Jews have faced antisemitism and discrimination in universities and campuses in the United States, from the founding of universities in the Thirteen Colonies until the present day in varying intensities. From the early 20th century, and until the 1960s, indirect quotas were placed on Jewish admissions, quotas were first placed on Jews by elite universities such Columbia, Harvard and Yale and were prevalent as late as the 1960s in universities such as Stanford. These quotas disappeared in the 1970s.
In the early 21st century, there was a resurgence of antisemitism, especially after the BDS campaigns in the early 2000s and notably after the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel when anti-Israel activists and protestors were reported to have engaged in physical and verbal violence toward Jewish students and staff in American universities. American university administrations were criticized for failing to protects Jewish students and the president of Harvard, Penn and MIT were criticized for failing to clearly define calls for genocide of Jews as violating their universities' code of conduct. Some called for the genocide or ethnic cleansing of Jews living in Israel.
18th century and 19th century
Only one Jew, Judah Monis, received a college degree from an American university prior to 1800. Monis was given a job in Harvard to teach Hebrew on the condition he converted to Christianity. Despite having converted and married a Christian, he was not embraced by his Harvard colleagues.[1]
Due to the low proportion of Jews in the overall American population (a quarter of a million out of 63 million) according to Nathan Glazer "… before 1880 or 1890 there were too few American Jews for them to constitute a question".[2]
20th century
In the beginning of the 20th century, US administrators in elite universities in the United States sought to solve what was called to as "the Jewish problem" referring to there being too many Jews in campuses. Administrators restricted Jewish enrollment and created the modern admissions process to restrict the number of admitted students of Jewish origin. According to the Washington Post, every major section in the application process, including geographic diversity, legacy preference, the interview and freshman class cap were part of an effort to address "the Jewish problem" and reduce the number of Jewish students. Columbia University in New York City, Harvard, Yale and Princeton were among the first universities to restrict Jewish enrollment, following elite universities, hundreds of other US colleges restricted Jewish admission until the 1960s.[1]
According to Mark E. Oppenheimer, vice president of Open Learning at American Jewish university, universities were considering finishing schools for elite Protestant boys, Jewish students sought to use universities as an engine of social mobility and were less interested in the social activities of the university and instead preferred to invest in academic performance and studying, leading to a change in character of American universities which was perceived as a threat to the Protestant American elite.[1]
Jerome Karabel, a sociologist of the University of California wrote in "The chosen: The hidden history of admission and exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton" that Jews were seen as socialist proselytizers by nativists as well as a genetically inferior race by some Americans. Jews were considered unacceptable by some elite social circles according to Karabel.[3]
Abott Lawrence Lowell by John Singer Sargent 1923
Efforts to restrict Jewish enrollment started in New York City, a city whose population was 30% Jewish in the early 20th century. In Columbia university in 1920 had a 40% Jewish enrollment rate according to Oliver Pollak.[4] Since most Jewish students at the time were poor, worked night jobs to pay their tuition and lived at home, Columbia required students to live in dormitories in campus as well as limited scholarships. Columbia also began to conduct interviews in admissions process and according to Oppenheimer, university representatives detected accents or telling signs of Jewish origin even if the name of the applicant was not clearly Jewish. According to Nadell, elite Protestants students began to abandon Columbia due to its changing culture, after the initiation of the program Columbia halved the number of Jewish students within two years.[1] In Harvard Jews composed about 22% of the student population in 1922. Harvard began a geographic diversity program to enroll students from states with low numbers of Jews. Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell, according to historians James Davidson and Deborah Coe, was "the most significant proponent of restricting Jewish admissions".[5]
US admissions tests were designed to fit a White Protestant elite education with questions on Classical subjects as well as Greek and Latin which were not taught in schools in which the Jews and other immigrants learned.[1] Yale, Dartmouth and other universities introduced legacy admissions that favored the Protestant elite.[1]
According to sociologist, Stephen Steinberg, Jews were most commonly restricted through character and psychological exams.[2] Jews were often given descriptors that were in contrast to the values which the universities sought and those Jews who managed to prove they exhibited such values were considered "pushy". School administrators who were mostly Protestant would characterize Jews with stereotypes and prevented their entry to universities.[2]
Stanford University under President Marc Tessier-Lavigne admitted in 2022 of having limited the admission of Jewish students in the 1950s which he called "appalling antisemitic behavior". According to the Stanford committee, Stanford stopped or limited recruiting students from schools with high ratios of Jewish students. Between 1949 and 1952 following the introduction of the quota for example the number of students enrolled from Beverly Hills High School declined from 67 to 20 while Fairfax declined from 20 to 1. Stanford also misled investigations, parents and alumni who inquired for decades.[6][7]
