After years of displacement, occupation and violence, Hamas, an armed Palestinian political group, attacked Israel, leaving approximately 1,200 Israelis dead. What followed is a war that has disproportionately affected Palestinians.
Since the events of Oct. 7, 2023, San Diego State University’s minority students have increasingly felt a lack of support from our school’s administration. Whether it’s their rhetoric in public statements, the handling of harassment cases or even meeting with SDSU’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on Islamophobia, our school has dropped the ball in making all students feel heard.
On Oct. 9, 2023, President Adela de la Torre sent out a campus-wide email that described Oct. 7 as an “outburst of violence.” She condemned any acts of violence, especially against civilians. She stated that SDSU is “deeply struck by the sheer scale of the loss of life – of innocent Israelis, Palestinians, and countless others.”
One can assume that, in an attempt to be heard by someone other than an SDSU administrator, a complaint was made about the email by an SDSU student to the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights. The SDSU student submitted an OCR discrimination form on the basis of national origin.
“This letter has promoted hate and racism against … all Arabs and Muslims in general,” the student wrote. “ … Adela de la Torre did not disclose the amount of damage Israel has done in Gaza nor did she mention the number of war crimes committed.”
This lack of acknowledgement has not only been felt by this anonymous student, but others as well, such as student Samar Ismail. Ismail is the community organizer for the San Diego chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and feels the university is slow to respond to Muslim students being targeted on campus.
The administration also struggles to align with the students they’re supposedly trying to acknowledge and uplift, like bringing the Anti-Defamation League, an anti-hate organization, to do cultural competency training. An organization that believes anti-Zionism is antisemitic.
“There are groups like the ADL who will come in and do Islamophobia training, but I, as a Muslim, and a lot of Muslims, do not align with that group,” Ismail said. “… If you’re gonna do a cultural competency training, do one that actually represents the group that you’re trying to learn about.”
Islamophobia cases in higher education have increased in the past 2 years, leaving students like Jasmin Khalil, a member of the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Islamophobia and president of the Students for Justice in Palestine, struggling to reconcile the lack of support from the administration.
“There have been many incidents of harassment that won’t be classified as hate crimes against Muslim students on campus,” Khalil said. “We get those reports and had to start our own reporting form for our community because things keep happening where students don’t feel like they’re being addressed at all.”
She explained that there have been incidents of harassment in many places around campus that did not result in any university statements or acknowledgment. And, if they have, they did not acknowledge what the student was targeted for.
Additionally, Ismail revealed that CAIR is actively helping a student who has been unfairly targeted for the past two years.
SDSU has given a platform to people like a former Israeli consul-general and founder of the Brand Israel program, Ido Aharoni. A man who vehemently supports the genocide and who got a visiting professorship at SDSU in spring 2025.
“We made a decision in this philosophical debate that we need to go all the way to take them out,” Aharoni said in a Business Insider interview. “And if the collateral damage is going to be dramatic, just as the collateral damage in Germany and just the collateral damage in Japan was dramatic, then so be it.”
A letter written by faculty and student organizations at SDSU was written to demand that the school not let him speak on campus. The letter was originally signed by 27 organizations, including many other university SJP chapters and CAIR, and has since received more support.
As students continue the fight to be heard, Khalil stated that the Blue Ribbon Task Force has been requesting meetings with de la Torre over the past two years.
“There have been pictures released of President Adela attending different events with different student groups,” Khalil said. “But she has refused to acknowledge her presidential task force and it continues to be asked every meeting.”
The task force finally got a meeting with de la Torre on Oct. 23 of this year.
“I’d say it was an important step towards progress…” Khalil wrote. “One main goal students and the task force are pushing for and have brought to the attention of the president is opening a Middle Eastern/SWANA center.”
Khalil explained that the task force is hopeful the university will take action.
Cory Marshall, the senior director of media relations at SDSU, responded in an email when asked if de la Torre wanted to comment on the fact that the task force had been requesting meetings for two years.
“Prior to the Oct. 23 meeting, members of the president’s office staff attended previous task force meetings,” Marshall wrote. “The meeting with President de la Torre was scheduled once the task force finalized its priorities and annual agenda to present to the president, which did not occur until this fall.”
The Blue Ribbon Task Force on Islamophobia, which was announced in April 2024, is an expansion of the already-existing Islamophobia and Southwest Asia and North Africa/Middle East and North Africa Task Force. The promotion, given by de la Torre, ensures that the task force consists of 12-15 staff, students, faculty, community members and allies, whose appointments will be prioritized if they’ve demonstrated content expertise.
Khalil stated that, during the transition to a presidential task force, “there were professors who were very crucial to the task force who were not invited back,” slowing their progress and leaving students to fend for themselves.
When asked about the California State University chancellor’s announcement that the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission initiated a system-wide antisemitism complaint against the CSUs, Khalil admitted she wasn’t surprised.
“I don’t think SDSU is at risk of anything because of that lack of trying at all,” Khalil said.
Jonathan Graubart, a professor and chair of political science at SDSU, has also seen the neglect from our school’s administration.
Graubart wrote an open letter this year to President de la Torre, published in The Daily Aztec, explaining why he resigned from the Presidential Task force on Addressing Antisemitism, which he was invited to in 2021. He felt the task force did not allow for diverse viewpoints, with some members even maligning and doxing him. While on the task force, he tried to express concerns about the growing hostile environment directly to de la Torre, but received no response.
Graubart specializes in the topics of Israel-Palestine, Zionism and Jewish dissent. He even organized a lecture series in 2016 at SDSU that hosted a range of Israeli and American-Jewish voices, among many other things he’s done to encourage diverse dialogue.
“You have chosen to prioritize the input of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Hillel and other Israel-partisan voices,” Graubart wrote. “Such deference is even more alarming given the aggressive and xenophobic crackdowns of the new Trump Administration on campus protesters and the ADL’s defense of such actions and even of Elon Musk.”
Graubart ended the letter with a plea to De la Torre:
“I hope you come to realize that your safe political stance chills speech, marginalizes Palestinian and other Arab faculty, staff, and students, and validates the efforts of hardline Jewish groups to exclude dissenting voices.”
As the world continues to pay attention and the U.N. declares Gaza a genocide, the hope is that our school can genuinely and intentionally acknowledge the emotional turmoil its students and faculty — such as Khalil, Ismail and Graubart — have been through.
