Hotspots of Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Sentiment on US Campuses | Página 33

Hotspots of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment on US campuses

Jewish Students’ Relationship to Israel
To understand whether a campus climate that
is hostile to Israel and/or to Jews is affecting
Jewish students’ relationship to Israel, we
examined Jewish students’ connection to
Israel. Among all respondents, the vast
majority felt connected to Israel: 43% of
respondents reported that they were “very
much” connected to Israel, and an additional
32% reported that they were “somewhat”
connected. Figure 11 also shows that there is
relatively little variation in the levels of
connection to Israel across schools. This
suggests that the dramatic differences in levels
of hostility and harassment across campuses
do not seem to be translating into dramatic
differences in the extent to which students at
these campuses are connected to Israel. For
example, CUNY-Brooklyn, which had some
of the highest reported rates of hostility
toward Jews, also had the second highest
average connection to Israel, whereas the
school with the lowest level of connection,
UMass, was average with respect to measures
of hostility toward Jews and Israel.
Connection to Israel and Comfort
Discussing Israel: School and IndividualLevel Dynamics
This section outlines the characteristics of
schools and of Jewish students that impact the
way they think and talk about Israel.

Connection to Israel. Although there was
little campus-level variation in connection to
Israel, there was substantial individual-level
variation in students’ feelings of connection to
Israel. To determine the factors associated
with an individual student feeling more
connected to Israel, a multi-level regression
model was run on the entire sample.7 As
implied by Figure 11 (page 29), school-level
factors had little or no relationship with the

degree to which a respondent felt connected
to Israel. In particular, respondents at schools
with an active SJP group, or at schools where
other respondents tended to perceive a hostile
environment toward Israel, were not any more
or less likely to be connected to Israel
compared to their peers at other schools. The
number of total Birthright Israel applicants at
a respondent’s school likewise had no impact
on a respondent’s level of connection to
Israel.
Individual-level factors, including
participation in a Birthright Israel trip and
having two Jewish parents, did appear to be
associated with a stronger connection to
Israel. In addition, students who perceived
more hostility toward Israel on their campus
than their peers also tended to