On Oct. 7, 2023, Mady Most was in the middle of giving a campus tour when her family and friends began calling her repeatedly.

“I had to stop the tour early because I thought there was an emergency,” said Most, a fourth-year health science major and Husky Ambassador. “My mom told me to go home and put the news on.”

Most, the president of Northeastern Hillel, later learned about Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel that day, in which the Islamic, Palestinian nationalist militant group killed over 1,200 people and took more than 240 others hostage. The day was the deadliest for Jews since the Holocaust and sparked a war in the Middle East that has had — and continues to have — significant implications for Northeastern’s campus community. 

“It was a mad dash to text and call and just hear the voices of all the loved ones I have in Israel,” Most said. Most’s mother’s family lives in Israel, and she has visited the country multiple times throughout her life. 

“To hear what was going on, something so devastating and unfathomable happening in my homeland and a place that means so much to me — I will never forget that feeling,” she said. 

In the days after the attack, several Jewish student groups on campus held joint memorials and demonstrations, mourning those killed and demanding Hamas release those taken hostage.

“I came to Hillel [Oct. 7] and was with some other people in this community just to sit together,” said Gregory Laursen, a third-year data science and international affairs combined major and Hillel representative for Northeastern’s Student Government Association. “No one said a word — we were all feeling the same thing. It’s sort of an indescribable feeling, I never felt that way before, and I hope to never feel it again.”

Now, a year since Israel declared war on Hamas, Israel’s military campaign in the region has left more than 40,000 Palestinians, including more than 16,000 children, dead. Protests against the war and Israel’s military aggression, as well as calls for a ceasefire, spread quickly around the world, including many on university campuses. 

“People might not expect as much from students or young people just because they’re young, and people might not expect them to really have that stake in those kind of issues or they might not really expect them to care,” said Rebecca Bamidele, a 2024 Northeastern alum with a combined degree in biology and political science. Bamidele was a student commencement speaker for the class of 2024, and went off script from her university-approved speech to highlight the health care system crisis in Gaza. 

“Our generation really is creating that shift in terms of being vocal and being outspoken and really making noise when we feel like something is wrong,” she said. 

At Northeastern, pro-Palestinian students have demanded in repeated demonstrations throughout the year that the university cut ties with companies that do business with Israel, saying Israel’s military operations in the region amount to a genocide of Palestinians. Northeastern partners with companies that manufacture weapons and supply them to Israel, notably RTX Corporation, formerly Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin, which employ students for co-op. 

“There’s a long-established precedent of protesters on university campuses standing up against morally outrageous things,” said Phineas Wormser, a third-year computer science major who has participated in several of Northeastern’s pro-Palestine protests over the last year. “I think it’s our moral responsibility to stand up for the people in Gaza, since they’re fighting for basic survival [and] they don’t have the ability to do so for themselves.”

Students’ disparate understandings and views on the conflict fostered a tense campus climate over the past year. Both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel students have expressed safety concerns over doxxing on social media and harassment over their identities and beliefs. 

“It’s been a profoundly difficult year for students on campus,” Director and Rabbi of Northeastern Hillel Sara Paasche-Orlow said. “This is a complex, international conflict that has, in some ways, manipulated many narratives on campus.”

Both camps have also expressed frustration with how Northeastern’s administration responded to the war and ensuing student protests. Pro-Palestinian students have criticized the fact that Northeastern President Joseph E. Aoun has only commented on the Israel-Hamas war once, when he released a co-signed statement Oct. 10, 2023, condemning Hamas’ attack on Israel. 

In August, a group of more than a dozen students and alumni filed a complaint against Northeastern with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, urging a federal investigation into the university’s alleged discrimination against Palestinian, Arab and Palestine-supporting students. The complainants said the university created a hostile environment for Palestinian and Arab students, imposed unfair disciplinary actions on pro-Palestinian activism and responded to pro-Palestine events more harshly than pro-Israel events. 

Laursen and Most said they didn’t oppose the protests themselves. But Jewish students expressed fear throughout the year that frequent chants of “globalize the Intifada” and “from the river to the sea” often used by pro-Palestine protesters were antisemitic and called for violence against Jewish people.

“More than anything, I support Northeastern’s students’ rights to lobby for movements they are passionate about. That’s a large part of what Hillel does,” Most said. “Regardless of what people feel on certain issues, I’m glad Northeastern provides a space for students to speak up about what they feel passionate about.”