In the 1970s quotas on Jews gradually disappeared and admission of students of Jewish origin rose in American higher education.[1]
In the late 20th century, Holocaust deniers were given a platform to run disinformation campaigns in multiple student run newspapers as well as through visits to universities. According to the ADL, through principles of academic freedom and student activism extremists and antisemitic rhetoric were allowed a say in university campuses. According to ADL this forced universities to directly fight antisemitism and extremism.[8]
21st century
In 2001 the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement began to pressure American universities to cut ties with Israeli academics and from Israel. Although such efforts mostly failed, the US Civil Rights commission issued a report in 2005 which states that "antisemitism persists on college campuses and is often cloaked as criticism of Israel". Jewish students were said to often feel isolated and targeted for harassment by BDS activists.[9][1]
In 2022 the American Jewish Congress released a report stating that a third of Jewish students felt unsafe or uncomfortable in campus due to their Jewish identity.[1]
In northern autumn 2023, before the October 7th attack a Palestinian literature festival was held in Penn campus, critics of the event pointed to controversial guests including Roger Waters who had called for the destruction of Israel as well as used antisemitic language.[10][11]
Following the October 7th attacks
Following the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, there were protests led by pro-Palestinian student groups. In an article about the student protests, Jonathan Chait noted that most pro-Palestinian protesters do not "engage in anti-semitic harassment." However, Chait wrote that a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) statement celebrated the attack and claimed that all Israeli Jews were legitimate targets.[12] The organization is supported and financially sponsored by the American Muslims for Palestine, which according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is linked to Hamas. A bipartisan group of lawmakers called for a federal investigation into the funding of SJP.[13][14] Columbia University and Rutgers University suspended the SJP chapter in their university in late 2023.[14]
In late November 2023, the Center for Antisemitism Research found that 73% of Jewish college students and 43.9% of non-Jewish students experienced or witnessed antisemitism in the 2023–2024 school year.[15] An August 2024 study conducted by Brandeis University found that one third of non-Jewish college students in the US embraced antisemitic or anti-Israel views.[16]
In 2023 the American Jewish Congress released a report that found that 44% of Jewish students were affected by antisemitism on campus. 25% of Jewish students avoided wearing or displaying items that could identify them as Jewish. More than 50% of Jewish students were excluded or felt excluded from other students more than once.[17]
Of the non-Jewish students targeted 46% said it was because they were assumed to be Jewish. According to the research center only 38.6% of Jewish students reported feeling comfortable in universities compared to 63.7% prior to the October 7th attack on Israel. A majority of students, Jews and non-Jews reported feeling their campus administration did not do enough to fight anti Jewish prejudice. Only 45.5% of Jewish students said they felt physically safe and 32.5% emotionally safe in universities.[15]
The center also found that only 18% of American students underwent any training related to anti-Jewish prejudice compared to 55.8% having undergone DEI training.[15]
December 2023, antisemitism hearing in Congress
In December 2023, President of Harvard, MIT and Penn testified before Congress regarding the state of antisemitism in their universities and were asked if "calling for the genocide of Jews" is against the codes of conduct in Penn, MIT and Harvard. The three presidents answered that it was a violation depending on the context. The President of Harvard, Claudine Gay and president of Penn, Lizz Magill subsequently resigned following criticism.[10][18] In August 2024, Columbia president Minouche Shafik also resigned following criticism,[19][20] and this came alongside the resignation of three deans at Columbia who had sent text messages with antisemitic tropes.[21][22] In December 2023, The United States Congress launched an investigation into antisemitism at the American universities.[23]
In late 2023, the New York Times reported that some Jews in Harvard have stopped wearing openly Jewish headwear.[24] In the New York Times article, Mark Oppenheimer noted in light of the history of antisemitic quotas against Jews in Harvard, "To see newly resurgent antisemitism against this backdrop of fairly recent, wonderful acceptance is a very, very painful thing for a lot of Jews,". Dr Gay after her resignation apologized for her testimony in Congress as well as saying that chants heard in Harvard such as "globalize the intifada" and "from the river to the sea" are antisemitic and a call for violence against Jews.[24] A Jewish student told the New York Times that some students may have different definitions for their chants and gave the benefit of the doubt while another student remarked that after October 7 there has been a major shift and felt the campus was an alien place, saying his classmates explicitly praised Hamas and denied the rape and abduction of Israeli women.[24] A June 2024 report from a task force commissioned by the acting president of Harvard concluded that antisemitism is indeed a major issue on campus, and suggested several ways to combat it.[25] In August 2024, a Federal Judge "found plausible accusations that Harvard was deliberately indifferent toward Jewish and Israeli students who said they feared for their safety after facing severe and pervasive harassment," and he ruled that the university must face the lawsuit brought against them.[26][27]
