Let’s reassess campus responses to antisemitism

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has spawned hundreds of campus protests and a series of widely publicized incidents that left many Jewish students feeling unsafe.

These include an online threat to assault Jewish students at Cornell University; a Jewish counter-protester whose nose was broken while he was trying to stop the burning of an Israeli flag at Tulane; pro-Palestinian students pounding on the doors of Cooper Union library with Jewish students inside; the violent occupation of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University; and statements by student organizations at Harvard and faculty members at Yale, Columbia and Cornell appearing to justify Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.

These incidents and the rhetoric at many pro-Palestinian campus encampments have led to claims that colleges and universities are hotbeds of antisemitism, where administrators are unwilling or unable to take the measures necessary to combat an increasingly hostile environment for Jewish students. This narrative has been fed by congressional hearings, donor revolts, resignations of university presidents, punitive legislative proposals, dozens of Department of Education investigations and a spate of private lawsuits. As a result, colleges and universities are adopting a range of measures to address claims that they have permitted a hostile environment for Jewish students.

How accurate are claims that campus antisemitism is pervasive? The reality is more complicated than critics admit, and the result is often a mismatch between problems that actually exist and the responses that are emerging.

Campus encampments, the most visible symbol of pro-Palestinian student sentiment, appeared at just over 130 of the nation’s roughly 4,000 degree-granting institutions. Over 500 institutions have seen demonstrations and protests, 97 percent of which have been peaceful, with fewer than 20 resulting in violence, much of it coming in response to police crackdowns.

Protests have been concentrated at highly selective schools, which helps explain why they have received so much attention. Even at those institutions, perceptions of campus antisemitism differ.

In a recent U.S. News poll of students at 25 top universities, one-third said antisemitism was not a problem on their campuses, 53 percent said it was a “small problem” and 14 percent called it a “huge problem.” Among Jewish students, perceptions vary “dramatically from one campus to the next,” with the “vast majority” reporting a hostile climate at some schools and “substantially fewer” feeling that way at others.

Trying to ascertain the extent of campus antisemitism is complicated by widespread disagreement over how to define it. Some comments are antisemitic under any definition. That said, most pro-Palestinian protesters insist they are anti-Israel, not antisemitic. Meanwhile, critics interpret chants of “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada” as calls for the extermination of all Jews in Israel and see broad campus support for the protests as a form of antisemitism.

In assessing antisemitism on their campuses, the task forces established by some of the nation’s most prominent universities have largely avoided defining the term. The co-chairs of Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism declared, “one does not have to argue about fine points of definition to know that shunning, excluding, and intimidating students is wrong regardless of their identity or beliefs.” At Harvard, they concluded, the Jewish community “largely feels under siege.” Stanford’s task force found that campus antisemitism exists “in ways that are widespread and pernicious,” with Jewish students “viewed as interchangeable representatives of the Jewish people” and under pressure to “openly denounce Israel and renounce any ties to it.”

The challenge for campus leaders is to find ways to protect and support Jewish students without undermining academic freedom and free expression. Unfortunately, many government officials and private citizens now want to take draconian measures against institutions that don’t crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests, even when doing so infringes on free speech.

Congressional committees have threatened to strip elite universities of their tax-exempt status, impose punitive taxes on endowments, expand penalties for colleges found responsible for civil rights violations and cut off federal research funding to institutions that do not move aggressively enough to combat antisemitism. The Department of Education’s new anti-harassment policy treats even protected speech as potentially contributing to a hostile environment. Donors have pulled large gifts and threatened to withhold more. Angry students, parents and alumni have flooded administrators with complaints and demands.

Colleges and universities are responding to the pressure. The University of Pennsylvania has banned demonstrations that “advocate violence,” a standard that goes well beyond the legitimate prohibition of incitement. New York University settled a private lawsuit in part by agreeing, when evaluating future claims of campus antisemitism, to consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition, which includes as an example the assertion “that the existence of the state of Israel is a racist endeavor” — a claim that, however offensive, is clearly protected speech.

And many schools — including Cornell, Michigan, Barnard, Columbia and American University — are tightening their restrictions on protest activity in ways that appear to unduly limit free expression and academic freedom.

There are many steps colleges and universities can take to combat antisemitism (as well as Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination that have received comparatively little attention) without infringing on free expression. They should address the elephant in the room: whether, for example, administrators applied a different standard to allegations of racism following the killing of George Floyd compared to allegations antisemitism after Oct. 7.

Schools should schedule presentations, debates and workshops, using specific in-class and out-of-class scenarios, to distinguish between speech that is offensive and speech that harasses, intimidates or threatens individuals or groups, and indicate when speakers should be disciplined for violating campus policies and when they should be admonished for violating campus norms.

Colleges and universities should also streamline bias-reporting processes; conduct workshops on civil discourse and how to handle hate speech; ramp up anti-bias training for faculty, students, and staff; expand student support resources; increase resources for regional studies; strengthen religious accommodations; and bolster the security presence at religious gatherings and centers.

As students return to their campuses this fall with the conflict in Gaza still raging, institutions of higher education should not be stampeded into compromising the protections for free speech and academic freedom that are central to their mission.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. David Wippman is emeritus president of Hamilton College.