In December, the unofficial student group Huskies for a Free Palestine staged a sit-in in the Curry Student Center, which overlapped with a pre-planned Shabbat dinner organized by Northeastern Chabad just a few floors above where more than 100 demonstrators gathered. Jewish students who attended the dinner told The News they felt “targeted” by the demonstration and were emotionally distressed over a poster reading “globalize the Intifada” that pro-Palestine demonstrators hung in Curry. The sit-in resulted in the university placing three student protesters on deferred suspension, the highest level of warning issued by the university.

The tense year on campus came to a head when Northeastern students erected an encampment on Centennial Common in April, joining a nationwide movement of similar demonstrations on university campuses. After the second night of the demonstration, which culminated in a tense interaction between pro-Palestine encampment participants and two pro-Israel counter-protesters, close to 100 demonstrators were arrested by university, state and Boston police the following morning. 

Despite the heavy police response, protesters at the encampment remained peaceful. Demonstrators, made up of Northeastern students, those from outside colleges and other groups, held a Passover Seder on the first night and have emphasized throughout the year they don’t see traditional pro-Palestine slogans, such as “from the river to the sea,” as antisemitic. 

“There was no sense of anger. It was a really hopeful experience, I felt a sense of hope for the Palestinian people, for the Israeli people, a hope for a better world,” said Wormser, who was arrested at the encampment. “Now, a year later, you only hear about the negativity. Everyone remembers the police response, the violence, the arrests, but really that’s only a small part of it.”

As the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel passes, the conflict in the Middle East continues to escalate. On Oct. 2, Iran fired a barrage of missiles into Israeli territory, and Israel has vowed to retaliate. Israel has struck several targets in Lebanon since the end of September in its war on Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group allied with Hamas. 

Pro-Palestinian students have said they are planning to continue to pressure the university to divest from military companies as the war escalates. Northeastern School of Law Students for Justice in Palestine is participating in a “Week of Rage” taking place on college campuses nationwide from Oct. 7 to Oct. 11. The group is planning to hold events each day to protest the Israel-Hamas war and what they call Northeastern’s “complicity” in it. 

On Oct. 9, Huskies for a Free Palestine will hold a rally on the sidewalk of the Christian Science Plaza to protest Northeastern’s career fair that same day, which will feature weapons manufacturers like RTX and General Dynamics. 

“I think as long as we keep applying pressure there’s hope of making the university hear us,” Wormser said. “If the university understands that enough people really care about this injustice, and they’re motivated financially, I hope that they will fold to the pressure and divest and denounce this brutal war.”

As the war enters its second year and tensions in the Middle East escalate, students said they’re uncertain about what the future of protests will hold for Northeastern’s campus. This semester, the university updated its Code of Student Conduct and other campus demonstration rules, implementing more severe sanctions for students found in violation of university policies.   

“Oct. 7 commemoration is a challenging one because there’s both the loss of life and the suffering on that day and there’s the ongoing pain of hostages being held, and then there’s the unresolved conflict and unresolved sense of what will the future hold,” Paasche-Orlow said. Northeastern Hillel will hold a vigil on Krentzman Quad Oct. 7 to commemorate the lives lost and to “stand strong in the face of continued tragedy,” according to the group’s Facebook post about the event.  

Laursen highlighted the numerous protests that have taken place in Israel calling for a ceasefire and the safe return of Israeli hostages. 

“On the surface, it might look like everyone’s polar opposites. But I think deep down we all, for the most part, want the same things,” Laursen said. “People just want suffering to end for everyone.”

Students also expressed gratitude that tensions on Northeastern’s campus did not escalate into physical violence between students. At other universities, like the University of California Los Angeles and the University of Arizona, confrontations between students about the Israel-Hamas war resulted in injuries when protesters and counter-protesters threw objects, like fireworks and traffic cones, at each other. 

Paasche-Orlow said she believes there have been and will continue to be productive conversations about the conflict on campus.

“There is important dialogue happening in lots of different corners of campus,” she said. “I believe already there’s much more discourse and dialogue going on as people’s eyes are open to the complexity of this greater conflict.”

Lily Cooper and Zoe MacDiarmid contributed reporting.