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It turns out there are far fewer illegal, or undocumented, students in the New Hampshire college system than Rep. Joe Sweeney (R-Salem) feared.

Sweeney’s response? Even one is too many.

Sweeney’s been talking for weeks about the fact that the University System of New Hampshire and the University of New Hampshire accept illegal immigrants as students. He argues they are potentially granting some of the illegals lower-cost, in-state tuition, which he says should go to legal residents.

The Salem Republican has been publicly calling on USNH to release the number of illegal immigrants enrolled in the state’s public college system.

On Wednesday, the university system released the number. According to a statement from the USNH, there are a total of three DACA-qualified students enrolled at either UNH, Keene State College, or Plymouth State University in this spring semester out of more than 21,000.

DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an immigration policy that gave people who were brought into the country illegally as children some legal protections and rights. It was instituted under President Barack Obama, halted in President Donald Trump’s first term, and brought back during President Joe Biden’s term. It is now subject to litigation and pending appeals.

Sweeney, the Deputy Majority Leader in the House, has been hammering schools over the fact that 2,400 New Hampshire kids have been turned away from UNH over the past four years. He questioned how many of those students were competing for slots at the schools with illegal immigrants.

USNH pointed out that more than one-third of students who apply at one USNH school also apply to at least one other in the system. 

“So, while a student may have been denied admission at one USNH school, they may have been admitted to another. In fact, USNH accepted 95.2 percent of New Hampshire resident students to at least one institution over the past four fall terms,” its statement reads. “The number of students denied admission to any institution over the past four fall terms was 1,083 individuals (4.8 percent) out of 22,557 applicants.”

And illegal immigration does not play a factor in students getting turned away, according to USNH Chancellor Catherine Provencher. New Hampshire’s higher education institutions have the capacity to add students and will accept all qualified New Hampshire applicants. If they can make the grade.

“Students are denied admission if they are not academically prepared,” Provencher said. “The last thing we want to do is have students paying tuition and possibly taking on debt if we do not think they will succeed academically. We do not admit any students from outside of New Hampshire at the expense of our Granite State students.”

Undocumented or illegal students do not qualify for financial aid, according to the statement. As for Sweeney’s claim that people in New Hampshire illegally could still be getting the lower in-state tuition rate, USNH insists they have safeguards in place.

“USNH students who pay in-state tuition rates must meet all New Hampshire residency requirements as set forth by the USNH Board of Trustees and sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury that they are legal residents of the United States,” the statement reads.

Sweeney and other advocates of increased immigration enforcement are less-than-impressed by the “sign an affidavit” standard.

And Sweeney ally Rep. Ross Berry (R-Weare) notes the immigration status information comes not from federal records, but from students self-reporting their immigration status on a form.

“That ‘three’ number is self-reported. Does anyone really believe that every illegal immigrant in the USNH system self-reported their actual status?” Berry asks.

Sweeney has been sending around a screenshot of the UNH application website that states, “DACA students are not eligible for financial aid, but they can be considered for in-state status for tuition if they meet USH’s residency requirements” to back up his claims.

When NHJournal checked the UNH website on Tuesday, that language had been removed.

Asked Wednesday about the website change, UNH representative Tania DeLuzuriaga dismissed it as an oversight.

“This was outdated information that was posted under a prior administration and was overlooked until it was pointed out,” DeLuzuriaga said

Sweeney says the unwillingness of the university system to address the illegal immigration issue could have unintended consequences.

“If USNH won’t take this seriously, then it’s time to consider 287(g) agreements between campus police and ICE to restore accountability.”

The University of New Hampshire isn’t saying how many of its enrolled students are in the country illegally, and the university appears to be hiding the fact that some of those students are getting subsidized tuition rates.

Illegal immigrants attending U.S. colleges is nothing new. The Higher Ed Immigration Portal estimates that more than 407,000 undocumented students, including DACA recipients, are enrolled in higher education.

But with the state’s budget tight and the University System of New Hampshire (USNH) complaining about modest cuts proposed by House Republicans, Rep. Joe Sweeney (R-Salem) wants to know what impact illegal immigration is having on the system. He’s also expressed concern that the system’s willingness to take undocumented migrants might mean legal Granite State residents are losing slots.

When he asked UNH for the data on the number of students who are “undocumented, or in the country illegally,” he didn’t get the answer, he told NHJournal.

“They told me they don’t keep those numbers,” Sweeney said.

