Marcus Foundation donates whopping $27 million to Hillel International to support campus Jewish life

Thirty-four percent of Jewish students hide their Jewish identity for fear of antisemitism.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

Jewish campus life has received a boost from the Marcus Foundation—a philanthropic organization founded by Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus and his wife, Billi—which announced a $27 million donation to Hillel International, the world’s largest collegiate nonprofit for Jewish undergraduates.

Announced on Thursday, the three-year gift will fund new executive talent, strengthen chapter operations across the regional south, and cultivate future Jewish leaders from among the nearly 200,000 students Hillel serves worldwide each academic year.

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, those students face an increasingly adverse campus environment.

For several years before and since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, Jewish students have faced identity-based assaults, verbal abuse, and other acts of discrimination—from anti-Zionists spitting on Jewish students at the University of California, Berkeley, while calling them “Jew,” to gang assaults at Columbia University’s Butler Library, swastika graffiti, and the expulsion of a sexual assault survivor from a victim support group over her support for Zionism.

Recent surveys capture the toll: 34 percent of Jewish students hide their Jewish identity for fear of antisemitism, 38 percent decline to voice pro-Israel views on campus, 32 percent believe campus groups foster a hostile environment for Jews, and 25 percent say antisemitism was the basis for their exclusion from a group or event.

Jay Kaiman, president and director of the Marcus Foundation, told eJewishPhilanthropy in an exclusive interview that the foundation’s founder had anticipated the crisis.

“Bernie recognized a long time ago that we needed to support campus life because it was going to be and is very difficult today,” Kaiman said. “He was talking about it before it became what the realities are today.”

In a press release, Kaiman added that the gift would help “ensure that every Jewish student has access to a vibrant, joyful, and safe Jewish community.”

Hillel International CEO Adam Lehman thanked the Marcus Foundation on Thursday, saying the investment would help Hillel “foster Jewish joy, pride, and leadership” across the schools it serves while building “an expanded talent and leadership pipeline.”

The gift was not the month’s only investment in Jewish higher education.

At the Contemporary Antisemitism Haifa 2026 conference at the University of Haifa on July 7-9, Gratz College joined two international partners to launch the Contemporary Antisemitism Studies Association (CASA), a global academic body devoted to interdisciplinary research on anti-Jewish hatred.

David Hirsh, academic director and CEO of the London Centre and a CASA founder, said the group would examine all aspects of contemporary antisemitism, “including anti-Zionist antisemitism,” without prejudice.

Both initiatives come amid rising antisemitism and efforts within American higher education to cut ties with Israeli universities under the so-called “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward the Jewish state’s eventual elimination.

Antisemitic incidents have surged nationally since the Oct. 7 attack, with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recording triple-digit percentage increases in its audits.

In New York City, Jews were targeted by more hate crimes than any other group during the first six months of 2026, according to the New York City Police Department’s (NYPD) biannual report released on July 2.

The department logged 178 anti-Jewish hate crimes from January to June, even as crimes against Asian, Black, and white residents fell by double digits — fueling concern that antisemitism has intensified during the early months of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration.

Lawmakers and advocacy groups, meanwhile, are pressing states to do more.

Last week, former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) proposed a national blueprint for combating antisemitism modeled on measures Virginia adopted under former Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R).

As The Algemeiner has reported, Virginia passed HB 1606 in Feb. 2023—signed into law that May—adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and later established an antisemitism task force, new Holocaust curriculum standards, and a Jewish Heritage Month.

Academia has a role to play as well, said Julie Ancis, a professor of informatics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who delivered a keynote at the Haifa conference.

“Academics provide the theoretical and empirical grounding to this work,” she told eJP, citing her research on social media influencers.