The local undertaking coincides with a larger federal investigation by the commission into what at American college campuses following Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel and that nation’s retaliatory war in Gaza.

Demonstrators set up a 23-day encampment at Auraria last year — the largest of Colorado’s pro-Palestinian protests — at which students and others protested the war and called for the University of Colorado to divest financially from Israel.

The committee’s alleges the Auraria encampment featured participants chanting slogans “calling for the extermination of the state of Israel and for terrorist attacks on Jews globally.” The proposal attributes that statement to “news reports,” but does not cite any specifically.

The proposal acknowledged such statements are not “per se illegal… just as reading ‘Mein Kampf’ out loud in public is not illegal,” but alleged the encampment interfered with campus access and classes, and included a “hostile occupation” of the student union and vandalism.

A representative of the Auraria Higher Education Center told The Denver Post last month that the campus is committed to fostering a “safe, inclusive and respectful environment for all,” and that antisemitism, along with any form of hate or discrimination, has no place on campus.

Auraria is home to the Community College of Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and CU Denver.

During Thursday’s 45-minute virtual commission meeting, a handful of Auraria students from anti-Zionist advocacy organization said they were present during the encampment and felt welcomed and safe until the university called in police to break up the protest.

“These investigations seemingly about antimestimism all across the country have little to do with Jews and everything to do with dismantling higher education,” said a virtual public commenter who identified themselves as Asa.

, a member of the Colorado Advisory Committee and research director at libertarian think tank , proposed the antisemitism research project.

In a virtual meeting earlier this year, Kopel described antisemitism on college campuses as “a matter that is long overdue for serious analysis… and that has been swept under the rug and dismissed by a lot of authorities in the past.”

“State advisory committees are formally charged with being the eyes and ears of the commission in D.C., so as a factual investigation, this is a place to get some facts and write about it ourselves for Colorado, but also do a useful investigation elsewhere,” Kopel said.

As the project progresses, the committee will invite speakers to provide testimony to inform a forthcoming report.

The committee identified the following questions as guiding its study:

• What are university and college campus policies around antisemitic discrimination?
• How did university and college administrators address recent incidents of antisemitism?
• How are antisemitic incidents documented and/or reported?

“An anticipated outcome of the project is to ensure that the commission is advised of the presence and/or absence of antisemitism at Colorado institutions of higher education,” the project proposal said. “The committee intends that such information will lead to a better understanding of addressing any related civil rights concerns through its recommendations.”

The committee intends to release a report with findings next year that may include recommendations for federal, state or higher education policy or statutory changes, the proposal said.

“The committee also hopes to make recommendations that will protect both students and faculty impacted by antisemitism, while strictly adhering to the First Amendment rights of all Americans, whatever their views,” the proposal said.

The committee’s next meeting is scheduled virtually for

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Denver District Court, comes as — some who have been linked to pro-Palestine activism — are facing deportation and visa revocation by the Trump administration.

The complaint names as defendants Chief Jason Mollendor and six other members of the involved in last year’s arrests on the campus, home to the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver and Community College of Denver.

“The truth is that the arrests on April 26, 2024, were never about enforcing campus policies, they were about punishing protesters for their views,” the lawsuit, brought by the Rathod Mohamedbhai law firm, states.

Devra Ashby, director of communications and marketing for , said campus officials had not yet been served with the lawsuit Wednesday.

“We are committed to following the appropriate legal processes and will respond through the proper legal channels should we receive notice,” Ashby said.

The plaintiffs — an MSU Denver professor, two CU Denver faculty members, two CU Denver students and three Colorado residents — all either had their charges dismissed by the Denver City Attorney’s Office or entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the City Attorney’s Office that led to the dismissal of their charges.

“I was taught by this university that we are supposed to raise our voices when injustices are happening,” said plaintiff Sarah Napier, 25, a CU Boulder graduate who joined the protest to advocate for the CU system to divest from Israel.

“I took many classes on civil disobedience at CU and felt called by my personal beliefs that I should be there protesting the university’s complicity in genocide,” she said. “They’re not upholding what they’re teaching. They can’t be educating students and then silencing the truth.”