Sweeney wants to know exactly how many UNH students are illegal immigrants, and how many of those undocumented students are getting in-state tuition rates, or any other form of financial aid. 

“You can be in this country illegally and you can get a subsidized education at UNH,” Sweeney said.

When NHJournal reached out to UNH to follow up on Sweeney’s request, it declined to respond. Sweeney provided NHJournal with a screenshot recently taken from UNH’s admissions page that states DACA students can, in fact, get in-state tuition. 

“DACA students are not eligible for financial aid, but they can be considered for in-state status for tuition if they meet USH’s residency requirements,” the website states in the screenshot. 

But when NHJournal checked Tuesday afternoon, the information about in-state tuition for DACA applicants was missing.

“DACA students are students that came to the U.S. as children and meet guidelines in which they can work/study in the United States. It is the student’s responsibility to contact the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to request consideration of DACA. This determination is not made by the University of New Hampshire. DACA students are not eligible for financial aid,” the page stated on Tuesday afternoon.

For Sweeney, the concern is that undocumented students, or students who are in the country illegally, are taking spots at the state university that should be going to New Hampshire natives and getting the in-state rate. Tuition for 2024-2025 was $15,520 for New Hampshire residents and $36,170 for non-residents. 

Sweeney is concerned that UNH may have turned away a total of 2,400 New Hampshire applicants in the last four years, at the same time it was seeking DACA students to apply. Sweeney’s critics point out that the USNH system already accepts more than 85 percent of all New Hampshire residents who applied to UNH. The rates at Keene State and Plymouth State are even higher.

Eva Castillo, director of the New Hampshire Alliance for Immigrants and Refugees, points to another math problem in Sweeney’s argument: There simply aren’t enough undocumented people in New Hampshire to ruin any Granite Stater’s college dreams.

“There are 88,000 foreign-born people in New Hampshire, and less than one percent are undocumented,” Castillo said. “I don’t know where this idea has come from that we’re being flooded by undocumented people.”

Castillo says undocumented students at UNH do not qualify for traditional forms of student aid, and they have to pay out of pocket for their education. Rather than promoting attendance, they face a barrier to seeking college degrees or specialized job training. In many cases, these students have been in the country since they were children.

“These kids are kids who have been raised pledging allegiance to our flag,” Castillo said. “I don’t understand what is the purpose of (Sweeney’s) attitude … These are not the principles of the America I have known.”

Perhaps, but UNH’s unwillingness to share its data and its decision to delete DACA information from its website raises questions about the real numbers on campus.

Sweeney told NHJournal he isn’t against illegal immigrants attending universities, he just doesn’t want them to go to UNH or any New Hampshire college.

“They can pursue education in their own countries when we send them back,” Sweeney said.

As the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced a guilty plea in a case involving an illegal immigrant crossing the border into New Hampshire, Granite State Democrats continued their defense of sanctuary city policies at the State House.

On Tuesday, Esdras Aaron Calel-Cumes, 29, pleaded guilty in federal court to helping fellow Guatemalan, Luis Felipe Xiloj-Ambrocio, 31, cross the U.S.-Canadian border near Pittsburg, N.H., last September. Border Patrol agents spotted Xiloj-Ambrocio on trail cameras in the woods near the border and soon tracked him to the car Calel-Cumes was driving on Route 3. 

Xiloj-Ambrocio has already been deported, and Calel-Cumes faces deportation after he serves a sentence for Tuesday’s conviction. He faces up to five years in prison and will be sentenced at a later date. 

“This effort is part of Operation Take Back America, a nationwide initiative that marshals the full resources of the Department of Justice to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), and protect our communities from the perpetrators of violent crime,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

It’s not a sentiment shared by Democrats like state Sen. Debra Altschiller (D-Stratham), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and heard testimony on HB511, a proposed ban on sanctuary cities.

Residents of sanctuary communities like Peterborough and Lebanon testified on behalf of their pro-illegal-immigration policies, arguing that they — and not the state — should determine whether local police are allowed to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

Chairman Sen. Bill Gannon (R-Sandown) responded by pointing out that allowing illegal aliens to live in their communities exposes other communities to the criminal aliens’ actions. He noted, “There was a mass murderer in Rye,” a community next to his district. “A mass murderer from Brazil who killed 12 (sic) people.”

Altschiller, who represents Rye, objected.

“There was no mass murder in Rye. There was a man arrested. There was not a mass murder in my district,” Altschiller responded angrily. “It was in another country. It wasn’t even in the United States.”

