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In the year that has passed since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, college campuses have been embroiled in debates about the resulting conflict. A major focus of these debates has been the surge in reports of antisemitic harassment of Jewish students, with campus administrators, faculty, politicians and pundits furiously arguing over the prevalence and severity of antisemitism on campus.

They have also been debating the forces driving it, how universities should respond and how to address concerns about antisemitism while also responding to harassment and hostility toward Muslim and Palestinian students as a result of the war.

These debates are important, not only because they inform how campuses should deal with antisemitism and other forms of prejudice in the new academic year, but also because they speak to core issues for higher education, including free speech, diversity and institutional neutrality.

Unfortunately, systematic data has played only a small role in these debates. Pundits trade assertions about what protesters really want. Or they warn that antisemitism is being dishonestly "weaponized" to stifle criticism of Israel. Meanwhile, politicians and philanthropists castigate schools based on their perceptions of how administrators dealt with the conflict.

However, claims about antisemitism on campus are often based on anecdotes, headlines and social media trends. Rather than representing the range of perspectives among students, anecdotes, headlines and popular social media posts tend to amplify the loudest, most viral and most extreme voices.

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