Encampment met with arrests

On April 25, several hundred pro-Palestine demonstrators established an encampment on the grassy lawn of Auraria’s Tivoli Quad. The Denver protest, which included tents and demonstrators peacefully assembling, was born out of a wave of student activism and college encampments across the country protesting Israel’s war in Gaza.

Demonstrators pledged to stay until University of Colorado officials divested from activities and funding related to Israel.

“Rather than respecting the constitutional rights of those gathered, law enforcement, including officers from the Denver Police Department and the Auraria Campus Police Department, abrogated well-established First Amendment rights through intimidation and mass arrests,” the lawsuit states.

According to the lawsuit, police justified the arrests of students, faculty and other demonstrators as necessary to enforce Auraria’s camping ban that prohibits tents — a policy the plaintiffs’ attorneys said was enacted in 2004 following a protest against the Iraq War in which students set up tents on campus.

The timing of the policy indicated it was created “not as a neutral regulation, but as a tool to restrict expressive conduct and limit speech on campus,” the lawsuit states.

On April 26, Skip Spear, general counsel and chief administrative officer for Auraria Higher Education Center, told several protesters their tents violated campus policy and they needed to leave, the lawsuit alleges.

“It was a peaceful protest,” Napier said. “We were just there with signs and tents. Students were still able to go to classes. It wasn’t disrupting the normal flow of the university.”

The lawsuit alleges Spear did not tell all of the gathered protesters that they needed to leave, nor did he say that they could continue to demonstrate if they removed the tents. Spear then contacted Chief Mollendor, who declared the protest “unlawful” and deployed law enforcement, according to the lawsuit.

The eight plaintiffs, in their lawsuit, contend the Auraria demonstrators did not violate laws or campus policy, other than a few unidentified protesters who set up tents.

“By refusing to allow protesters to move away from the tents and continue their protest, Chief Mollendor made clear that he was there to shut down the protest rather than simply ensure the removal of tents,” the lawsuit states.

Mollendor issued a dispersal warning that failure to leave could result in arrest, the lawsuit said. That order was unlawful, the plaintiffs’ attorneys argue, because “it failed to instruct demonstrators to remove the tents, instead broadly prohibiting all speech on Auraria Campus.”

The lawsuit said officers began dismantling tents and arresting seated protesters who had linked arms. Seven out of the eight plaintiffs were charged with trespass and failure to obey a lawful order, while one protester, CU Denver lecturer Joie Ha, was charged with interference and failure to obey a lawful order.

Denver and Auraria police arrested around 40 people for trespassing and resisting arrest on April 26.

Despite the tents being removed at that time — the only alleged policy violation — the lawsuit said police continued arresting people.

“Once the tents were removed, the protest was entirely lawful and protected under the First Amendment,” the lawsuit states. “The decision to proceed with arrests after the fact demonstrates that the objective was to suppress the protest and retaliate against the protesters.”

The lawsuit noted that a week after the arrests, Denver police Chief Ron Thomas said during a Citizen Oversight Board meeting that he refused to aid in clearing the encampment because there was “no legal way” to do it unless the protest “truly does something that creates an unlawful assembly” and that they weren’t “going to go in and sweep out this peaceful protest just because they’re occupying a space on campus that you’d like to use for something else right now.”

The demonstrators re-occupied the Tivoli Quad after the arrests and stayed 23 days until the campus ordered the dispersal of the encampment.

“This is democracy in action”

Plaintiff Alex Boodrookas, an MSU Denver professor who teaches Middle Eastern history, said he joined the protesters after walking past the encampment on his way back from a faculty meeting and seeing riot police.

“The police presence was stunning,” Boodrookas said. “There were police cars everywhere, fully armored, and armed police and this was a peaceful protest. The dangerous thing that day was the presence of the police. Other than that, the protesters were holding talks and craft circles.”

Attorney Azra Taslimi, who is representing the plaintiffs, said it’s an important time to bring this lawsuit forward amid the federal government’s targeting of student activists. 

“It����ap a dangerous message to send out to the public at large that there is some speech that is going to be protected and some that when it challenges government, what our country’s policies are, that is going to be met with police oppression,” Taslimi said. “We are seeing a dangerous unraveling of the rule of law across the country.”

Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the already had revoked 300 or more visas from international students across the country as the Trump administration largely targets foreign-born students who have objected to Israel’s war in Gaza.