When Gannon pointed out that he said “mass murderer,” not “mass murder,” Altschiller added, “Alleged. Alleged.”

In fact, “Antonio Jose De Abreu Vidal Filho, 29 … was convicted of 11 murders and sentenced to 275 years and eleven months in prison in June 2023,” ICE said when it announced his arrest, in Rye, in 2023.

State Rep. Ross Berry (R-Weare) challenged Altschiller’s statement when he testified before the committee about the bill he co-sponsored.

“This arrest in Rye, it’s not ‘alleged.’ The guy was convicted. He was convicted by a jury of killing 11 people in Brazil. And apparently, because the mass murder happened in Brazil, it’s not a big deal,” Berry said. “It’s a big deal to me, it’s probably a big deal to everybody around him. But these are the sort of people that we should just let through (the U.S. border), because it makes us feel good. It’s ridiculous.”

Berry also urged the committee to consider amending the bill by expressly covering judges, referencing the recent arrest of a state judge in Wisconsin charged with helping an illegal alien evade arrest. According to witnesses, Judge Hannah Dugan escorted the illegal immigrant through a back door of the courtroom to avoid federal agents with a warrant waiting to arrest him.

“I would like to see the judicial system added to this legislation, given what we’ve seen in Milwaukee,” Berry said.

As if to echo his point, the Boston Herald reported Tuesday that a Massachusetts judge, Shelly Joseph, is facing removal from the bench over her decision to allow an illegal immigrant originally from the Dominican Republic to walk out a back door of the Newton District Courthouse to avoid getting arrested by the ICE agents in 2018. Her case has been in the judicial system for years. Joseph is scheduled to finally face a hearing on June 9.

Also on Tuesday, it was reported that New Hampshire State Police are now clear to work with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, becoming one of 38 states to enter into an agreement with ICE that allows state and local police to enforce immigration laws on a limited basis.

Gov. Kelly Ayotte, who has been pushing for the agreement for months, applauded the move.

“Criminals who are in our country illegally and pose a danger should be apprehended and removed. I support and encourage New Hampshire law enforcement agencies to cooperate with ICE to enforce our laws and keep our communities safe,” she said in a statement.

ICE reports its agents have arrested 66,463 people in the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s administration. During President Joe Biden’s first year in office, the agency arrested 74,000 illegal immigrants during all of 2021.

The University of New Hampshire may be facing tens of millions of dollars in cuts in state funding, but it’s still spending money on controversial Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs and employees. Not only are DEI policies unpopular with Republicans in the New Hampshire House, but President Donald Trump has also signed an executive order seeking to end government support for them.

An appeals court upheld the Trump administration’s ability to execute the order while legal challenges work their way through the court.

On Tuesday, the House Finance Committee passed an amendment to the state budget banning government contracts with DEI mandates.

But if UNH is shying away from the race-based DEI policies in question, it isn’t showing. The school has made no announcements about shutting down any of its many DEI operations, and has previously indicated it does not see any changes coming.

“We believe diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion are foundational values inextricably linked to achieving our core educational mission and embrace the many characteristics of our community members that make them uniquely themselves,” the school’s Diversity Statement reads on its DEI page.

When Trump started signing anti-DEI executive orders hours into his second term, UNH told NHJournal it had no plans to change its programs or courses.

“Nothing to report at the moment, but I can let you know if that changes,” UNH Executive Director of Media Relations Tania deLuzuriaga responded in January.

Since that initial inquiry, UNH has not scaled back any of its public DEI offerings. deLuzuriaga did not respond to NHJournal on Tuesday.

The school continues to offer a full slate of classes that examine race, like “Race, Ethnicity, Class & Classics,” “Gender, Race, and Class in the Media,” and “Gender, Race and Technology.”

UNH has a Civil Rights & Equity Office, an Office of Community, Equity and Diversity, and the Aulbani J. Beauregard Center for Equity, Justice and Freedom. There is also the Faculty and Staff of Color Affinity Group and the LGBTQIA+ Faculty and Staff Affinity Group.

It’s difficult to gauge how much UNH spends on all of its DEI initiatives, as they are spread throughout different sections of the school budget. Some costs are easier to find, like the $195,000 annual salary for Nadine Petty, UNH’s Chief Diversity Officer.

A review conducted by NHJournal last year estimated funding for the various DEI programs in New Hampshire’s higher education institutions at between $6 and $9 million. An estimated $2 million was UNH funding.

