Hostility Toward Israel and Jews: Campus- and Individual-Level Dynamics
Hotspots of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment on US campuses 25
Hostility Toward Israel and Jews: Campus- and Individual-Level Dynamics
The analyses presented above indicate that there is considerable variation in the extent to which Jewish students at different schools perceive hostility toward Israel and Jews on their campus. These analyses have highlighted a number of specific campuses, including schools in the UC system, Northwestern, CUNY-Brooklyn, and Illinois, where hostility appears to be particularly high, and other schools, including Washington University, CUNY-Queens, and Syracuse, where hostility is extremely low. While the findings about particular schools are notable, it is also important to understand whether there are general trends underlying the differences between specific schools. Are there certain types of schools where hostility tends to be higher or lower, or certain school-level factors that predict perceptions of hostility?
Multilevel modeling was used to explore some of the individual- and school-level factors that might be associated with perceiving a hostile environment toward Jews or Israel on campus. These analyses control for 1) the tendency of certain types of students to be more or less likely to perceive or experience different forms of hostility and 2) the relative prevalence of these students across schools.
The analyses indicate that respondents at public universities were more likely to report a hostile environment toward Jews than those at private universities, but there were no differences between public and private schools with respect to perceived hostility toward Israel. Respondents at schools in the southeastern US were somewhat less likely to report hostility to Jews or Israel compared to those at schools in other regions.
Respondents at schools with a larger number of Birthright Israel applicants on their campus were less likely to report a hostile environment toward Jews or Israel. In contrast, the total number of Jewish students on campus or their relative proportion in the student population did not seem to have a significant effect on respondent’ s perceptions of hostility, although this could be due to inaccuracies of the estimates of the Jewish population on these campuses. Respondents at more selective schools, as measured by the US News & World Report( 2015) rankings, were more likely to report that their schools had a hostile environment toward Israel, but not toward Jews.
One other school-level factor found to be significantly associated with perceiving greater hostility to both Jews and Israel was the presence of an active SJP group on campus. In other words, all else being equal, students at schools with an active SJP group were more likely to perceive a hostile environment toward both Jews and Israel.
At the individual level, regardless of which school they attended, respondents with inmarried parents and those who had gone on a Birthright Israel trip were more likely to report a hostile environment toward Israel and Jews on their campus. Thus, although having a large number of Birthright Israel applicants on campus is associated with reduced perceptions of hostility, actually participating in Birthright Israel is associated with increased perceptions of hostility. The analysis of the relationship between connection to Israel and perceptions of hostility below will help shed some light on this somewhat surprising result.