Nearly half (48.3%) of non-Jewish college students experienced or witnessed antisemitic behavior on campus or on online school platforms in the past year, according to a survey that the Anti-Defamation League released on Tuesday.
Shira Goodman, vice president of advocacy and head of the Center to Combat Antisemitism in Education at the ADL, told JNS that the number is “really very high.”
Just 5.3% of respondents reported undergoing antisemitism training despite many schools telling the ADL that they require such training or offer it on a voluntary basis. “There’s a little bit of a disconnect there,” Goodman told JNS.
The ADL also released its “report card” on Jew-hatred on campus on Tuesday. The survey and the report show that “schools are taking more action, but we are still at heightened levels of antisemitic incidents on campus,” Goodman said.
Some 47.6% of non-Jewish students endorsed at least one antisemitic belief listed in the survey, and 19.2% agreed with three or more such beliefs. Some of those beliefs are that American Jews are too powerful or that they are more loyal to Israel than to the United States, or that Jews are responsible for the Israeli government’s actions.
Among respondents, 18.1% reported more sympathy for Hamas than Israel, and 32% were comfortable being friends with Hamas supporters. Just 8.1% had more sympathy with Israel than with the U.S.-designated terror group. Still, 69% believe that Jews have a right to an independent country, and 69.3% don’t agree with universities severing ties with Israeli institutions.
Some 85% of the 1,107 non-Jewish students, who were polled in January and February, think that universities should take action against antisemitism on campus, and 76.1% think people should care more about Jew-hatred.
The “report card,” which grades 150 U.S. colleges and universities, shows that there are some “big improvements,” including many more A’s and B’s than in 2025 and 2024, according to Goodman. That suggested “sustained action, new policies, enforcement, taking this seriously,” she said.
Two schools that Goodman cited were University of Pennsylvania and Tufts University, both of which improved from C’s in 2025 to B’s this time around.
But many other schools haven’t taken sufficient action and remain “flat.”
“I think Maryland staying a C is disappointing,” she said. “It’s such an important school, such a high Jewish population, such a great center of Jewish life.”
University of Maryland, College Park has “such great Jewish life on that campus” but its “student government has been among the most active in an antisemitic way in the country,” Goodman told JNS.
The public university has said repeatedly that student government votes don’t impact university policy, but hasn’t “come out and explained why this is problematic,” Goodman said. She noted that the student government rescheduled a vote on a resolution to boycott Israel from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur.
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign were among the schools that got D’s. In 2025, Cal Poly got a D and Illinois got a C.
California State University, Los Angeles and Scripps College, a liberal arts college that is one of five undergraduate schools in the Claremont Colleges, were among the schools that received F’s. Scripps also got an F last year before. Cal State wasn’t included in last year’s “report card.”
New York University, Brandeis University and University of Southern California were among the schools that received A’s. Last year, Brandeis also got an A, and NYU got a B and USC got a C.
The ADL bases its grading on administrative policies and practices, Jewish life on campus, campus climate and enforcement of policies and response to incidents, according to Goodman.
“There’s a need for continued vigilance,” she said. “This isn’t something that just kind of comes and goes with those peaks related to Israel-Gaza or the Iran war.”
“It’s got to be consistent—how we talk about these things, how we teach about these things, how we learn about it, because we could easily shift back in a moment and we don’t want to be back to where we were fall of 2023, spring of 2024,” she said.