“Members have long been asking for a breakdown of DEI funding for the University Systems and have yet to receive an adequate answer. Hearing that UNH alone spends roughly $2 million on DEI, clearly intervention is required,” House Majority Leader Jason Osborne said at the time.

Before Trump, DEI initiatives made business sense for many colleges. UNH is facing a demographic crisis that is impacting all higher education institutions in New England. Small colleges throughout the region have been closing or merging as there are not enough students to go around. Without the students and the federal loans they get to pay tuition, many more schools will be forced to shut their doors.

But the DEI initiatives meant to bolster attendance could cost UNH serious money. Trump has threatened to pull federal funding from schools that continue offering DEI programs, and that could endanger student loan funding and the ability of the ever-decreasing pool of students to pay UNH’s tuition. 

UNH already went through painful budget cuts last year, slashing $14 million caused by declining enrollment and lower-than-anticipated tuition revenue. The university eliminated its journalism major, closed an art museum, and laid off 75 people in 2024 to address the shortfall.

But the DEI programs remained.

State Rep. Sam Farrington (R-Rochester) is a UNH student, and he says it’s time for the university to end its DEI policies.

“UNH has the potential to be an economic asset for the state in terms of job growth, but is unfortunately turning into a clown show,” Farrington told NHJournal.

“Why should the state continue to invest taxpayer resources when they are being dumped on exorbitant administrative salaries and foolish DEI agendas?”

A new complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights says the University of New Hampshire is part of a group that racially discriminates against faculty members.

The Legal Insurrection Foundation filed the complaint Wednesday alleging the North Star Collective, an initiative operated by the New England Board for Higher Education (NEBHE), is breaking anti-discrimination laws by excluding White faculty from the program.

Among the schools that fund and operate the North Star Collective: The University of New Hampshire.

“One of the points of the North Star Collective is to advance programming and educational opportunities for non-White faculty, what they call BIPOC: Black, Indigenous, people of color,” said William Jacobson, president of the Legal Insurrection Foundation. “Anybody who’s been on campus in the last decade would be familiar with what that is, it basically means non-Whites.”

The North Star Collective offers a fellowship program exclusively to BIPOC faculty members which includes mentoring opportunities, seminars, networking opportunities, and a stipend. The main qualification for people interested in applying for the fellowship is either to be a person of color, or to “identify” as a person of color.

“They should have just said, ‘We have this program. It’s meant to help everybody except White faculty,’” Jacobson said.

The North Star Collective is a joint effort of 20 schools within the New England Board for Higher Education membership, including UNH. The university declined to comment on Thursday, saying it had not yet seen the complaint.

Nearly all of the member schools named in the complaint are state universities that rely on federal funding, according to Jacobson. Programs like the North Star Collective, which discriminate based on race, violate federal equal protection laws and the U.S. Constitution.

“We are alleging that it violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act because it’s discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin, and for the public universities who are among these 20, it also violates the 14th Amendment equal protection guarantee,” Jacobson said.

The NEBHE is not named in the complaint, since it does not get direct federal funding. State Sen. David Watters, (D-Dover) is a member of the NEBHE’s board of regents. He did not respond to a request for comment. Jacobson told NHJournal the NEBHE removed North Star Collective information from its website sometime in February.

“Fortunately, we had already archived a lot of them in the so-called Wayback Machine,” Jacobson said.

The lawsuit is just the latest in a series of legal efforts to end race-based policies — sometimes called “affirmative action” — by taxpayer-funded entities like universities, as well as public schools and government agencies. For example, when it was discovered that New Hampshire schools and state agencies were using materials that described White people as uniquely and inherently racist, the state passed a law banning that content. (A federal judge struck down the law as too vague in 2o24.)

And in 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Harvard University’s race-based admissions policies and practices violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

In some of his first executive orders, President Donald Trump directed the Justice Department to target initiatives like the North Star Collective that use racism to combat past racism. Jacobson said he found out about the group from a Sacred Heart University press release promoting professors who were accepted into the North Star program.

“I think they maybe didn’t get the message of Trump being elected, that this is not something you’re supposed to be bragging about,” Jacobson said.

The complaint is heading to the federal Department of Education at a time when its future is uncertain. Trump has announced plans to eliminate the department after already cutting staff. Jacobson said his complaint will likely be moved to the Department of Justice, where he hopes it will be considered for an investigation. It could take months or even years for the case to be resolved, he said.

The Equal Protection Project, part of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, focuses on rooting out racist agendas that are enacted by institutions to combat racism. 

