Brandeis University. Photo: Wiki Commons.

American higher education prides itself on truth-telling. Yet when the subject is antisemitism, the academy often resorts to denial and minimization.

A recent Brandeis University study is a striking case in point. Its authors, Dr. Graham Wright and Prof. Leonard Saxe of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, claim that only three percent of non-Jewish faculty are hostile toward Israel.

In a recent Inside Higher Ed editorial, the authors argue that most professors are in fact allies, not adversaries, in the fight against antisemitism.

This narrative is reassuring — but dangerously misleading. It rests on a narrow definition of “hostility” that excludes far more pervasive expressions of animus.

Wright and Saxe classified as hostile only those faculty who denied Israel’s right to exist and refused to collaborate with colleagues who affirmed it. By that measure, just three percent of professors qualified. Yet their own data tell a different story: a majority — 54 percent — agreed that Israel is an apartheid state; 8 percent said they would not collaborate with a colleague who supports Israel’s existence; and 7 percent denied Israel’s right to exist outright.

Calling Israel an apartheid state — when it manifestly is not — is an act of hostility, one that delegitimizes the Jewish State and stigmatizes its supporters. By any reasonable standard, then, hostility among non-Jewish faculty is not marginal but widespread.

Jewish students’ experiences reinforce this reality about faculty.

Wright and Saxe’s own earlier 2023 report, In the Shadow of War: Hotspots of Antisemitism on US College Campuses, found that at some of the most hostile schools since October 7, 2023, “about 80 percent of Jewish students reported encountering hostility toward Israel from other students ‘sometimes’ or ‘often,’” and 30 percent reported hostility directly from faculty.

Is it remotely plausible that only three percent of faculty are hostile when nearly one in three Jewish students perceive faculty hostility firsthand?

The authors’ subsequent 2024 report, Antisemitism on Campus: Understanding Hostility to Jews and Israel, reached similar conclusions: a majority of Jewish students (60 percent) reported a hostile environment toward Jews on their campus, and 82 percent reported hostility toward Israel.

Non-Jewish students largely agreed: 56 percent said there was a hostile climate toward Israel on their campus. And in February 2025, the American Jewish Committee reported that nearly one-third of Jewish college students believe faculty themselves have promoted antisemitism or hostile learning environments, which matches the 2023 numbers on faculty. These findings make clear that many faculty are part of the problem, not simply neutral bystanders.

Campus incidents drive the point home. At NYU in April 2024, professors formed a human barricade to shield a pro-Hamas encampment from police. At Columbia, professors rallied in defense of encampments accused of harassing Jewish students. At Barnard, a professor proudly supported students in a building takeover and berated a student who challenged her extreme anti-Israel views.

At Sarah Lawrence, where I teach, many faculty openly embrace anti-Zionist narratives, justify calls for violence, and encourage disruptive tactics such as building takeovers. The president of the American Association of University Professors has even endorsed militant “direct action,” betraying its founding mission of protecting academic freedom in favor of raw activism. This posture lends legitimacy to those who would turn campuses into platforms for radical politics and intimidation.

These are not isolated incidents. They reflect a broader pattern of faculty normalizing antisemitic rhetoric, excusing intimidation, and modeling for students that radical activism trumps pluralism. If only a handful — say three percent — of professors were hostile, then the rest would be allies. Yet where are the teach-ins against antisemitism? The op-eds condemning dehumanizing chants? The marches for pluralism led by senior professors with tenure? They scarcely exist, and certainly not in meaningful numbers.

Instead, we see that Jewish and Zionist faculty very publicly retreat in frustration or fear. Many resign or fall silent rather than rally colleagues. Outside groups such as the Academic Engagement Network have tried to fill the void, but on campus, the absence of strong faculty support for beleaguered students is glaring. That silence sustains an anti-Israel culture that cannot credibly be blamed on only three percent of professors.

The Brandeis study also overlooks a structural reality: much of the actual teaching of undergraduates is done not by tenured or tenure-track professors, but by adjuncts, lecturers, and contingent instructors. These are the faculty who most directly shape classroom climate, yet they were excluded from the survey. By extrapolating from a narrower, more insulated slice of faculty, the study presents a portrait of classrooms that is rosier than the reality Jewish students encounter.