In Colorado, the Trump administration has revoked at least 22 international students’ visas, including 10 students at Colorado State University in Fort Collins and 12 students across the University of Colorado’s four campuses. It’s unclear why these students — whose identities and countries of origin have not been released — were targeted.

“Student protests are not a disruption of education, they are a reflection of it,” Taslimi said. “This is what civic engagement looks like. This is democracy in action.”

Six students at in Fort Collins and four students attending the Boulder and Colorado Springs campuses recently had their international student visas revoked by federal agencies, the two schools said.

Neither university has identified the students who lost their visas, said what countries they are from, or revealed whether federal officials provided any explanation. The visa revocations come as the Trump administration has cracked down on international students who expressed views opposing Israel’s war on Gaza.

Violeta Chapin, a CU Boulder law professor and expert in immigration law, said that, historically, international students’ visas might be revoked if they disenroll — but offices at the university dedicated to helping such students can get them back on track.

“What we’re seeing now is a far different, unprecedented intrusion by the executive (branch) into this particular area and to be revoking student visas for different reasons than we have seen previously and at higher rates than we have ever seen,” Chapin said Wednesday.

The CU system — the state’s flagship, four-campus university — confirming the F-1 visas issued to four international students had been revoked by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. F-1 visas .

CU currently enrolls 3,802 international students across its four campuses. That’s more than one-third of the studying at Colorado colleges and universities, according to NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

The visa revocations began last week and none of the CU students have been detained at this point, university spokeswoman Michele Ames said Wednesday morning.

CU is not releasing any information about the students’ “specific circumstances” in order to protect their privacy, the university said. A notice on  said in-person advising for international students was canceled Wednesday.

“At CU we are focused on supporting the success of all of our students, including international students,” the university’s statement said. “Each one of our students are seeking to advance their careers and the lives of their families, and we understand the anxieties that visa revocations cause to impacted students. We urge any international student with questions or concerns to reach out to their campus’ international student office.”

Six international students at CSU also have had their visas revoked, the university confirmed. Additional details about the situation were not being shared for privacy reasons, CSU said. The school did not respond to questions from The Denver Post about whether any of those students have been detained by authorities.

A university communication said “some CSU international students have been impacted by visa revocations and SEVIS terminations issued by the U.S. Department of State.” SEVIS, the , is the web-based system that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security uses to track student visa information.

CSU urged impacted students to immediately contact the embassy of their home country, the CSU Office of International Programs at 970-491-5917 or isss@colostate.edu.

“Our international community is an integral part of Colorado State University, enriching our campus in countless ways,” the university said. “Please know that CSU deeply values our international student population and is committed to supporting you to the best of our abilities.”

No revocations reported at other Colorado schools

The University of Denver said Wednesday that there has been no ICE activity on its campus and DU has not received any unusual student-information requests from immigration officials.

Metropolitan State University of Denver said that, as of Wednesday, no MSU Denver student F-1 visas had been revoked.

And the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley said it does not provide visa information to protect student privacy.

Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. State Department has revoked 300 or more visas as the Trump administration largely targets foreign-born students who have objected to Israel’s war on Gaza.

Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in an attack that killed 1,200 people, during which about 250 hostages were seized. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 50,000 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and destroyed much of the enclave.

Nationally, students linked to pro-Palestinian activism in multiple states have been taken to detention centers by masked immigration officers with little information released as to why they are being held.

“We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist, to tear up our university campuses,” Rubio

It’s not yet clear whether any Colorado students have been detained by immigration officers or what their visa revocations could mean for them.

Colorado’s most high-profile collegiate activism against the war in Gaza came last year when students set up a long-term encampment on the Auraria Campus in downtown Denver. So far, no students at Auraria — home to MSU Denver, CU Denver and the Community College of Denver — are known to have had their visas revoked.

“Extraordinary departure from typical practice”

Chapin, the immigration law expert, said once international students lose their visas, deportation is imminent.

“Another way we’re seeing this extraordinary departure from typical practice is we’re seeing international students getting detained and locking them up even though immigration is a civil system, not a criminal system,” Chapin said. “What we’re seeing from this administration is a desire to vastly increase the people in detention and spending billions and billions of dollars to do it.”

