For Jews in the United States and around the world, Monday evening, the beginning of Passover, was supposed to be a time for exchanging blessings of peace, comfort, and hope.

Instead, as pro-Palestinian protests and unrest escalated at several university campuses in the Northeast, school administrators were canceling in-person classes and hurriedly trying to make alternative arrangements for Jewish students to safely celebrate their seder dinners after sundown, the beginning of Passover.

“The cohesion that Passover has provided Jews for millennia is currently strained in ways I cannot remember and cannot fathom,” Daniel Osborn, a writer, educator, and the host of “Joy and Conversation,” a Jewish history and culture podcast, wrote in an op-ed over the weekend.

A new wave of protesters rallied at tent encampments set up at Yale, New York University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University, and Columbia, where New York City police last week arrested more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators. The activists, many of whom are not students, blocked streets and demanded that the university divest any Israeli interests and reverse any suspensions or expulsions related to the months of protests. Monday morning, police also arrested several dozen protesters at Yale University who defied warnings to leave.

Administrators of the prestigious schools frantically trying to respond to protect the safety of all students expressed frustration and sadness about the volatile campus climate. In canceling in-person classes this week, Columbia President Minouche Shafik announced Monday that she hoped it would “deescalate the rancor” and “give us all a chance to consider next steps.”

To their detractors, however, the protesters’ escalation impacting Passover was a predictable response to what they view as weak university leadership. For months, Jewish students, faculty, and influential alumni have remonstrated against the leadership of Ivy League and prestigious college presidents who have passively allowed pro-Hamas protestors to repeatedly violate campus rules, threaten Jewish students and faculty, and spew antisemitic hate speech.

The pro-Palestinian protests began in the wake of the Oct.7 attacks in southern Israel where Hamas militiamen slaughtered 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took some 250 hostages. In response,........

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