The consequences of the study’s myths are profound. Administrators cite it to downplay problems. Policymakers invoke it to avoid reform. Faculty hide behind it to excuse their inaction. The result is a campus environment where hostility toward Israel and its supporters festers unchecked, while institutions point to “data” purporting to show that almost all faculty are allies.

Wright and Saxe close their piece by warning that while the actions of a few faculty can shape the climate of an entire campus, punishing faculty as a whole is unwise. They add that changes are needed, but can only succeed if faculty are part of the process. On that last point, they are right: faculty must be part of any solution. Universities cannot be reformed over the heads of the people who teach and mentor students every day.

But solutions cannot rest on misinterpretation. The Brandeis study’s own data reveal serious problems, yet its framing implies that faculty hostility is statistically marginal. That misleading conclusion obscures the lived reality of Jewish students — and the actual reality on campus.

As I have argued in AEIdeas, faculty bear a responsibility not only to avoid hostility, but to actively sustain pluralism and resist intimidation. When professors retreat into silence, they create a vacuum that the most radical voices inevitably fill. Recognizing that reality is essential if faculty are to become part of the solution rather than bystanders to the problem.

Until faculty themselves prove otherwise, the evidence is clear: too many are not allies of Israel or of Jewish students, but part of the problem itself.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a bullhorn during a protest at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) on March 11, 2025. Photo: Daniel Cole via Reuters Connect.

The Columbia Journalism Review, the official organ of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, recently published a round table discussion on press freedom in Gaza and Israeli restrictions on foreign journalists entering Gaza.

This was not, however, an academic and nuanced discussion on such hot-button topics. Rather, it was an orgy of radical voices accusing Israel of the most heinous crimes, dismissing any connection between certain Gazan journalists and Hamas, and ignoring the role that Hamas plays in obstructing press freedom in Gaza.

Urgent ideas for defending press freedom in Gaza, the world’s deadliest place for journalists. By @AzmatZahra, @MeghnadBose93, and @laur_watso. https://t.co/tMUN4F3oIl pic.twitter.com/bM6WPezgfI

— Columbia Journalism Review (@CJR) August 18, 2025

The tone of this piece was immediately set by the introductory remarks by Azmat Khan, the initiator of this discussion, and both an assistant professor of journalism and the director of the Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism at Columbia Journalism School.

Khan engages in a blistering diatribe against Israeli actions in Gaza, accusing the Jewish State of committing genocide, purposefully targeting Gazan journalists in order to stop them from reporting on the war, and manufacturing a “man-made human catastrophe in Gaza.”

Khan dismisses Israeli allegations that certain Gazan journalists and media workers that were moonlighting as terrorists as “poorly evidenced accusations that someone Israel killed was a combatant, rather than well-documented evidence of that person’s work as a reporter” and also goes after “pro-Israel advocacy groups that dub themselves ‘media watchdogs’ and wage systematic campaigns, fomented by Israeli intelligence, to discredit, dehumanize, and blacklist them—and to harass those who defend them.”

There is no doubt that Khan had HonestReporting in mind on that last point, after we exposed the terror links of certain Palestinian journalists in Gaza and how Hamas frames the narrative emerging from the coastal enclave.

Clearly, rather than engaging with the serious questions about the journalistic integrity of some Gazan reporters and media workers, Khan prefers to blindly absolve them of any wrongdoing and vilify those bringing these terror ties to light. This is not the work of an influential academic committed to truth and accuracy but of a propagandist obfuscating reality to serve a prepared narrative.

Khan’s ire then turned toward governments and news outlets, accusing them of turning a blind eye to Israel’s actions in Gaza and endangering the lives of Palestinian journalists.

It is here that Khan turned to a litany of “thinkers from across the fields of journalism, human rights, literature, academia, and advocacy,” asking for new strategies and ideas on how to promote “press freedom” in Gaza. With such a biased introduction, it is no surprise that the respondents all shared Khan’s animus towards Israel and placed all blame at the feet of the Jewish state, completely ignoring the terror organization that still exerts control inside the Gaza Strip.