In late 2023 a protest that began in the outskirt of Penn campus resulted in the targeting of a Jewish owned restaurant in Philadelphia.[28][29]
In 2024, US President Joe Biden condemned antisemitism in campuses.[30]
Some pro-Palestinian students called for intifada,[31] as well as calling for Hamas brigades to kill Israeli soldiers. Some protestors called to burn Tel Aviv, a major Israeli city, to the ground. Anti Israel activists also sang "Oh Hamas, our beloved, strike strike Tel Aviv". Some students also chanted "Go Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets too".[32] The Jews of New York Instagram shared a video of a woman protestor with a sign reading "Al-Qassam's next targets" pointing toward a counter protest waving Israeli and American flags.[32]
Anti Israel protestors also called for Jews on campus to "Go back to Europe, you have no culture. All you do is colonize". A counter protest was taunted with calls of "Jews" and "Go back to Poland".[33][32] According to Jerusalem Post, a Jewish counter protestor tried to stop anti Israel activists from burning an Israeli flag while another Jew was splashed with water.[32] The anti Israel protestors also proclaimed "From the water to the water (a reference to the Jordan river and the Mediterranean), Palestine is Arab" which is considered a call for the cleansing of the region from Jews and the denial of Jewish rights for self-sovereignty in their ancestral homeland.[32][18]
Jewish students in Columbia reported feeling unsafe, being spit on and feeling relief at leaving the university. A student told Jerusalem Post that they felt their student representatives did not represent their grievances.[31] A protestor yelled at Jewish students "The 7th of October is going to be every day for you!".[12] Seth Mandel wrote in the "Commentary" that universities were teaching students that Jews must be supplanted from their homes because they represent a race that belongs elsewhere which according to Mandel is the reason why Jews were told to go back to Poland by students in Columbia.[34]
Two major Christian universities - Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU) in Marion, Indiana and Colorado Christian University (CCU) in Lakewood, Colorado - issued a letter condemning campus antisemitism and promising to protect the safety of Jewish students on their campuses.[37] In July 2024, UCLA was ordered by a court to develop a plan to protect Jewish students on campus;[38] in August, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that the university must prevent pro-Palestinian protesters from blocking Jewish students from accessing classes and other parts of campus.[39][40] Also in July, University of Wisconsin suspended five pro-Palestinian groups from campus after calls to label Jewish organizations as "extremist criminals".[41] In August 2024, the US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights found that Drexel University failed to adequately address the anti-Jewish hostile climate on campus.[42]
In August 2024, New York University updated its discrimination policy so that speech that would be considered discriminatory when addressing Jews or Israelis will also be considered discriminatory when substituting the term "Zionist".[43] Columbia University restricted access to campus out of concern for 'reports of potential disruptions' at the beginning of the new semester.[44] Anti-Israel activists also vandalized Cornell University on the first day of classes.[45] Also in August 2024, MIT denounced the distribution of 'antisemitic' Mapping Project flyers at orientation.[46] MIT President Sally Kornbluth said that while she supports free speech, she thought the flyers promoted antisemitism, and made some students feel uncomfortable.[46]
In September 2024, University of Pennsylvania announced a new office to fight religious intolerance.[47] An independent investigation ordered New York Governor Kathy Hochul into antisemtism in CUNY called 'complete overhaul' of the system's policies relating to antisemitism;[48][49] Hochul furthermore directed CUNY to using the IHRA working definition of antisemitism in assessing antisemitism claims.[50] This was coupled with a report detailing a 10-month investigation into antisemitism at CUNY published by Former New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman also calling for an overhaul of CUNY's system in addressing antisemitism.[51] In parallel, CUNY Jewish students shared first-hand account of campus antisemitism with Congressman Ritchie Torres and New York City Mayor Eric Adams at a roundtable at New York City Hall.[52][53]
Jewish Voice for Peace is an American Jewish anti-Zionist and left-wing advocacy organization. It is critical of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories, and supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
Antisemitism at universities has been reported and supported since the medieval period and, more recently, resisted and studied. Antisemitism has been manifested in various policies and practices, such as restricting the admission of Jewish students by a Jewish quota, or ostracism, intimidation, or violence against Jewish students, as well as in the hiring, retention and treatment of Jewish faculty and staff. In some instances, universities have been accused of condoning the development of antisemitic cultures on campus.
Historians continue to study and debate the extent of antisemitism in American history and how American antisemitism has similarities and distinctions with its European counterpart.
The history of Jews in Qatar is relatively limited unlike some of the neighboring countries in the Gulf of Persia.
