Campus Reports on Antisemitism

Time for Consequences?

Swastikas on the USC campus. Image source: Report on Campus Climate and Call for Action.

Campus Antisemitism Report Card by Anti-Defamation League (ADL)

The ADL has released its Campus Antisemitism Report Card, a new tool to evaluate antisemitism on college campuses and track whether and how administrations are responding:

ADL’s Campus Antisemitism Report Card is a tool for students, parents, alumni, college faculty, guidance counselors, admissions consultants and other stakeholders. Our goal is to serve students and their families looking for information about the current state of antisemitism on campus and how particular universities and colleges are responding.

ADL produced this Report Card during a time of incredible volatility on college campuses. It takes the temperature at a moment in time and provides a roadmap for improving campus climate. This is Report Card version 1.0 and should be used in concert with other tools when making decisions about college.

Our analysis combines objective data with certain subjective impressions and analysis as well as our beliefs about how to weigh different factors. Reasonable people may disagree with these decisions. 

USC received a C from the ADL. Here is what our report card says:

The University of Southern California (USC) has 2,000 undergraduate Jewish students who comprise 10% of the student population; the 2,000 Jewish graduate students make up 7% of the student body. There are Hillel, Chabad, Jewish Greek life organizations and partnerships with Hebrew Union College and the USC Shoah Foundation.

What’s Happening on Campus?

In July 2022, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened a Title VI investigation into allegations of antisemitism at USC after a Jewish student resigned from her position as student government vice president in August 2020, after being targeted for discrimination because of her perceived Jewish identity. The student reported that the harassment had taken a toll on both her physical and mental health.

After October 7, there were several incidents of students and other individuals removing posters of kidnapped Israeli civilians who are being held hostage in Gaza.

In February 2024, three student groups—Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the Palestinian Youth Movement and Dissenters—held a vigil for Palestine and launched the “National Divestment Campaign,” calling on the University to divest from Israel and saying “We know that USC is very complicit in violence.”

Complaints have been lodged against some professors for allegedly promoting antisemitic and anti-Zionist content online, and Jewish students—particularly in the law and medical schools—have also reported being targeted with online harassment.

University Policies and Responsive Action

In January 2022, President Carol Folt convened an Advisory Committee on Jewish Life at USC, and in August of that year, she accepted the committee’s final report, including a number of proposals to combat antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and to develop and improve campus processes for addressing harassment and discrimination.

In November 2023, USC hosted the Western Region Summit on Antisemitism in Higher Education conference in partnership with Hillel International and the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles.

In April and May 2024, at the request of the University administration, law enforcement dismantled two encampments, leading to 93 arrests after the first encampment and zero after the second. In an April 2024 announcement, the University canceled its main commencement ceremony, citing security concerns following campus protests.

Many other campuses fared much worse than USC. According to Haaretz, “Northwestern, UCLA and Michigan Earn Flunking Grade in New ADL Report on 'Jew-friendly' Campuses.” It is ironic that these are the schools that we often refer to as aspirational in the context of tenure and promotion…

Campus Reports on Antisemitism

Campus reports are coming out—some put together by official university committees, some by faculty advocacy groups. Recently, we published a redacted version of a report that several members of The Circle submitted to the president and the provost of USC (“Report on Campus Climate and Call for Action”). In addition to exhibits of antisemitism, our report included suggestions for concrete actions. After publishing our report, we came across the document “Best Practices and Principles: Free Speech, Academic Freedom, and Responsibilities of Students and Faculty” published jointly by the Academic Engagement Network and Hillel and were pleased to see that our recommended actions are fully aligned with their best practices.

JFrg at UCLA (Jewish Faculty Resilience Group at UCLA) is collecting information on antisemitic incidents and has prepared a report of their own (see also an impressive collection of relevant materials on their website). The report contains ample examples of antisemitism at UCLA, many in clear violation of university policies and strikingly similar to incidents at USC. The report also comments on the lack of action by the university:

The chancellors have had six months to deal with the surge of antisemitism and have failed. To our knowledge, not one student or faculty member has been disciplined on any UC campus in response to antisemitic actions since October 7. In fact, there is no evidence that a single enforcement action or even investigation has commenced for any incident.

The report also emphasizes the double standard against Jews:

The chancellors and regents would never have allowed these violations of UC policy to occur if it were aimed at students/faculty from another historically oppressed minority group. The resulting double- standard is unsupportable.