“The remedy for racism never is more racism,” the EPP’s website states.

Accusing him of “failing up” and “cashing out,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations says there should be no place at the University of New Hampshire for former Biden advisor Jake Sullivan, and it’s calling on the university to give him the boot.

Sullivan, who served as President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor, was recently named as a senior fellow at UNH’s Carsey School of Public Policy, and the inaugural Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order at the Kennedy School at Harvard. The 48-year-old Democrat is also married to first-term U.S. Rep. Maggie Goodlander, who is currently considering a 2026 run for U.S. Senate. 

CAIR’s Deputy Executive Director Edward Mitchell said Sullivan’s role directing the Biden White House’s foreign policy, especially its support for Israel, disqualifies him from those prominent positions.

“Government officials who flout federal law, lie to the American public, and enable deadly foreign policy catastrophes should not be able to cash out on their disastrous time in office by failing up and taking up cushy positions at prominent colleges and universities.”

Mitchell accused Sullivan acted as a “shadow president” for Biden, echoing a line of attack Republicans made on the enfeebled president during his time in office.

In a letter to UNH President Liz Chilton and the Carsey School of Public Policy’s Stephen Bird, CAIR expressed outrage for botched Biden policies overseen by Sullivan.

“As National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan was a ‘chief architect’ of the most disastrous foreign policy decisions made by the Biden administration. He oversaw the catastrophic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021—an operation that ended with a U.S. drone strike that killed an innocent Afghan family. Under his leadership, no one was held accountable for this war crime,” wrote Robert McCaw, CAIR’s Government Affairs Department Director.

CAIR has a long history of anti-Israel action and rhetoric, so it’s no surprise it singled out the Biden administration’s support for the Jewish state.

“Mr. Sullivan coordinated the Biden administration’s unwavering support for the Israeli government’s indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Gaza. He oversaw arms shipments, provided diplomatic cover, and repeatedly affirmed Israel’s human rights abuses despite overwhelming evidence of systematic violence against Palestinian civilians,” McCaw wrote.

“By granting Sullivan this prominent role, UNH sends the troubling message that architects of destructive, failed and illegal policies can ‘fail up’ and be rewarded with prestigious academic positions, regardless of the grave human rights implications of their actions.”

UNH issued a statement Wednesday backing Sullivan.

“The Carsey School is nationally recognized for research, policy education, and bringing people together for thoughtful dialogue to address important societal challenges. We seek to give our students the skills to start and build impactful careers, learning from both leading scholars and leading practitioners in policy, community development, and public management,” the statement reads. “Jake Sullivan’s deep experience in federal government and public policy led us to name him a senior fellow, an unpaid honorific position given to those with a significant role contributing to the public discourse on policy. We look forward to having him contribute to our academic community.”

Sullivan’s wife, Goodlander, is a former UNH professor. The couple lives in a $1.2 million mansion in Portsmouth, though Goodlander rented a property in the Second Congressional District just a few weeks before becoming a candidate last year’s Democratic primary.

As Biden’s foreign policy advisor, Sullivan took incoming political fire from both sides in the Israel v. Hamas conflict. Last May, 26 centrist Democrats in Congress wrote Sullivan to complain about the administration’s decision to withhold weapons from Israel as they fought Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

Goodlander was already running for Congress at the time, but she refused to comment on the Biden policy or say if she supported or opposed withholding weapons from the Jewish state.

Days after taking office, President Donald Trump reversed the Biden policy and released the weapons to Israel.

NHJournal has reached out to Goodlander for a response.

For years, the University of New Hampshire had a reputation for fostering free speech and a diversity of ideas on campus. But that reputation has been under assault of late, and now its standing in the latest Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) annual rankings for campus speech has fallen from third in the nation to 59th.

“I did not expect such a drop,” State Rep. Daniel Popovici-Muller (R-Windham) told NHJournal. He was the prime sponsor of a new law protecting free speech on campus passed earlier this year.

As disturbing as UNH’s fall may be, it still hasn’t hit Ivy League levels. The university with the worst free-speech climate in the country is right across the state line in Massachusetts: Harvard.

“Harvard University retained its position as the lowest-ranked institution for free speech for the second consecutive year,” according to the report. “Harvard, Columbia University, New York University all received an ‘Abysmal’ rating for their speech climates. The University of Pennsylvania and Barnard College round out the bottom five.”

Dartmouth College was ranked 224, one of the 30 worst-performing schools in the country.

