You can tell something is off with the Alums for Campus Fairness’s Campus Climate Brief from the cover of the report. There you see the odd secondary title of “The Strongest and Most Concerning Campuses for Jewish and Pro-Israel Students.”
Catch that? The report conflates being a Jewish student with being a pro-Israel student. Being Jewish, however, does not go hand in hand with being pro-Israel, especially among the younger Americans who are the vast majority of college students. Consider, for example, the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll results from June indicating that 23 percent of Jewish Americans age 45 and over say Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza, with the percentage jumping to 37 percent for Jewish Americans under 45 years old. Of course, the numbers will come in higher for lesser criticisms of the Israel government. It is thus no wonder that at college campuses across the country Jewish students are among the leaders of and participants in protests against actions of the Israel government, as well as against its substantial influence on, and support from, the United States government.
In a Wednesday editorial at Forbes, Scott White challenged a core argument of the Campus Climate Brief that one thing that makes a college good for Jewish students is the suppression of criticism of Israel. In contrast, White argues persuasively that many Jewish students will prefer a college that includes in its mission tolerance for disagreement:
Rankings like this one can answer part of the safety question parents want answered. But families might do better asking a wider set of questions: Can a student wear a yarmulke or Star of David across campus without fear? Can an observant student eat kosher and keep Shabbat? Can a Zionist student defend Israel without being frozen out of unrelated organizations — and can a critic of Israel do the same without being treated as less Jewish? Can Jewish students disagree with each other inside Jewish organizations? Can a Palestinian student condemn Israel just as freely? Does the administration protect controversial speech while drawing a clear line at threats and harassment? And when controversy erupts, does the college teach students to interact with it, or try to make it go away?
Those questions say more about a campus’s intellectual and Jewish life than the number of protests on the quad.
While White presented a commendable critique of the Campus Climate Brief, he passed along in his article results from a Hillel report on antisemitism on college campuses that share a fundamental problem with the Campus Climate Brief. Hillel inflates its reporting of antisemitism incidents numbers by including in them incidents where people were critical of the Israel government — speech that White praises colleges for accepting on campus. I wrote more about Hillel’s bogus claims regarding antisemitism in a June of 2024 article you can read here.