Chapin encourages international students to take precautions if they’re traveling and ensure all their travel documents are up-to-date and available.

She advised they share their itinerary with family and, if the student is working with a lawyer, make sure they have that lawyer’s contact information.

“We don’t want to panic anybody,” she said. “We have no reason to believe any of our students would be detained, but we also don’t know. We have the revocation of visas for two of our CU Boulder students, and we don’t understand why. Now these things are happening rapidly and they’re happening under much more cover of darkness.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

The program was made possible through the passage of Senate Bills 23-007 and 24-51, approved by the State Board for Community Colleges and Occupational Education. Through CCD, students can complete their high school diploma in as little as five weeks, with the flexibility to extend their studies up to one year.

“This program is not only about education but about opportunity,” Assistant Director of Admissions at CCD Josh Margolin said. “In Colorado, there are over 300,000 adults without a high school diploma. This program is designed to give them the tools they need to improve their job prospects and, ultimately, contribute to the state’s workforce in meaningful ways.”

The high school diploma program offers a unique, self-paced learning experience. Classes meet on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings to accommodate working adults. Students can also attend classes remotely if necessary.

Read more at .

Aaron Verner was arrested on suspicion of two counts of attempted murder and assault after shooting an Auraria Campus police officer in the arm, according to the Denver Police Department.

The shooting happened about 1:18 a.m. Monday after two Auraria Campus police officers approached someone who was breaking into a car, according to a news release from the campus police department.

The person — later identified as Verner — fled. When campus officers found him later, he fired multiple shots at the pair and hit one of them in the arm, campus officials said in the release.

Officers fired a Taser at Verner when he resisted arrest, but it’s not clear if the Taser actually hit him, campus police said in the news release.

Verner fled on foot again after shooting the officer and was later arrested by Auraria Campus and Denver police officers, campus police said. He was taken to the hospital for evaluation.

The Auraria Campus is home to the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver and Community College of Denver.

The entrance to Auraria Campus at Ninth Street and East Colfax Avenue was temporarily closed for the investigation but has since been reopened, campus police said. The RTD light rail station at Colfax and Auraria was also temporarily closed.

The plan also would guarantee the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche won’t leave any time soon because the city’s approval hinges on a promise to keep the two pro teams playing at the downtown arena.

The proposed development would include up to 6,000 new housing units with 18% of those qualifying as affordable housing, a new city recreation center, retail space, a hotel and a signature park with walking and biking trails on the 70 acres surrounding Ball Arena adjacent to Denver’s downtown.

The plan would include at least two multi-story towers, although their exact height and size are yet to be determined.

The project is being proposed by Kroenke Sports and Entertainment — the company that owns the Nuggets and Avalanche — and it would largely replace an area that now is mostly parking lots. So far, there has not been a discussion about building a new arena; the existing facility opened in 1999.

The development at 1000 Chopper Circle would “stitch together” the city’s three major sports venues — Empower Field at Mile High, Coors Field and Ball Arena — while also connecting downtown neighborhoods such as Sun Valley, Jefferson Park and Lower Downtown that now are split by busy streets, railroad tracks and the Platte River, according to a vision plan on the .

Elitch Gardens is not included in the zoning request or development plans. The proposed River Mile development, which would replace the amusement park and its surrounding parking lots, is a separate transformational project.

Tony Lechuga, a senior city planner, said the Ball Arena project would bring a “shock of energy” to downtown, which has seen a decline in the number of people who commute to offices and then stay for dining, shopping and entertainment since the COVID-19 pandemic changed work habits.

“It’s huge,” said Lechuga, who has led the city’s negotiations with Kroenke over the development plans. “This could be absolutely transformational to the city and downtown as we know it.”

The city’s , which move the property away from legacy zoning codes into two more updated zoning districts, Lechuga said.

The board approved one section to be classified as a center district, which was created with the idea of building a modern downtown. That would include two to three blocks of transit stations, the arena itself, Interstate 25 and Speer Boulevard.

The other area would be rezoned to a transition district that would limit building heights similar to what is allowed in the LoDo neighborhood. That zone would be the south end of the property along Auraria Parkway between Speer and Ninth Street, and between Auraria and Chopper Circle.

