Last fall, the FBI released its annual report on hate crimes and the numbers were stark. In 2019, law enforcement agencies across the country documented a total of 15,873 criminal and related incidents motivated by bias toward a host of identity groups—the highest level in more than a decade. Fully one-fifth of reported crimes were driven by the offenders’ religious bias.
In this vein, there has been an alarming increase in antisemitism across the United States in recent years. The Anti-Defamation League reported in May that “the American Jewish community experienced the highest level of antisemitic incidents [in 2019] since tracking began in 1979.” This trend is reflected on U.S. college campuses, as well. In the 2019-20 academic year, Hillel International reported a record-breaking 178 antisemitic incidents on the campuses it serves. This number is striking in its own right; it is even more bleak given that many institutions shut their doors for several months during this period in response to the pandemic.
The examples of campus antisemitism over the past few years are numerous and diverse, with many documented anonymously on the @Jewishoncampus instagram account. On one campus, someone left a note on a Jewish student’s door saying that “Jews created COVID-19 to subvert the white race.” At another, a student openly denied the scope and mechanisms of the Holocaust in class, and the teaching assistant leading the class said nothing. A few years ago, a Jewish student at UCLA was challenged on her ability to serve on the student council because of her Jewish identity and assumed support for Israel, and similar troubling incidents have occurred more recently.
According to the Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey (IDEALS), Jewish students are the least likely among their peers to feel their institutions are receptive to religious diversity with just 27% perceiving campus welcome favorably. This national study—which Interfaith Youth Core conducted in partnership with Dr. Matthew Mayhew at The Ohio State University and Dr. Alyssa Rockenbach at North Carolina State University—also found that Jewish students are three times more likely than their peers to observe division and conflict between different religious and nonreligious groups on campus.
For Jewish students in the study, experiences of being mistreated or discriminated against because of their religious identity increased over time throughout their years on campus. Unfortunately, these findings are unsurprising when situated within the broader national and international context. It is somewhat more surprising that a majority of Jewish students (69%) felt their religious identity was well supported while in college, more so than most other religious groups. More specifically, 84 percent of them agreed there was a place on campus where they could express their religion.
Institutional religious accommodations are one factor that may contribute to Jewish students’ favorable views in this regard. At some colleges, for example, Jewish students are afforded academic accommodations for religious observances, kosher meal options are available in the dining halls, and religion is acknowledged as an important aspect of diversity and inclusion on campus. A Forward article published in September also points to the work of Hillel International and Chabad on Campus—independently funded organizations that serve hundreds of institutions across the United States—as instrumental in supporting Jewish students. These groups often have space on or near campus and serve as a place for building community and practicing Jewish religious and cultural traditions.
The paradoxical nature of the Jewish student experience raises an important question: Why might it be that Jewish students generally have space and support on campus to express their religious identity, but they simultaneously experience more division and less welcome than their peers? Our work with Jewish students offers a possible answer to this question. We find that Jews are often viewed as privileged, stereotyped as white, as upper class, as influential, and thus people can be quick to overlook or downplay purported discrimination. Not only are these stereotypes inaccurate — for example, approximately 20% of Jewish college students identify as people of color — but they are also grounded in deeply rooted historic antisemitic tropes of Jewish power, greed, and control.
