Hotspots of Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Sentiment on US Campuses | Page 41

Hotspots of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment on US campuses

Discussion
In a speech at the Righteous Among the
Nations awards ceremony in January 2016,
President Obama told the audience “Here,
tonight, we must confront the reality that
around the world, anti-Semitism is on the
rise. We cannot deny it. …when Jewish
centers are targeted from Mumbai to
Overland Park, Kansas; when swastikas
appear on college campuses—when we see all
that and more, we must not be silent” (The
White House, 2016). The results of the
present study suggest that the reality described
by the President is a fact of life for Jewish
students on campuses in the United States, but
it is far from universal. Furthermore, the
current situation is considerably more
complex than current public discourse
suggests, not only with respect to the
prevalence, but also the nature of the problem
and its impact.

The key finding of the present study is that, in
terms of hostility to Israel and antisemitism,
university campuses are quite different from
one another. Some campuses, such as CUNYBrooklyn, Northwestern, and many of the
schools in the University of California system,
are “hotspots” where the majority of Jewish
students perceive a hostile environment
toward Israel, and over one quarter perceive a
general environment of hostility toward Jews
on their campus. On these campuses about
three in four students report hearing hostile
remarks toward Israel and over 20% of
students report being blamed for Israel’s
actions because they are Jewish. In addition,
around one third of students report witnessing
some form of antisemitic harassment, often
Israel related. On these campuses, it appears
that the high rates of antisemitic harassment

and hostility are largely driven by hostility
toward Israel. In fact, one of the strongest
predictors of perceiving a hostile climate
toward both Israel and Jews is the presence of
an active Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)
group on campus.
At the same time, hostility toward Israel does
not inevitably translate to hostility toward
Jews. At NYU, for example, perceptions of
hostility to Israel are relatively high, but unlike
at the schools discussed above, Jewish
students do not perceive this campus to have a
hostile environment toward Jews, and reports
of antisemitic harassment are rare. More
generally, Jewish students at highly selective
schools tend to see their camp