The Denver City Council and Mayor Mike Johnston must approve the zoning changes before work can start. The rezoning request next will go to the council’s Platte River committee and a public hearing before the full council is tentatively set for October.

The Kroenkes own 80% of the property included in the plans, but the Auraria Higher Education Center, Regional Transportation District and Xcel Energy also have interest in the land. Kroenke has been negotiating with the city for two years on how the development will look and how the city will protect affordability, cultural interests and coveted views of the mountains, the South Platte River and downtown.

The Kroenke family has told city planners it will ask to create new metropolitan districts, which could assess taxes to pay for infrastructure such as roads and sewers.

Community agreements

The negotiations over the development plan have included a community group that represents surrounding neighborhoods along with housing and transportation advocates to receive their input on what they would like to see included.

The development would be built in phases, with the first phase mostly involving commercial and entertainment space around the arena, said Matt Mahoney, Kroenke Sports and Entertainment’s senior vice president of development. There would be some rental housing in those buildings and the company would make sure 18% of that housing would be considered affordable, he said.

It’s not yet clear whether the development would include parking garages to make up for some of the spaces lost around the arena.

As part of the deal, city planners are working on a community development agreement that would allow Kroenke Sports and Entertainment to build taller structures as long as they meet certain provisions laid out by planners. If approved, the new zoning code would restrict towers to either five stories or 70 feet tall unless those provisions are met. Those provisions include the 18% affordable housing component as well as an agreement to build a new Denver recreation center, Lechuga said.

“What that means is someone could build a larger tower, but the taller the tower, the more affordable housing they have to provide,” he said.

While specific design plans have not been finalized, there was discussion before the Planning Board on Wednesday that indicates Kroenke is considering at least two towers with up to 300 units on site that could reach 30 stories each.

The deal also will include a community benefit agreement that will mirror the community development agreement, but could have other components such as a requirement to build a daycare center or an assurance that the community’s Indigenous roots will be honored and respected.

Neither of those agreements have been finalized, but planners said they should be by the time the City Council considers the zoning change.

The plan has support from surrounding neighborhood organizations as well as the Denver Economic Development Council, the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and other business groups.

“The future of our city”

However, discussion at Wednesday’s meeting indicated some people in surrounding neighborhoods question whether Kroenke Sports and Entertainment is serious about building housing and how affordable it will be if it is built.

The city also is asking for an exemption that would allow Kroenke to build taller structures that could potentially block views of the Rocky Mountains, the South Platte, downtown or the Tivoli building on the Auraria Campus.

The old rules, known as a view plane, already are ineffective, Lechuga said.

The origin point that establishes the view plane for the Rocky Mountains is where an earlier city hall was located at 14th and Larimer streets. But views already are blocked because the Auraria Campus is state-owned and not obligated to follow city building codes. So campus buildings already obstruct views, he said.

The city has design standard guidelines that it can use to protect those views, he said.

Chris Shears, principal at the Shears, Adkins, Rockmore architecture firm, said the overall development will incorporate plans for the Auraria Campus, downtown and other areas.

“We have a clear picture of the future of our city and that����ap pretty exciting,” Shears said.

After nearly five decades of advocacy, Frances Torres finally will have the opportunity to wield some institutional power over the Denver land from which she and her family were forcibly displaced.

On Wednesday, the board governing the Auraria Higher Education Center — the downtown campus that’s home to the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver and Community College of Denver — approved a new years-in-the-making masterplan.

That planning document outlines the future of Auraria’s development, beginning with a hard-earned concession to the displaced residents and their descendants who sacrificed their homes in the largely Latino neighborhood razed by the city in the 1970s to build the campus.

A strip of about a dozen Victorian homes, now called the Ninth Street Historic Park, was preserved from destruction through grassroots organizing and remains on the campus today. But who gets a say in what happens to Ninth Street has been a matter of contention for years as the displaced residents have vied for more control over the land they used to call home.

In a resolution adopted Wednesday alongside the masterplan, the Board of Directors established the Auraria Historic Corridor on the 150-acre campus, an area that includes the Ninth Street Historic Park and St. Cajetan’s Church. The designation acts as a boundary around what remains of Denver’s former Westside neighborhood.