The top five states: University of Virginia, Michigan Technological University, Florida State University, Eastern Kentucky University, and Georgia Tech. UNH, on the other hand, maintains pro-speech policies, according to the FIRE report, but the latest student survey exposes troubling trends. FIRE’s free speech report found a huge majority of UNH students (77 percent) support shouting down speakers with whom they disagree. Another 42 percent indicated using violence to stop speakers they disagree with is sometimes acceptable. 

A UNH representative told NHJournal the university has an excellent free speech climate, as evidenced by the many events held on campus.

“The University of New Hampshire has a long and proud history of supporting the First Amendment. Over the course of the last school year, UNH permitted a variety of Free Speech events across the ideological and political spectrum,” UNH Executive Director of Public Relations Tania deLuzuriaga said.

But the ACLU of New Hampshire criticized how UNH handled anti-Israel protests on campus, using the police to stop pro-Palestine protesters from setting up a large-scale “encampment” on campus. While police ended up arresting 12 people during the May protests, but all but one of those charged had their cases dropped. 

Popovici-Muller worked with FIRE and UNH when he created the free speech protection law (HB1305), signed into law by Gov. Chris Sununu this summer. When he first started working on the issue in 2023, Popovici-Muller said, conservative and religious groups were being silenced at the school. 

“There has been a pattern of certain groups being treated differently from others when it comes to free speech,” he said.

The Christian group Free Exercise Coalition (FEC) had to lawyer up and file a federal complaint when it was denied official recognition as a student group at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law by the Student Bar Association (SBA) last year.

State Rep. Ellen Read (D-Newmarket) is one of a handful of Democrats who supported Popovici-Muller’s bill. She was a bit taken aback that more Democrats were not on board. The right to protest was instrumental in the fight for liberal ideals like civil rights, women’s liberation, and against the Vietnam War, she said.

“Free speech is a liberal, leftist concept going all the way back to John Locke,” Read said. “We need to uphold those values. If one side can violate basic rights, that will be used against us as soon as the power shifts.”

New Hampshire Democrats who saw Popovici-Muller’s bill as only benefiting conservatives changed their minds when the pro-Palestinian protests started, Read said.

It shouldn’t matter what the viewpoint of any particular group or individual happens to be, Popovici-Muller said. A public institution like a university must respect everyone’s right to speak and assemble. 

“You cannot stack the deck. If you have the power to stack the deck today in your favor, in the future it will be stacked against you,” he said. “The university is facing a very challenging environment where lots of people don’t understand treating all speech equally regardless of its content.”

As Granite State college campuses prepare for a new semester to begin in the coming weeks, the Jewish Federation of New Hampshire has written Dartmouth College and the University of New Hampshire urging them to ensure the safety of Jewish faculty and students.

“Our goal at the Jewish Federation of New Hampshire is to protect Jewish students and faculty, to ensure they are safe and feel comfortable on campus. It’s not our job to decide who gets prosecuted for breaking the rules and who doesn’t,” Federation board chair Tracy Richmond told NHJournal. “All we are asking is that the universities follow and enforce their own rules and policies, and that they do so consistently.”

In the letter, sent to Dartmouth’s Sian Beilock and UNH’s Elizabeth Chilton, the Federation wrote, “As you know, there has been a surge of antisemitism since Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7. Sadly, New Hampshire has not been immune, and our universities have faced the same disruptive anti-Israel protests as schools in other states.”

“Jewish students have the right to access education free from intimidation, harassment, and discrimination. Furthermore, there is no legitimate justification for students who encourage violence,” the Federation added.

Neither Beilock nor Chilton responded to NHJournal’s request for comment. And according to Richmond, the schools have yet to respond to the Federation’s letter dated July 25.

The fundamental message, Richmond said, is that institutions should impose the same rules on all students, and they should enforce them as well.

“We ask you to make it clear that activists cannot disrupt the functioning of the university without penalty. We ask UNH to protect viewpoint diversity, civil discourse, and the rights and safety of Jewish and pro-Israel students,” the Federation wrote. “We urge you to continue consistently enforcing rules and ensure that students and faculty that break them face disciplinary consequences.”

Both UNH and Dartmouth were rocked by protests in May, part of a national effort by pro-Palestinian and some pro-Hamas groups. More than 100 people were arrested between the two schools, the majority at Dartmouth. Nearly all of the people arrested at UNH recently had their cases dropped.