Antisemitism, the prejudice or discrimination against Jews, has had a long history since the ancient times. While antisemitism had already been prevalent in ancient Greece and Roman Empire, its institutionalization in European Christianity after the destruction of the ancient Jewish cultural center in Jerusalem caused two millennia of segregation, expulsions, persecutions, pogroms, genocides of Jews, which culminated in the 20th-century Holocaust in Nazi German-occupied European states, where 67% European Jews were murdered.
Antisemitism has long existed in the United States. Most Jewish community relations agencies in the United States draw distinctions between antisemitism, which is measured in terms of attitudes and behaviors, and the security and status of American Jews, which are both measured by the occurrence of specific incidents. FBI data shows that in every year since 1991, Jews were the most frequent victims of religiously motivated hate crimes. The number of hate crimes against Jews may be underreported, as in the case for many other targeted groups.
Antisemitism in Canada is the manifestation of hatred, hostility, harm, prejudice or discrimination against the Canadian Jewish people or Judaism as a religious, ethnic or racial group.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is a New York–based international non-governmental organization that was founded to combat antisemitism, bigotry and discrimination. ADL is also known for its pro-Israel advocacy. Its current CEO is Jonathan Greenblatt. ADL headquarters are located in Murray Hill, in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The ADL has 25 regional offices in the United States including a Government Relations Office in Washington, D.C., as well as an office in Israel and staff in Europe. In its 2019 annual information Form 990, ADL reported total revenues of $92 million, the vast majority from contributions and grants. Its total operating revenue is reported at $80.9 million.
Racism in the Palestinian territories encompasses all forms and manifestations of racism experienced in the Palestinian Territories, of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, irrespective of the religion, colour, creed, or ethnic origin of the perpetrator and victim, or their citizenship, residency, or visitor status. It may refer to Jewish settler attitudes regarding Palestinians as well as Palestinian attitudes to Jews and the settlement enterprise undertaken in their name.
Antisemitism in France has become heightened since the late 20th century and into the 21st century. In the early 21st century, most Jews in France, like most Muslims in France, are of North African origin. France has the largest population of Jews in the diaspora after the United States—an estimated 500,000–600,000 persons. Paris has the highest population, followed by Marseilles, which has 70,000 Jews. Expressions of antisemitism were seen to rise during the Six-Day War of 1967 and the French anti-Zionist campaign of the 1970s and 1980s. Following the electoral successes achieved by the extreme right-wing National Front and an increasing denial of the Holocaust among some persons in the 1990s, surveys showed an increase in stereotypical antisemitic beliefs among the general French population.
Students for Justice in Palestine is a pro-Palestinian college student activism organization in the United States, Canada and New Zealand. Founded at the University of California in 2001, it has campaigned for boycott and divestment against corporations that deal with Israel and organized events about Israel's human rights violations. In 2011, The New York Times called it "the leading pro-Palestinian voice on campus". As of 2024, National SJP has over 350 chapters in North America.
IfNotNow is an American Jewish group which opposes the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Its membership demonstrates against politicians, United States policies, and institutions it perceives as supporting occupation, usually seeking to apply pressure through direct action and media appearances. It has been characterized variously as progressive or far-left.
Antisemitism is a growing problem in 21st-century Germany.
Antisemitism in the People's Republic of China is a mostly 21st century phenomenon and is complicated by the fact that there is little ground for antisemitism in China in historical sources. In the 2020s, antisemitic conspiracy theories in China began to spread and intensify. Some Chinese people believe in antisemitic tropes that Jews secretly rule the world.
Following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the outbreak of the Israel–Hamas war, there has been a surge of antisemitism around the world. Israeli Immigration Minister Ofir Sofer has stated that Israel is bracing to expect a large wave of Jews migrating to Israel due to the rising antisemitism around the world.
Globalize the Intifada is a slogan that has been used for advocating for global activism in support of Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation. The term intifada being derived from the Arabic word nafada meaning to "shake off", refers to Palestinian uprisings or resistance against Israeli control, and the call to "globalize" it suggests extending the spirit and actions of these uprisings beyond the regional context to a worldwide movement.
Within Our Lifetime - United For Palestine (WOL), is a pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist activist organization primarily active in New York City. The group, which expresses support for Hamas and Palestinian political violence against Israel, has been one of the key organizers in the city's ongoing Israel-Hamas war protests.
Antisemitism at Columbia University was prevalent in the first half of the 20th century and has resurged in recent years. In the early 21st century, discourse surrounding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict would sometimes lead to accusations of antisemitism, but these individual controversies were typically isolated.
After the October 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel, donors to colleges and universities in the United States halted donations or cut ties with the schools over their responses to the attacks and the resulting antisemitism on campuses. The reaction has been called a donor backlash, donor revolt., donor crisis., and donor uprising.
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