And a new nine-member committee — with displaced Aurarians and their descendants holding the majority of seats — will oversee the planning and use of the historic corridor. Plans for art, proper educational signage and a healing garden, among other ideas, all fall under the new committee’s purview.

Nolbert Chavez, an elected CU regent who helped shepherd the renovation of Ninth Street, called the resolution “a very big deal.”

“Nowhere else in the country has a community ever been displaced and then been given back this kind of genuine involvement,” said Chavez, who is studying displaced communities as part of his Ph.D. work at CU Denver.

“The purpose of the Auraria Historic Corridor,” according to the resolution, “is to celebrate and honor the history and legacy of the people and places of Auraria before the creation of the campus.”

The resolution also created two reserved parking spots for displaced Aurarians in the Juniper Permit Lot at Seventh and Curtis streets.

“Thank you from my displaced Aurarian heart,” Torres said during Wednesday’s board meeting inside the campus’s Tivoli Student Union. “If my parents were here, Phillip J. and Petra Torres, they would be so proud of everything that we’ve done. When we were growing up, we weren’t even supposed to play in this building, the Tivoli. I’m standing here now thinking how happy they would be that we can say that we have a part in this campus.

“But most importantly,” she continued, “I think our relationship is much more positive, and the process of healing that we’ve wanted for so long is beginning.”

In February, dozens of displaced Aurarians showed up to a campus board meeting with a list of demands that boiled down to wanting more say in what happens to Ninth Street.

Virginia Castro, an activist who has been fighting alongside the displaced Aurarians since 1969, told The Denver Post she thinks enough people turned out to finally prove they were not backing down.

“We ended up having to show the powers that be that it wasn’t just a few of us wandering around,” Castro said. “There are a lot of people out there and when you suffer some kind of trauma, it doesn’t just go away. You deal with it and stuff it somewhere and people still want to talk about it.”

Colleen Walker, CEO of the Auraria Higher Education Center, said Wednesday’s board meeting was emotional. The resolution said the board “recognizes the history and trauma associated with the displacement of this community.”

“I am feeling deeply grateful,” Walker said, noting the hard work of everyone involved to hold 80 engagement opportunities for students, staff and the broader community throughout the Auraria Campus masterplan planning process. “There were lots and lots of tears today, but they were happy tears.”

Castro plans to sit on the committee and hopes to focus on a peace and healing garden on Ninth Street that is already underway and figure out how to bring the community back to St. Cajetan’s.

“I feel that even though sometimes we just don’t think that anything can change, I think it can,” Castro said. “If it����ap the right thing to do and you know it����ap the right thing to do and you stick with it, sometimes it happens.”

Rapoport, a junior, got involved with the as a freshman, making the trek to the University of Denver’s campus for events because there wasn’t a chapter at MSU. She felt completely welcome and made fast friends, finding comfort in the familiarity of praying every Friday and connecting with her roots.

“Once I was approached about starting Hillel (at MSU) I was so excited because I could find a community of Jewish people on my campus,” she said.

Rapoport and University of Colorado Denver student Lindsay Abramson began a Hillel chapter at the — the downtown campus shared by CU Denver, MSU and the Community College of Denver — earlier this year.

But since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the resulting war, reports of antisemitism in Colorado have spiked while the state’s most visible pro-Palestinian demonstrations centered on colleges, with protesters staging weeks-long encampments at Auraria and the University of Denver.

Those campus demonstrations have ended for now, but in interviews with The Denver Post, Jewish college students and community leaders, and pro-Palestinian protesters, described a fundamental difference in how they perceived the spring protests and the attached ideologies — like whether support for Israel and support for Judaism can be separated.

At Auraria, protesters gathered at the throughout the school year to demonstrate against Israel and in support of Palestine. That location — a museum and former home of Israel’s first and only female prime minister — is where the Hillel chapter initially met.

Some demonstrators left chalk graffiti on the building and sidewalks with messages like “Tear this down” or “Get Zionists off our campus,” Rapoport said.

Students started meeting at the Tivoli Student Union instead, but later had to move elsewhere after campus officials closed the building for safety concerns related to a pro-Palestinian student encampment on the adjacent quad, Abramson said.

