NEW YORK — An overwhelming majority of Jewish parents of high school juniors and seniors say the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and its aftermath have affected which college their child plans to attend, according to a survey by Hillel International.
Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania have announced steps to fight anti-Semitism after weeks of turmoil on their campuses and others.(Wikimedia, David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images, Columbia University. Design by Jackie Hajdenberg)
Many families have ruled out schools over anti-Semitism concerns, the survey found, and a relatively small but significant proportion — 19% — said they are considering eschewing higher education for their children altogether.
The findings dovetail with a different survey, conducted by BBYO in February, showing that two thirds of Jewish teens said anti-Semitism on college campuses had become an important factor in their college choices.
Some teens said they changed their plans because of incidents on specific campuses since Oct. 7.
The parents and teens’ anxiety have been fueled by prominent reports about anti-Semitic and anti-Israel activity on campuses amid the Israel-Hamas war.
Adam Lehman, president and CEO of Hillel International, said the findings were “a really important additional wake-up call for universities that their positive actions, or failure to act, is going to have real consequences when it comes to their ability to attract Jewish students.”
“We do not believe this is a moment for the Jewish community to pull away from entire institutions of higher education,” he said.
“We’re working hard to actually ensure that we fix the campus climate at schools where that climate is broken, rather than really self-ghettoizing.”
Hillel says its survey, which was sourced from parents on its own email list as well as a previous study conducted by JFNA, is the first to measure changing attitudes since Oct. 7.
Nearly all respondents — 96% — said they are “concerned about the increase in anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses since October 7.”
Slightly fewer — 87% — said that Oct. 7 had a direct “impact” on how they chose a college or university for their child, while around two-thirds of respondents (64%) said they are not applying to certain schools.
The survey was conducted March 13-19, three months after the explosive congressional hearing on campus anti-Semitism led to the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.
The US Dept. of Education has opened more than 80 Title VI discrimination investigations on college and K-12 campuses since Oct. 7.
Sixty percent of parents said whether the school was under investigation was an important factor in their college selection.
The survey of more than 400 parents by the Benenson Strategy Group also found that nearly three-quarters of Jewish parents (74%) believe finding a campus with vibrant Jewish life has become more important since Oct. 7 — and that 91% were more likely to recommend their child become involved in Hillel.
Lehman pointed to the Campus Climate Initiative, a Hillel effort to educate university personnel about anti-Semitism.
Mothers Against College Anti-Semitism is a Facebook group with more than 55,000 members.
Members of the group share reports of anti-Semitism from their children’s schools, seek guidance on the safest schools for Jewish students or encourage others to apply to their child’s school.
In the survery, more than half of parents also said they cared about whether the school’s president made a “strong statement” after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.
Julia Jassey, a recent college graduate and CEO of the Jewish student advocacy group Jewish on Campus, says that Jewish students, not their parents, are best equipped to raise awareness about anti-Semitism on their campuses.
“The last thing that I would ever tell a parent or a student is not to go to a certain school because it’s anti-Semitic. All that will do is self-select ourselves out of spaces where we want to be able to offer our experience and perspective,” Jassey said.
“It’s really more important that when students go to school, they’re educated about what anti-Semitism is, how to combat it and what to do when they experience it.”
Hillel’s survey does not differentiate between anti-Israel and anti-Semitic campus activity.
It frames all objectionable post-Oct. 7 campus activity as “anti-Israel and/or anti-Semitic incidents.”
It also does not include Jewish groups that have been active in anti-Israel activity, with which Hillel does not collaborate.
Another recently released survey, from Tufts University professor Eitan Hersh and the Jim Joseph Foundation, found that more than a third of Jewish college students are hiding their Jewish identities in order to fit in on campus, while the number of Jewish students who feel more assertive in their own Jewish identity has doubled from two years ago.
Hersh says that his results indicate that “students feel like they pay a social cost just to attend Jewish events like Hillel, or to even just identify as Jewish.”
Hersh says that since the war, “many students are under pressure to have a position, to take a position, and I think that might cause some students to not bring up their Jewishness in conversation, because Israel politics are so complicated.”
Asked what advice he would give to Jewish parents considering colleges for their children, Lehman said it was important to “do the homework, to really understand what the Jewish life experience is like at a given campus.
“Don’t simply rely on news reports or social media chatter.”
