Watchdog group grades colleges on response to antisemitism...and several in New England fail

By Stacey Dresner

While students at the University of Michigan were celebrating Rosh Hashanah last week, the Goyim Defense League, a notorious white supremacist group, was dropping flyers around the Ann Arbor campus entitled “Every Single Aspect of the COVID Agenda is Jewish.”

At Rutgers, the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Phi house was vandalized and eggs were thrown at its front door.

And a week before the High Holidays, three swastikas were carved into the door of a Jewish student at Trinity College in Hartford.

Antisemitic incidents like these on college campuses are no surprise – they have been on the rise for the past several years. According to the Anti-Defamation League, these incidents reached an all time high of 244 in the 2020-2021 academic year – even though many campuses were closed due to Covid-19.

“We are seeing pervasive antisemitism infecting higher education in America at an alarming rate,” says Liora Rez, the Connecticut-based executive director of StopAntisemitism, an antisemitism watchdog group. “Colleges should be a place where students come to grow, learn, and push forward in life, instead campuses are becoming breeding grounds for Jew-hatred.”

Now StopAntisemitism has released “Antisemitism on U.S. College & University Campuses 2022,” a ‘report card’ that grades 25 schools across the United States on how they deal with antisemitism on campus and how they protect their Jewish students.

Rez says that for the past few years her organization has been receiving inquiries from Jewish parents who are concerned about which college campuses are safe for their children.

“One of the most frequently asked questions that we receive is from Jewish students and families who want to know where the safest schools in the U.S. are for Jews right now,” Rez said. “In light of those questions and with an increasing number of antisemitic incidents occurring on U.S. college campuses, we decided to take the initiative and prepare this report.”

The 25 colleges and universities in the report were selected and classified in five categories: Ivy League, Liberal Arts, State Schools, and the Public and Private schools with the highest population of Jewish students. Seven schools received an F, while only three schools received an A. The organization used rankings from U.S. News and World Reports and other sources when choosing the 25 institutions, which also had to have substantial Jewish student populations to be included.

“Through the ‘Antisemitism on U.S. College & University Campuses 2022’ report card system, parents of Jewish students have a chance to see which colleges are not doing enough to protect the welfare of Jewish students. The results are grim and reflect a trend that desperately needs to change,” Rez says.

SUBHEAD: Ranking the schools

The surveys StopAntisemitism used to rank the schools in their report were sent to each school’s administrators and to Jewish students attending those institutions.

When analyzing and grading each school, StopAntisemitism adhered to various baseline measures under four categories: protection, allyship, identity and policy:

Protection: How does the school report antisemitic incidents? Is there a willingness to work with Jewish advocacy groups? And what are the reactions from college administrators after an incident occurs?
Allyship: Does the college speak out against antisemitism? Are Jews included in the school’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies?
Identity: Do Jewish students feel safe at their school? Do Jewish students feel the need to hide their identity on campus? Do Jewish students feel like they are being held responsible for Israel’s actions?
Policy: Has the school adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism? Is there a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) organization on campus? Have BDS resolutions been adopted?

Out of the 25 schools surveyed only Brandeis University and Tulane University received A’s, while the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania received an A-.

Two of the other Ivy League schools surveyed in the report – Yale University and Columbia University both received F’s. According to the report, students surveyed at both Yale and Columbia do not feel that the school administration take antisemitism and their safety seriously enough and feel complaints of antisemitism on campus are ignored. Students also said that they don’t feel comfortable expressing their Jewish identity or their support for Israel.

Two liberal arts colleges in Western Massachusetts colleges were graded – Amherst College, which got a C and Williams College which received a D-. Students surveyed at both Western Mass. schools said that they do not feel that the administration does enough to ensure the safety of its Jewish students; Jewish students are not included in DEI initiatives; and while students at Amherst College say they do feel safe in expressing their Jewish identities, they don’t feel comfortable expressing support for Israel. At Williams College, where a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolution was passed, students reported a hostile environment aimed at Jews masked as anti-Zionism.

