Grapevine

Survey reports on Jewish students' experiences at US colleges

The percentage of Jewish students on U.S. college campuses who said their Jewish identity was very important to them increased significantly from 2022 to 2024, according to a new study by a Tufts political scientist. An increasing number of students also reported that they felt a need to hide their Jewish identity to fit in on their campus and hide some of their opinions to fit in at Jewish activities on their campus, following a year of college-campus protests around the Israel-Hamas war.

Among other findings were that students of higher socioeconomic status, both Jewish and non-Jewish, were the strongest supporters of Israel, and that while many Jewish students saw their schools as aligned against Israel, many non-Jewish students saw school administrations as being pro-Israel.

The study was done by Eitan Hersh, professor of political science at Tufts University, for the Jim Joseph Foundation, which seeks to promote Jewish education in the U.S. The study began in 2022, using data from College Pulse, a survey research and analytics company that focuses on higher education. In 2022, only Jewish students were surveyed, but in subsequent years non-Jewish students on college campuses with significant Jewish populations were included.

Hersh thinks that similar studies for many different groups on college campuses could be useful. "It is really important to have independent research consistently on these questions, not just for the Jewish community, but for the Muslim community—for any community," he says. "How are things going over time? How do we know if things are going well? How do we know if people are happy or unhappy?"

Hersh, who has done previous scholarly work on antisemitism, co-wrote the report with Dahlia Lyss, A24, who worked with him while an undergraduate at Tufts. Hersh spoke recently with Tufts Now about the report.