While some protesters focused their message on how Israel is waging its war with Hamas, others expressed anti-Jewish sentiments, including the antisemitic chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free.” At UNH, protesters chanted, “U.S., Israel — go to hell!”

The antisemitism isn’t limited to campuses. Across the U.S., there has been a surge in anti-Jewish violence, including mobs pouring into the streets of Washington to protest a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Those protests featured the burning of American flags, waving Hamas flags, assaulting police, and vandalizing monuments with graffiti including “Hamas is coming.”

In New Hampshire, Marxist radicals with Palestinian Action U.S. targeted the Israeli-owned Elbit Systems facility in Merrimack for destruction during a protest weeks after the Oct. 7 terror attack.

The Federation’s letters to UNH and Dartmouth come as U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns denied a motion to dismiss the antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard, ruling that the Ivy League school “failed its Jewish students,” based on the evidence.

According to The Wall Street Journal, six Jewish students brought the federal lawsuit claiming they didn’t feel safe on campus and that Harvard didn’t punish antisemitic student protesters and faculty members. Stearns wrote in his ruling that Harvard’s public statements that it would discipline students and faculty accused of antisemitism were mostly “proved hollow.”

Richmond told NHJournal the Harvard ruling is a win that will help hold institutions, like colleges, accountable.

“I am thrilled Harvard is being held accountable and I believe they should have their day in court to explain their policies and behavior,” Richmond said.

Colleges already have rules in place protecting students from discrimination and violence, Richmond said. The Federation wants to make sure those rules don’t get ignored when it comes to protecting Jewish students and faculty.

“And if these institutions have rules in place, and Jewish students or faculty still don’t feel safe on campus — that’s the problem,” Richmond said.

“We wrote to UNH and Dartmouth to let them know that, when the new semester begins and students return to campus, the Jewish Federation of New Hampshire is here, and we will be watching.”

The anti-Israel protests that rocked the University of New Hampshire campus this spring were supported by a national organization with alleged ties to terrorism.

The group National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), along with American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), are accused of operating as a propaganda arm of Hamas, the terrorist organization that carried out the murders, rapes and kidnappings in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

On Tuesday, a Virginia judge ordered (AMP), to disclose its funding sources as part of an investigation by state Attorney General Jason Miyares into allegations of terrorism financing, the Washington Free Beacon reports.

A federal lawsuit brought by survivors of the Oct. 7 terror attack alleges the organizations mobilized in the hours and days after the Hamas terror attack in order to spread disinformation and advocate “peace” by demanding Israel not retaliate against the terrorists.

“There is a legal chasm between independent advocacy and knowingly serving as the propaganda and recruiting wing of a Foreign Terrorist Organization in the United States. AMP and NSJP are the latter. They are not innocent advocacy groups, but rather the propaganda arm of a terrorist organization operating in plain sight,” the lawsuit claims.

The NSJP takes credit for helping organize a protest at the UNH Durham campus this spring in which hundreds of anti-Israel protesters attempted to set up illegal encampments before being arrested. The protest also featured antisemitic messages like “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free,” and accusations that the Jewish state is guilty of genocide.

AMP’s leadership founded the NSJP in 2010, one of the main groups behind this spring’s college campus protests, including at UNH. The stated goal of the NSJP to advocate for the Palestinian people is a smokescreen, however, according to the lawsuit. Instead, it uses its hundreds of campus organizations to support terrorism against Jewish people.

“AMP’s message to college campuses through NSJP is unambiguous: violent attacks are a justified response to Zionism as an idea, to Israel as an entity, and to Zionists as people. The purpose of this messaging is not only to justify the terrorism of Hamas and its affiliates in Gaza within Western academia and society at large but also to establish an environment where violence against Jews and anyone else associated with Israel could be construed as acceptable, justified, or even heroic,” the lawsuit states.

According to the Anti Defamation League,  NSPJ began using its campus chapters to call for more violence days after the Oct. 7 attack.

“[NSJP organized] a ‘Day of Resistance’ on Oct. 12, during which chapters on campuses across the country would convene rallies and other actions to applaud Palestinian ‘resistance’ to Israel,” according to the ADL. 

The NSJP’s “resistance” takes the form of antisemitic violence and murder in the United States, the ADL reports. 

“There was also a ‘Day of Resistance Toolkit’ in which SJP made clear that it advocates for Hamas or other Palestinian forces to conquer all of Israel, and for the ‘complete liberation’ of Israel and the full influx of Palestinians to Israeli land. The toolkit also called for chapters to bring this resistance to the U.S. by ‘dismantling Zionism’ on its campuses and ‘challenging Zionist hegemony,’” the ADL reports.

