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ADL Data Reveals Alarming Campus Antisemitism, Despite Strong Jewish Life
Antisemitism on college campuses is a serious problem for Jewish students trying to experience the diverse landscape of academic life.
In 2023, antisemitism on college campuses reached record levels, with incidents surging by 321 percent compared to 2022, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)’s Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents.
This dramatic increase includes 922 antisemitic incidents on college and university campuses, demonstrating an urgent need to address antisemitic hate on campus to ensure that all students can learn and thrive. A 2024 CPOST study confirmed that there is a crisis of antisemitism on college campuses, reporting that 56% of Jewish college students felt in personal danger because of their stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. A December 2023 Brandeis report showed that higher levels of antisemitic hostility on campus resulted in Jewish students feeling less safe and less like they “very much belonged.” Such hostility has translated directly to self-censorship, with a 2024 Jim Joseph Foundation study noting that “more than a third of Jewish students report they are hiding their identity in order to fit in.”
To help students, their families, and other campus stakeholders assess what’s happening on campuses — and to urge campuses to take immediate and meaningful action to improve the campus climate for Jewish students — the ADL recently released the first iteration of its new Campus Antisemitism Report Card, a tool that assesses the state of antisemitism on campus and how universities and colleges are responding.
The feedback so far indicates that we are achieving those goals.
Feedback from students and families indicates that our tool is a useful source of necessary information during this volatile time. A number of universities and college leaders have already responded with requests for information and resources, eager to learn how to improve.
Despite its strengths, some have criticized the Report Card or the specific grades it assigned, suggesting that the evaluations may not align with personal experiences on certain campuses.
It’s important to note, however, that while individual experiences may vary, the Report Card is based on data and research, focusing on institutions’ responses to antisemitism and reported incident data.
The data is clear — many of these schools are failing to meet the moment when it comes to addressing rising antisemitism. This is data and information that students, families, alumni, and other campus stakeholders deserve to have. Moreover, it is data and information that should incentivize meaningful corrective action from the institutions themselves.
Although the Jewish student experience is deeply related to what we were aiming to assess — namely the level of antisemitism on campus and how universities are responding — those things are not one and the same. Students on campuses that receive lower grades may still experience positive Jewish life due to strong support systems like Hillels, Chabads, robust Jewish studies programs, and Jewish Greek life organizations.
Conversely, campuses with high grades may still have students experiencing antisemitic incidents.
It is important to note that a high grade does not imply that a campus is free from antisemitism, just as a low grade does not suggest the absence of robust Jewish student life and support. In fact, many campuses received full credit for every aspect of Jewish life we assessed, but the high level of antisemitic incidents on campus, or the university’s lackluster response, drove the grade down.
Many factors affect an individual student’s experience on campus, which is why students and families should view the Report Card as one tool in a suite of available resources that they use to assess campuses.
Our Report Card aims to create a race to the top among campuses, motivating them to strive for excellence in addressing and combating antisemitism. The race is on, and removing the hurdles will only benefit students by creating safer and more inclusive campus environments for all students, including Jewish students.
We hope these schools will implement new programs and policies that we and others recommend, and that their grades will improve accordingly.
Shira Goodman is Senior Director of Advocacy at ADL (the Anti-Defamation League).
The post ADL Data Reveals Alarming Campus Antisemitism, Despite Strong Jewish Life first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
The post Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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