Billboards targeting antisemitism arrive near Penn State before football season starts

Four bright pink and white billboards with thought-provoking pro-Jewish messages recently went up in Centre County as part of a national campaign targeting antisemitism.

JewBelong, a national nonprofit organization, is running the billboard ad campaign in partnership with the Christian Broadcasting Network and Regent University to raise awareness of and call out the “persistent and dangerous presence of antisemitism on campuses nationwide,” according to a press release from JewBelong.

The ad campaign specifically targets large universities with Division I sports programs, like Penn State. The billboards were erected on Aug. 18 — just in time for the start of Penn State’s fall semester and the start of the football season — and will remain up through Nov. 10, garnering views from an estimated 1.9 million drivers.

The billboards display phrases such as “being Jewish shouldn’t require campus security,” and “Jewish students don’t need your pity. Just your spine,” and two of the signs can be found along Axemann Road, with the other two located along South Eagle Valley Road.

“The partnership with CBN and Regent University sends a critical message that fighting antisemitism is everyone’s issue,” JewBelong co-founder Archie Gottesman stated in the release. “When respected Christian institutions like CBN stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Jewish community, it reminds the world that we need to take hate seriously. We’re incredibly grateful for their courage and leadership at a time when silence is dangerous.”

The messages on two other Centre County billboards read, “chocolate hummus on an onion bagel isn’t the hate crime we’re currently worried about,” and “you don’t need to be a Jew to protect Jews.”

National university and college news outlet College Reform reported that alongside Penn State, there are 12 other schools with billboards displayed near them, including the universities of Alabama, Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Kansas, Louisiana State, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah and Wisconsin-Madison.

The ad campaign is in response to an increase in antisemitism on college campuses across the country in recent years. According to a report from the Anti-Defamation League, 1,694 antisemitic incidents on were recorded on college campuses in 2024, an 84% increase from 2023.

Last October, Penn State Hillel, the foundation for Jewish Campus Life at Penn State, said that between the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel through Yom Kippur, the campus experienced “several aggressive anti-Israel demonstrations by students and community members, and a number of our Jewish students at Penn State experienced hateful, antisemitic incidents.”

Jewish students also experienced doxxing, Penn State Hillel said. The university issued a statement condemning hateful posts and doxxing of students who commented on Israel-Hamas war posts.

“Antisemitic, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim comments have no place at Penn State and do not at all align with the University’s values,” the statement read.

Concerns about antisemitism have risen nationwide since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. The Anti-Defamation League recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents across the U.S. in 2024, the highest number on record since the group began tracking them 46 years ago.

“It’s a terrifying time to be a Jewish college student,” Gottesman wrote. “Jewish students do not feel safe and are up against some of the worst antisemitism of our lifetime.”