None of the state schools or public universities with large Jewish populations received A’s. The highest grade, a B went to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

The lowest grades went to the University of California, Berkeley and Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. Both of which received F’s.

In their survey, StopAntisemitism also assessed how each school has responded to antisemitic incidents by conducting two different surveys – one to each university, of which only three participated, and one to their Jewish students. Hundreds of students responded to the survey, with 55 percent of respondents answering “yes” when asked if they’ve experienced some form of antisemitism at their school, and only 28 percent of students surveyed report their school administration takes antisemitism and the protection of Jewish students seriously..

Rez founded the website StopAntisemitism.org in 2018, in order to expose Jew-hatred through up-to-date social media, blog posts, and other channels.

For several years prior to that, she was a social media influencer using the handle “Jewish Chick” with followers of more than 100,000 Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. Her Instagram page, “Where Fashion and Judaism collide” featured sponsored content – photographs of fashion accessories and Rez in designer clothes. But Rez, an ardent Zionest, also shared some posts promoting Israel and Judaism – articles about Israeli tourism and culture, and pro-Israel opinion pieces.

While she received the support of her Jewish supporters, Rez also received much hate online from antisemites and anti-Zionists – so much so that she doesn’t publish the town where she lives for security reasons. Because of that, as well as the overwhelming increase in antisemitism seen across the country in recent years, her focus shifted completely to exposing and fighting antisemitism online.

StopAntiSemitism.org is now interactive, allowing its audience to submit real-time tips about antisemitic incidents. But besides just reporting these antisemitic acts on the organization’s website and on Instagram, StopAntiSemitism.org goes one step further by going on the offense and holding antisemitic perpetrators responsible.

The website’s home page explains its mission with this epithet: “Holding Antisemites Accountable and Creating Consequences For Their Actions.”

“The goal really became exposing antisemites and creating consequences for their behaviors,” she explains. “With the levels of antisemitism we are seeing and all the directions it is coming from, the current status-quo reactive approach isn’t working. So we operate more on the offensive vs. the reactive.”

In 2021, StopAntisemitism had millions of visitors across all social media platforms, with 145,000 people visiting the organization’s website each month.

After the release of the college and university report, Rez says that she has been “blown away from the response of rising college students and their families” who are seeking requests for additional schools to be graded.

She notes that another survey will definitely be conducted. And she hopes that the report brings about change on college campuses.

“We hope that this inspires current students to get more engaged on campus, to join their student governments, their Hillels, their Stand With Us. To push their administrators to adopt and enforce the IHRA working definition of antisemitism,” she says. “We also are hopeful that this will open some administrators’ eyes to how bad antisemtism actually is under their leadership. We also hope the DEI representatives are being held responsible for their failures in protecting Jewish students, and we are calling for more Jews to be a part of DEI projects and staff and that those that are hostile to Jews be eliminated from those departments.”

if all else fails, Rez says that Jews will have to take to the courts.

“We have to keep telling ourselves that the law is on our side – that Title VI of the Civil Liberties Act is there to protect us, which we often forget,” says Rez. “We are hoping that more and more Jewish students, once all of their options are exhausted and their antisemitic complaints are not fully addressed, get in touch with us and other advocacy groups to see what can be done to pursue litigation. Because these schools must be held accountable, and again the law is on our side to do just that.”

For a look at how the 25 U.S. college were graded in the “Report Card” on “Antisemitism on U.S. College & University Campuses 2022,” see the list below. To see StopAntisemitism’s full report “Antisemitism on U.S. Colleges and University Campuses; 2022 Report Card” go to https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5cc20f51ca525b73bdd50e3a/t/6329e329e09c3b4b18017de6/1663689517936/2022+Antisemitism+on+U.S.+Campuses+report.pdf

Main Photo: In April 2021, after a reported seven antisemitic incidents too place on the campus of UConn at Storrs – three during the week of Passover – UConn Hillel held “A Solidarity Gathering to Fight Antisemitism.”

Report Card Grades for 25 US Colleges at a Glance:

Ivy League Schools