Bright pink pro-Jewish billboards have appeared on I-70 near KU’s campus. Here’s why
They’re big, bright pink and people in Kansas City began seeing these thought-provoking billboards with pro-Jewish messages around town in April. Now, football fans heading to Lawrence for KU’s season opener against Fresno State on Saturday will see them, too.
The national nonprofit organization JewBelong has installed two of its eye-catching billboards along I-70 near Lawrence to coincide with the beginning of the NCAA football season.
One reads: “You don’t need to be a Jew to protect Jews.”
The other says: “Jewish students don’t need your pity. Just your spine.”
The group has placed billboards near more than a dozen major college campuses to call attention to what it calls the “persistent and dangerous presence of antisemitism” on campuses nationwide.
The campaign specifically targets NCAA Division I FBS schools.
Billboards have gone up near the University of Florida, Penn State, University of Michigan, Louisiana State University, University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Oklahoma, where a sign on I-35 reads, “Standing against antisemitism is standing with America.”
JewBelong, based in New York, is an online platform promoting religious tolerance and spreading information about Judaism that also uses billboards and billboard trucks to spread its message. The group says incidents of anti-Semitism on college campuses have sharply risen in recent years.
The 2,334 antisemetic incidents reported on campuses during the 2024-25 school year were the highest ever since the Jewish campus organization Hillel International began tracking them in 2019.
“It’s a terrifying time to be a Jewish college student. Jewish students do not feel safe and are up against some of the worst antisemitism of our lifetime,” JewBelong co-founder Archie Gottesman said in a statement.
“The Jewish community is only 2% of the entire country, so we need to work extra hard to break through to the wider American public. Schools need to do better. Jewish students deserve to be safe on campus.”
Several of the targeted schools have seen antisemitic activity. Most recently, at Florida State University in Tallahassee, an “antisemitic harassment” incident over the summer involved a university employee and grad student who yelled at and reportedly shoved a Jewish student wearing an Israeli Defense Forces T-shirt.
The university issued a statement condemning the incident.
JewBelong referenced two incidents over the last two years in Lawrence.
According to KU officials, on Nov. 5, 2023, an Israeli flag was cut down from a flagpole outside the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity house off-campus.
It was later found torn up a block away. The American flag was also found on the ground near the flagpole, KU Chancellor Douglas A. Girod described in a letter to faculty, staff and students.
The “disturbing incident” was reported to Lawrence police, Girod wrote.
“Although the police investigation is still ongoing, world events and increasing reports of antisemitism across the United States make it reasonable to conjecture that this was an act intended to intimidate members of our Jewish community,” the chancellor wrote.
In a press release, JewBelong also cited KU for an incident in February 2024 when Israeli resident and businessman Gal Cohen‑Solal was shouted down by protesters chanting anti‑Israel slogans during an event at the KU student union.
The event featured firsthand accounts of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel that killed more than 1,000 people. Police escorted protesters out of the event, according to The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle.
The day of the event a new campus group, KU Students for Justice in Palestine, called for it to be canceled, protesting that it ignored “the over 36,000 Palestinians killed since Oct. 7,” the Chronicle reported.
The Israel-Hamas war has sparked concern about antisemitic activity nationwide, not just on campuses.
The 9,354 antisemitic incidents recorded in the Anti-Defamation League’s annual audit was the highest number on record since the group began tracking them 46 years ago.
Earlier this year JewBelong posted seven of its pink billboards along I-70 and I-29 in Kansas City. Billboards went up in nearly 20 cities, including Boston, San Francisco and Detroit, cities with smaller Jewish communities, the group said.
One billboard at I-70 and Brooklyn Avenue read: “Can a billboard end antisemitism? No. But you’re not a billboard.”
“Most people are not anti-Semitic at all. ... They’re just good people,” Gottesman said earlier this year. “But they may not realize, wow... this is an issue. And so that’s what the billboards do, is they make people aware that the antisemitism is (an) issue. And that’s why the billboards are so clearly important to getting the word out.”
JewBelong and Gottesman have been criticized in the past for their comments and messaging about Israel and the war in Gaza.
In his letter to the KU community after the incident with the Israeli flag in 2023, chancellor Girod wrote that school officials “want to reiterate that our mission and vision call us to build a caring community and to reject hate in all its forms.
“It is important that every member of our community feels safe, respected, and that they belong.”
The JewBelong billboards will remain near Lawrence until Nov. 10, the group said.
.jpg)