In contrast to these grass-root efforts, Stanford has released a report on antisemitism prepared by an official university committee. The report, titled “It’s in the Air: Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias at Stanford, and How to Address It,” states:

Our subcommittee reached this unanimous conclusion: antisemitism exists today on the Stanford campus in ways that are widespread and pernicious. Some of this bias is expressed in overt and occasionally shocking ways, but often it is wrapped in layers of subtlety and implication, one or two steps away from blatant hate speech. Antisemitism and bias against Israelis as a nationality group are not uniformly distributed across campus. We found schools, departments, dorms, and programs that seem largely unaffected, where Jewish students, faculty, and staff did not report issues with bias, harassment, intimidation, or ostracism. But a few portions of the campus appear to have very serious problems that have deeply affected Jewish and Israeli students. The most succinct summary of what we found is in our title, “It’s in the air.”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

The report also notes that Stanford’s DEI program exclude Jews and Israelis:

We heard many complaints about the University’s programmatic commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. What upset people was not the goals of DEI but the exclusion of Jews and Israelis, who (our study makes clear) confront bias and harassment on campus that should be addressed by campus DEI programs, if they exist at all. The clear and consistent appeal from our listening sessions was for equal recognition and treatment.

The idea that DEI can be reformed to include Jews is—at best—naive. The DEI apparatus is built on an ideology that fuels antisemitism, as explained by many (see, for example, the essay by by Tammi Rossman-Benjamin in Sapir, “Why DEI Programs Can’t Address Campus Antisemitism,” or the one by Stanley Goldfarb in the City Journal, “How DEI Inspires Jew Hatred.” The case of Dr. Tabia Lee, who was fired from her post as faculty director of DEI at Azusa College for standing up against antisemitism, illustrates the point as well. In addition, a recent study from the Heritage Foundation found an overwhelming number of university DEI officers are spewing antisemitic views about Israel on social media. Purging our campuses of DEI is a prerequisite for dealing with antisemitism.

Stanford simultaneously released a report on anti-Muslim bias (we all know that you can’t discuss antisemitism without giving equal time to Islamophobia). Both reports are discussed in the New York Times article “Stanford Reports on Antisemitism and Anti-Muslim Bias.”

A member of The Circle made the following observation:

It is noteworthy that (i) the Stanford committee is composed predominantly of faculty and students, and not administrators like ours; and (ii) the committee was charged in November 2023 and the report is dated May 2024. During this period, our standing Jewish Life committee has done nothing. The students who shared with me their complaints did not know about the committee and its chair, Varun Soni.  [See Advisory Committee on Jewish Life at USC].

The Inspires Index

A good empirical gauge of a campus’s climate with respect to antisemitism is how it responded to the terrorist attack of October 7. Writing for Inside Higher Ed, Amelia Benavides-Colón analyses a report on college responses to the atrocities of October 7 atrocities and the subsequent war in Gaza (“Amid the Israel-Hamas War, Colleges’ Responses Were All Over the Map”):

A new report offers a retrospective on how some colleges responded after October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel and killed some 1,200 Israelis. Israel’s military has since killed tens of thousands of combatants and civilians in and around Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. [Note the source quoted!]

The new analysis covers 43 colleges that are participants in the Interfaith, Spiritual, Religious, and Secular Campus Climate Index, or the Inspires Index, an assessment tool examining how well colleges support students with different religious identities. The Inspires Index is overseen by researchers at Ohio State and North Carolina State University.

Among colleges in the study that issued statements about the war soon after it began, half condemned Hamas and antisemitism, and 43 percent condemned Islamophobia. A small share, 13 percent, offered explicit support for Israel.

These statistics speak volumes about the sad state of American universities. The remarks of charwoman Foxx made before the Rutgers and UCLA hearings provide sobering picture of the cricis. She emphasized the role of radicalism and DEI in the spead of antisemitism on campuses.

More Examples of Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism on University Campuses

A couple of highlights from the The Free Press’s weekly TGIF newsletter:

At Columbia University, the specially appointed antisemitism task force has gone public with some of what they’ve found and . . . it’s not great. One Columbia professor reading names off a list before an exam saw a Jewish-sounding one and asked the kid to explain himself regarding Gaza. Another Columbia professor told students not to read mainstream media because “it is owned by Jews.” These are the professors! The school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine posted a video of someone saying: “Israel has no right to do anything about Hamas.” 

Stanford’s “Best Honors Thesis in Jewish Studies” was awarded to “a ritual performance grieving the Israeli occupation and destruction of Gaza, heightened since October 2023.” The runner-up, I’m guessing, was a deep dive into cream cheese. 

