According to its toolkit, the group’s “mass mobilization” of America’s youth pledges to “continue the work and resistance of Palestinians on the ground.”

A former president of Harvard, Larry Summers, is emerging as a lone voice in American academia in his willingness to demand a wholehearted defense of Jewish students on his campus. He asked on X today: “Why can’t we find anything approaching the moral clarity of Harvard statements after George Floyd’s death or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when terrorists kill, rape and take hostage hundreds of Israelis attending a music festival?”

His comments come after Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, delayed a statement repudiating the atrocities at Gaza and directed responsibility for the violence at Hamas. Her show of support for Israel promptly follows a convoluted statement Monday night in which university leaders said they were “heartbroken by the death and destruction” but refrained from explicitly denouncing Hamas.

Other elite schools are taking the same ambiguous approach. The president of Columbia Law School merely lamented the “violence that erupted in Israel and Gaza.” Her statement was considerably milder than the one she issued after a swastika was found in a campus bathroom in March. Stanford is also refraining from issuing any explicit denunciation even as some of its buildings are displaying bedsheets painted red with incitements like “the illusion of Israel is burning.”

The facade of support from campus administrators is falling on deaf ears as Palestinian solidarity groups on many campuses are applauding Hamas’s so-called decolonization. Students in the nation’s capital are going so far as to invoke the words of Nelson Mandela to equate Hamas terrorists to “freedom fighters.” A group at George Washington University declares in its statement: “we will be caged no longer.”

An announcement for a “day of resistance” event at the California State University Long Beach this week features a sketch of the paraglider Hamas used to arrive at the music festival near Gaza, where terrorists murdered more than 260 people. The national group describes Hamas as “the resistance in Gaza” — and even uses the term “Turtle Island” to describe the United States and Canada, referring to the Indigenous tribes of the land. 

Meanwhile, the student chapter at the University of Virginia “unequivocally supports Palestinian liberation and the right of colonized people everywhere to resist the occupation of their land by whatever means they deem necessary.” The group asserts that “the unprecedented feat” of Hamas’s brutality makes it “hopeful for the future of Palestine.”

As turmoil from opposing groups intensifies, some campuses are preparing for violence. At the University of Vermont, campus police will increase patrols this week around the Davis Center where the Jewish student group, Hillel, is planning a vigil in support of Israel, according to an Instagram post by Hillel’s executive director, Matt Vogel. “We keep the memories of those murdered alive,” he wrote, “and we will keep hope alive for those who are held captive.”

A growing number of students aligned with the Jewish cause are pushing back. More than 2,000 members of the Harvard community have signed a statement condemning the attacks on Israelis. They are also imploring student groups to retract their signatures from a Palestine Solidarity Committee letter that, as the Sun reported, claims that Israel is “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

The Harvard administration’s show of sympathy for what it calls the “war in the Middle East” — delivered more than four days after the violence began — “fails to meet the needs of the moment,” Mr. Summers asserted. As the joint statement in solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people warns, the school could be tainting its legacy: “Failure to denounce these atrocities unequivocally is a moral stain on the university and its leadership.”

Correction: A planned vigil for Israel will be held at the Davis Center at the University of Vermont this week. An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the location.