Here are some of the most radical proposals and claims that were put forward in this piece:

• Sharif Abdel Kouddous, the Middle East and North Africa editor for Drop Site News (an alternative news organization that has no problem parroting Hamas talking points and sympathizing with the terror group), suggested journalists strike until media organizations include a disclaimer that Israel is responsible for the most journalist deaths around the world. He said the veracity of any Israeli statement “is dubious.”
• Arwa Damon, a former CNN correspondent who was quick to  contextualize Hamas’ October 7 attacks, recommended “banning Israeli government and military voices from air and print until they let the press into Gaza.”
• Activist and journalist Mohammed El-Kurd, no stranger to misinformation and bending the truth, suggested a flotilla or march of foreign journalists to Gaza.
• Lila Hassan, an independent journalist, accused the media of favoring the Israeli narrative and not questioning it, thus violating media ethics.
• Assal Rad, a media critic, urged journalists and media organizations to platform Palestinian voices from inside Gaza and to stop treating Israeli government statements as “a reliable source of information.”
• Similarly, Diana Buttu, a former spokesperson for the PLO, called on journalists to stop “interviewing or giving space” to Israeli spokespeople.
• Abubaker Abed, a Palestinian journalist who glorifies Hamas and incites violence, suggested that media organizations should hire more Gazan journalists and pay them double the current rate while also providing cover for them in the international arena.

The publication of such a one-sided piece in an elite university’s journalism review calls into question the ethics and standards that are being taught to budding journalists. What hope is there for journalistic standards to be maintained in future reporting on Israel and the Palestinians if this is the approach taken by those who are tasked with influencing the next generation of journalists?

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

An Israeli soldier stands on a tank on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza, Israel, Aug. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

A widely reported story from The Guardian was headlined: “Revealed: Israeli military’s own data indicates civilian death rate of 83% in Gaza war.”

Yet neither Israel’s data — nor even The Guardian’s own article — actually support that absurd headline.

At RealityCheck, we don’t typically bother with absurd headlines, because our focus leans more toward making real policy changes. This particular headline, however, has been widely quoted on social media and even in some policy circles as “proof” that Israel is targeting civilians.

To reach its delusional conclusion, The Guardian claimed, “Figures from classified IDF database listed 8,900 named fighters as dead or probably dead in May, as overall death toll reached 53,000.” [emphasis added]

The Guardian goes on to reason that 8,900 named terrorists account for roughly 17% of the total number of people Hamas claims were killed.

Based on this logic, The Guardian unilaterally concluded that all other deaths (i.e. 83%) must have been entirely civilians.

That, of course, is not what the quoted data says: just because the IDF did not list a fighter’s name does not mean that person was a civilian.

Furthermore, The Guardian’s logic assumes that Hamas’ total figure is completely reliable, which is also doubtful — because Hamas is an internationally designated terror organization, listed alongside ISIS and Al-Qaeda: groups that have never been considered reliable news sources.

A few of the many non-civilians eliminated by the IDF in Gaza, via IDF.

The Guardian got its story from +972 Magazine, an Israel-based website that is both foreign funded and furiously anti-Israel. The website bases its entire article on — you guessed it — anonymous sources.

As we’ve discussed before, anonymous sources are notoriously unreliable, and sometimes can even be entirely falsified.

So what are the real numbers?

The most recent IDF figure from January states that 20,000 Hamas fighters were killed (far more than the 8,900 The Guardian claims), and there has been over half a year of intense combat since that time, which means the actual figure is now even higher.

Yet there is an even more dramatic development in Gaza casualty data: this month, Hamas’ “Ministry of Health” published a list of the more than 60,000 alleged deaths in Gaza in this war, up to the end of July.

As a rule, Hamas figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, however, according to Hamas’ own figures:

• 32,113 deaths were males of combat age (15–65)*
• 12,875 were children (under 15)
• 12,067 were women (15–65)
• 3,094 were elderly (65+)

*According to Hamas’ rules, “combat age” is (tragically) as young as 15.

Photo: Screenshot from the Hebrew language portal of the Gaza Ministry of Health website, originally captured by the Israeli website Abualiexpress.

If one does some basic math on those figures, they reveal that MOST of the casualties in Gaza (53.3%) were males of combat age, even though that demographic accounts for only 29% of Gaza’s population.

This is according to Hamas figures, which are notoriously unreliable. In all likelihood, the truth may be even more skewed toward the combat demographic.

That means the myth that most casualties are women and children (which was never true) is now supported by — literally no one.

Yet, somehow, none of this made it into The Guardian’s article.

I wonder why?

Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.