Colleges could benefit from taking a data-driven look at hostility toward Jews on campus

In the year that has passed since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, college campuses have been embroiled in debates about the resulting conflict. A major focus of these debates has been the surge in reports of antisemitic harassment of Jewish students, with campus administrators, faculty, politicians and pundits furiously arguing over the prevalence and severity of antisemitism on campus.

They have also been debating the forces driving it, how universities should respond and how to address concerns about antisemitism while also responding to harassment and hostility toward Muslim and Palestinian students as a result of the war.

These debates are important, not only because they inform how campuses should deal with antisemitism and other forms of prejudice in the new academic year, but also because they speak to core issues for higher education, including free speech, diversity and institutional neutrality.

Unfortunately, systematic data has played only a small role in these debates. Pundits trade assertions about what protesters really want. Or they warn that antisemitism is being dishonestly “weaponized” to stifle criticism of Israel. Meanwhile, politicians and philanthropists castigate schools based on their perceptions of how administrators dealt with the conflict.

However, claims about antisemitism on campus are often based on anecdotes, headlines and social media trends. Rather than representing the range of perspectives among students, anecdotes, headlines and popular social media posts tend to amplify the loudest, most viral and most extreme voices.

In our view, if college and university administrators want to make things better – for Jewish students and their entire campus communities – they need a more systematic understanding of the perspectives of all students on campus, including both Jews and non-Jews.

Using data to understand diverse perspectives

Over the past year, our team at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies has been using systematic data to get a better picture of what students actually think about antisemitism, Israel and their campus climate. We have surveyed thousands of Jewish students and over 4,000 non-Jewish students at 60 campuses. Because they provide a more representative picture of student attitudes and experiences then media reports based on isolated events, these surveys can help answer some of the key questions concerning what universities themselves call a crisis of antisemitism on campus.

How severe is antisemitism on campus?

In our December 2023 report, we showed that a majority of Jewish students felt there was a hostile environment toward Jews on their campus. This hostility was much more prevalent at some schools than others. Very few students had experienced direct threats to their safety.

Although high-profile media figures and politicians argue about when criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism, we asked Jewish students — the ones who were experiencing antisemitism — what they thought.

In our April 2024 report, we showed that over 90% of Jewish students at these schools felt that denying Israel’s right to exist was antisemitic. However, only a minority felt the same way about intense criticisms of Israel’s human rights record.

What non-Jewish students think about Jews and Israel

In an August 2024 report, we found that two-thirds of non-Jewish students at the 60 schools we surveyed did not have views about Jews or Israel that were likely to threaten their Jewish peers, even though they were often critical of Israel’s government. However, we found two other groups of students whose views were more likely to contribute to Jewish students’ experiences of antisemitism on campus. But these two groups were very different from one another.

Around 15% of non-Jewish students at these schools tend to express extreme hostility toward Israel. They deny its right to exist at all and are unwilling to be friends with anyone who thinks differently. Even though these students display no explicit animus to Jews, their hostility to Israel’s very existence is so intense that it poisons interactions with Jewish peers — since virtually all Jewish students find this view to be antisemitic.

Another group of students, also around 15% of the non-Jewish population at these schools, are willing to endorse explicitly anti-Jewish beliefs like “Jews have too much power in America.” However, they do not seem to be deeply motivated by political criticism of Israel’s government. They are most likely to endorse anti-Israel rhetoric such as the assertion that “supporters of Israel control the media,” which echoes traditional anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.

Better data leads to better debates

Better data will not magically solve antisemitism on campus. Neither will it resolve Islamophobia, or broader issues of how universities deal with this politically polarized moment. But we believe that it can help faculty and key stakeholders confront these challenges more productively.

Developing a better understanding of Jewish students’ concerns about antisemitism, and what “antisemitism” means to those students, can help administrators appreciate the scope and nature of the problem. Understanding the views of non-Jewish students can help administrators in crafting effective solutions.

A new year

As the war in the Middle East enters its second year, the issues that sparked protests are not likely to end. Universities still need to find a way to support Jewish students while upholding principles of free expression, and faculty will need to think about how to teach and talk about contentious topics. As we see, using systematic data to understand the perspective of all students – not just those with the loudest voices – should be a priority for higher Education institutions whose missions it is to create and disseminate knowledge.