For Jewish students like Abramson and Rapoport, the spring’s campus anti-war protests at Auraria, DU, and elsewhere in Colorado were regular reminders of increased antisemitism and what happens when people don’t distinguish between protesting the Israeli government and discriminating against Jewish people.

“Just because I wear a Star of David and I’m Jewish doesn’t mean you know my beliefs about the conflict,” Abramson said. “People are putting Jewish individuals in a category that (we) believe this way, and don’t actually hear my opinion.”

Hate crimes increase since Oct. 7

Antisemitic hate crimes in Colorado are on track this year to reach their highest level since before 2008, when the began tracking the data.

The CBI database tracks bias-motivated crimes, which Colorado law defines as acts that injure someone or their property or make them afraid of those things. Hate crimes are intended to intimidate the victim because of their “actual or perceived race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, physical or mental disability, or sexual orientation,”

Fifteen antisemitic crimes were reported in the first three months of 2024, the highest first-quarter numbers since before 2008, according to the CBI.

That mirrors an increase in late 2023, according to state data. Of the 21 antisemitic crimes reported in 2023, 15 occurred in October, November or December, mostly , killing an estimated 1,200 people and taking approximately 250 people hostage.

Israel’s responding attacks in Gaza have killed an estimated 36,000 Palestinians over the last eight months, , which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Abramson and Rapoport described being on campus and getting dirty looks when wearing a Star of David necklace or hearing a student respond with “Yikes” after learning that their classmate is Jewish. Abramson said she saw an Auraria protester holding a sign that read “What Hitler was doing was right” and overheard demonstrators calling pro-Israel counterprotesters “dirty Jews.”

“At this point, I’m just a little numb to it,” Abramson said. “It does hurt a little bit. If it was any other population, I feel like people would be reacting differently to what����ap going on.”

Jewish students at DU also have experienced increasing antisemitism, freshman Jaiden Skinner said.

Skinner is one of a handful of Jewish DU students who formed a community watch group in May after they said university officials ignored their concerns about feeling unsafe on campus. Students are equipped with flashlights and pepper spray for the worst-case scenario but are mostly there to walk each other across campus if someone feels unsafe.

Skinner said she’s been told to go back to Nazi Germany and overheard other protesters telling Jewish students that 1938 would look good on them.

“I’ve never experienced such hatred toward the Jewish population in my 20 years of existence,” she said.

Student organizers at Auraria and DU repeatedly denied any antisemitism among protesters and said pro-Israel counterprotesters made threats against the pro-Palestinian demonstrators.

“There is a difference between being uncomfortable and being in danger,” said DU graduate student Kristina Brunner, one of the organizers with “We are not the ones who yelled rape threats, we are not the ones who have threatened to physically attack (encampments.)”

“We are not the ones who put nails in students’ car tires because they parked too close to a house with Israeli stuff on it,” said fellow organizer and DU graduate student Ash Reid.

Criticizing governments, political bodies and “mass slaughter” might make people uncomfortable, Brunner said, but is not inherently unsafe.

“I do understand that people are scared, but I also think people are scared that political ideologies are being challenged in ways that the United States has never seen before,” Brunner said. “I think there are ways to honor life and to protest.”

Auraria student organizer Harriet Falconetti said she didn’t see or hear anything antisemitic among protesters and that antisemitism is “absolutely not tolerated,” adding that Jewish students and community members from Jewish Voice for Peace were involved in campus demonstrations.

Fundamental differences in opinion

But protesters, students and Jewish leaders described a fundamental difference in what they believe is antisemitic.

For Falconetti, Brunner and other pro-Palestinian demonstrators, being against Zionism — the movement by Jewish people to regain and preserve their historic homeland in what is now Israel — is not the same as being against Judaism.

“That����ap something we’ve been very careful to distinguish at the encampment. We do not think Judaism and Zionism are the same thing,” Falconetti said.

Statements like that are a nonstarter for community leaders like Rabbi Joe Black of Denver’s Temple Emanuel.

“If you are approaching dialogue from the perspective that my people, my family, my close friends have no right to be in their legitimate state — that’s no starting point,” Black said.

Recent CU Boulder graduate Dave Phillips also closely connects his Jewish identity with Zionism. After starting a chapter of the international campus organization Students Supporting Israel on the Boulder campus last fall, Phillips was offered a job with the organization.