In New Hampshire, groups like Palestinian Action USA have been “challenging Zionist hegemony” by vandalizing the Merrimack facility owned by Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons system manufacturer. Several members of PAUSA, connected to multi-millionaire communist James “Fergie” Chambers, have been charged for their alleged criminal antics at Elbit. Those cases are currently pending trial.

New Hampshire’s top law enforcement officer, Attorney General John Formella, has focused on the individuals behind the protests, though he has not closed the door on holding Palestinian Action USA responsible as well.

NSJP is also promoting the effort to pressure Formella’s office to drop the charges against the “Merrimack 3,” Sophie Ross, Calla Walsh, and Bridget Shergalis. They were arrested on vandalism and other charges after attacking the Merrimack, N.H. Elbit Systems location. Elbit Systems is an Israel-based company.

Students protesting against Israel’s war with Hamas are “useful idiots” enabling a murderous terror organization dedicated to killing Jews, Gov. Chris Sununu said Thursday.

“This is a war… this isn’t a policy dispute. This isn’t some geographic border discussion. This is one group, a terrorist organization called Hamas that wants to wipe out every Jew on the planet. That’s like their written goal and they don’t shy away from that at all,” Sununu said during an appearance on Drew Cline’s WFEA radio show.

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters have appeared on the campuses of the University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth College, as well as at town council meetings and city halls. Chanting “Long Live the Intifada” and “U.S., Israel, Go to Hell,” they’ve expressed their anger over both the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza, and the existence of the nation of Israel itself.

They are part of a national movement that began soon after the Oct. 7 terror attack, when Hamas members and Gaza civilians swarmed across the border into Israel and murdered, raped, and injured thousands of Israelis. Hamas still holds an estimated 128 hostages, among them five American citizens.

On May 1, a dozen protesters were arrested at UNH while trying to set up an illegal encampment on the campus. There were arrests at the Dartmouth campus in Hanover as well.

Sununu said the college students taking part in the protests are being used by groups with hateful intentions, like the Palestine Solidarity Coalition at UNH.

“They’re kind of using these students, as I would call them, useful idiots, frankly, to promote, ‘Oh, we’re just freedom fighters. This is genocide against Gaza.’ No, it’s genocide against the Israelis and it has been for 50 years now…” Sununu said.

There are numerous radical groups organizing the protests tied together by extremist ideology, and a willingness to work with governments hostile to the United States, according to research by the Network Contagion Research Institute.

Shut It Down for Palestine is an umbrella organization for several radical left-wing groups created on Oct. 11, days after the Hamas attack. Also known as SID4P, the group includes The People’s Forum, ANSWER Coalition, International People’s Assembly, Al Awda NY, National Students for Justice in Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement, and it has working ties with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a Marxist group dedicated to overthrowing the United States.

According to the NCRI report, the individual groups are part of an influence network tied to Neville Roy Singham, a far-left businessman who has allegedly disseminated Chinese Communist Party propaganda.

“The People’s Forum, IPA, and ANSWER Coalition serve as the conduit through which CCP–affiliated entities have effectively co–opted pro–Palestinian activism in the U.S., advancing a broader anti–American, anti–democratic, and anti–capitalist agenda. These three far–left SID4P Convenors are part of a network linked by close financial, interpersonal, and ideological ties to Neville Roy Singham and his wife Jodie Evans, a power couple within the global far–left movement with close ties to the CCP,” the NCRI report states.

Sununu said Thursday the college students getting caught up in the protest movement are easy targets for bad actors like SID4P groups, in part because they know so little about the history of Israel or the Middle East.

“When you don’t have good education in the classroom, the vacuum gets filled by social media and propaganda with these kids,” Sununu said.

Sununu isn’t alone in his view that the protests are being fueled by antisemitism. A Fox News poll released Wedensday found voters oppose the protests by a nearly 60-40 split. Large majorities of voters on both sides of the political aisle also decried the protests as both “pro-Palestinian” and “anti-Israeli.”

“About 6 in 10 voters say the protests are pro-Palestinian (62 percent) and anti-Israeli (58 percent). All other descriptions of the protests are under 50 percent, but not by much: anti-war (49 percent), antisemitic (46 percent), anti-American (43 percent), and pro-Hamas (42 percent),” according to the Fox News poll.