And Manhattan’s district attorney Alvin Bragg has, as expected, dropped charges against 30 people who had been arrested at Columbia University for breaking into a building, smashing the windows, and trapping a janitor. 

→ Speaking of incitement: We have the perfect portrait of an antifa member this week: a white guy with a PhD in African American Studies from Northwestern who is living with his parents. And he is firebombing the hell out of University of California, Berkeley. (I’ll stop writing about this when they stop doing it!) This guy is firebombing cop cars and buildings. He’s having a blast. He’s blogging about it. Though sadly, he’s been arrested—mean, much?—before he could burn down every building at UC Berkeley, which he sees as one of the centers of right-wing evil.

From our neighbors at Irvine: “Students Object to UCI’s Decision to Not Rehire Hillel Rabbi to Teach Jewish Texts Course” (Jewish Journal).

Seventy-five students have penned an open letter objecting to UC Irvine’s decision not to renew their contract with Hillel in Orange County Rabbi Daniel Levine as a lecturer to teach the university’s “Jewish Texts” course.

Professor Shai Davidai holds a pro-Israel rally at Columbia University on April 22, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images).

And from Columbia, also from the Jewish Journal: “Columbia Prof Shai Davidai Testifies Before Congress About Campus Antisemitism.”

“To say that civil rights are being violated does not begin to capture what Jews and Israelis have been forced to endure on campus,” Davidai told the House Ways and Means Committee. “Over the past months, Jewish students at Columbia have been locking themselves in their dorms to avoid being assaulted. They have been spat on, attacked, bullied, and vilified. Columbia has done nothing to stop pro-terror student organizations that justify, excuse, and celebrate the massacre of my people, and chant for their eradication ‘by any means necessary.’ As if violence against my four-year-old Israeli niece and my 93-year-old Israeli grandmother would be justified acts of resistance by ‘freedom fighters’—acts worthy of celebration.”

Shai commented on the impunity of radical faculty at Columbia:

“For decades, there has been no accountability for professors who indoctrinate rather than educate young Americans,” Davidai told the committee. “There has been no leadership, no taking of personal responsibility. In such a climate, it is not surprising that students feel complete impunity to spew their hatred toward Israelis, Jews, and the United States of America.”

Consequences for the Universities?

As hearings and congressional probes continue, some universities begin to see consequences. According to the Times of Israel, “U of Michigan, CUNY agree to make changes following federal antisemitism investigations:”

“Hate has no place on our college campuses—ever. Sadly, we have witnessed a series of deeply concerning incidents in recent months,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “There’s no question that this is a challenging moment for school communities across the country. The recent commitments made by the University of Michigan and CUNY mark a positive step forward.”

U.S. House of Representatives Opens a Massive Investigation of Antisemitism at UCLA

Following UCLA's congressional hearing on May 23, 2024, the House has initiated a investigation into antisemitism at UCLA, involving multiple congressional committees. The letter to the leaders of UCLA and the UC system announcing the investigation, signed by the chairpersons of six congressional committees, characterized antisemitism at UCLA as “ongoing and pervasive.” It stated that “Congress will not stand idly by and allow an environment hostile to Jewish students to persist, and that “the House of Representatives will not countenance the use of federal funds to indoctrinate students into hateful, antisemitic, anti-American supporters of terrorism.”

The letter further emphasized the bipartisan commitment to uproot campus antisemitism:

The fight against antisemitism is not a partisan issue. The undersigned Committee chairs are proud to conduct this work with substantial bipartisan support and will not rest until the facts are known and UCLA and others restore a safe learning environment for your students and properly steward the taxpayer funds placed in your care.

It is good to hear such a clear and strong statement from the top leadership. Unfortunately, these investigations involve Title VI—a bureaucracy that is, at least in part, responsible for the crisis on university campuses. Title VI and Title IX are being weaponized by bad actors, as the case of USC’s Professor Strauss illustrated. Universities should be able to deal with violations of their policies and misbehaving faculty and students without invoking federal regulations.

Parents and Donors Can a Make a Difference Too

We should not forget that actions by parents and donors can have significant consequences. Here is one example, reported by The Free Press:

→ Why won’t Jewish students come to our Pogrom? Enrollment is down at Emerson College after the school let their Intifada Revolution encampments hang out a little too long and chase a touch too many prospective families across campus (or as they put it: “student protests targeting our yield events and campus tours”). Now Emerson has to do layoffs.