pro-Palestinian protests have taken place on many college campuses across the country, including at the University of Kentucky, because of the accompanying rise of anti-Semitism on many of these campuses.

The Kentucky anti-Semitism Task Force created by Governor Andy Beshear in December of last year met on UK campus yesterday to discuss how to confront this issue and what the university has done so far.

It's been a real tough time for Jewish students across the country as the legitimate protest grows.

There is oftentimes illegitimate hate speech or other activities taken that make Jews fear for their safety.

And we heard from the president, CEO of Hillel International, which is the nation's Jewish student agency.

And we also heard from the dean of Students UK to talk about what's going on here in Kentucky.

And I tell you, I was very encouraged by the great work that UK is doing to not only protect Jewish students, but more importantly, build the interfaith dialog that's needed to really let us ascend from anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination.

Since October 7th, we've seen a lot of our students here at the University of Kentucky feel somewhat under distress for a lot of the things that they're seeing nationally on other campuses as well as abroad.

I think sometimes we're quick to jump to wanting to support students, but we don't ask them what support looks like or how we should be supported.

So we have had conversation ends with both our Jewish students and our Muslim students doing listening sessions for them, providing alternative program if they needed it, and hearing from them what their experience is like both in and out of the classroom.

Some of the things that Justin is already working on is the interfaith dialogs to make sure that we can actually, maybe, possibly in the fall, bring all communities together to have a conversation about how we can facilitate a better experience on our campus for all identities.

People on both sides are going to disagree about policy issues, disagree about what's going on in the Middle East, but we can disagree without being disagreeable.

I think the biggest takeaway is we need to continue to work more not just the UK, but on college campuses to be bringing interfaith dialog, bringing education to campus, letting folks on both sides of all issues understand the humanity at the core of all of our students.

The task force also announced the formation of a subcommittee to focus on anti-Semitism and K through 12 schools, the members of which have yet to be decided.