“People like to say anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitism, and that����ap a fine line,” he said. “Criticism of the Israeli government is fine. But once you start criticizing Israel being a nation, (that) is where it turns into antisemitism. When you say Zionism is racism and a genocidal belief, that����ap where it turns into antisemitism.”

Black said allegations of Israel committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza — claims brought to the United Nations’ International Court of Justice and rejected by U.S. and Israeli government officials — are “blatantly false.”

“Many of these protests are echoing Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian talking points that quite frankly want to see the destruction of the Jewish state and the Jewish people,” Black said.

But students like Brunner and Reid said the war and growing death toll among Palestinians are too important to stop talking about — and protesting against.

“There’s a genocide happening right now and we’re going to center that, because it����ap not being centered in so many conversations,” Reid said.

Jewish students Rapoport, Abramson and Skinner talked less about the semantics of the Israel-Hamas war and the decades-old conflict and more about wanting to feel safe on their college campuses, for people to recognize antisemitism is a problem and for there to be more conversations and fewer assumptions about what Jewish students think.

“The only way for anything in life to change is if you have conversations,” Skinner said. “You don’t have to agree with everything someone says, but at least you can develop an understanding of where they’re coming from and what they’re experiencing.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Updated at 3:21 p.m. June 11, 2024: Because of incorrect information from a source, the reason Hillel student meetings were moved from the Tivoli Student Union has been updated to clarify that the building was closed for safety concerns related to a student encampment. Additionally, the story was updated to correctly attribute a quote to University of Denver graduate student that the reporter had misattributed to Kristina Brunner.

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CU Denver and “our Auraria Campus partners” will move online, all Auraria campus events are canceled through next week and all campus buildings will be locked starting at 6 p.m. Friday, l and an

Moving to online classes impacts 23 of CU Denver’s “Maymester” classes, which run from May 13 to 30, spokesperson Jennifer Woodruff said in an email. The university’s summer term begins June 3.

Metropolitan State University of Denver, which shares the campus with CU Denver and the Community College of Denver, is operating “in a limited capacity” over the weekend and will provide more information about campus operations before Monday morning,

The Community College of Denver moved to remote operations April 29 after students and employees raised safety concerns about the encampment, President Marielena DeSanctis

Some essential employees were allowed to return to campus this week,

Police have arrested or cited 80 pro-Palestine protesters since the student-organized encampment began April 25, according to Auraria spokesperson Devra Ashby.

Students for a Democratic Society organizers and , companies and programs related to Israel in response to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which the Associated Press reports .

University of Colorado’s Board of Regents said no regents are offering any police changes in response to the demands.

The encampment has grown to approximately 110 structures since students first set up tents on the Tivoli Quad on April 25, Ashby said in a media briefing Thursday.

Campus officials estimate the demonstration has cost $290,000 between damages, canceled events and other costs, and that only 16 of the 80 people arrested or cited by police were students or employees, Ashby said.

Protesters have occupied campus offices and buildings on three separate occasions since April 25, leading chants and refusing to leave until police handcuffed them and cited them for trespassing, interference and disturbing the peace.

“We will not tolerate chronic intimidation, campus chaos and business disruptions,” Ashby said.

Protesters marched across campus and blocked traffic at Speer Boulevard and Auraria Parkway for nearly an hour Friday night ahead of the Colorado Avalanche game at Ball Arena.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

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Over the last two weeks, the encampment has grown into the largest of any of its kind on a Colorado university campus, with dozens of tents and at times holding up to a thousand protesters. But the setting differs from the recent protests at private colleges that have attracted the most attention nationally.

The public campus that houses Metropolitan State University of Denver, the University of Colorado Denver, and the Community College of Denver is largely composed of commuter students who are from low-income backgrounds, which stands in contrast to private campuses with the most high-profile protests, such as Columbia University in New York City.

The campus protesters against the Israel-Hamas war and U.S. involvement in it are part of a nationwide movement of students who have called for universities to divest from any corporations operating in Israel, among other demands. But as at other colleges, some Jewish students say the encampment should be taken down and that the protest has disturbed the climate on campus and made them feel less safe.

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