The headlines are everywhere. Antisemitism is on the rise on college campuses across the United States. In a recent article in USA Today by Deena Yellin, dozens of Jewish students interviewed said that they hide their Jewishness in fear of antisemitic reprisals. She quotes an ADL study stating that antisemitic incidents on campus have spiked 41 percent this past year, and there have been reports of such incidents at 130 campuses across the country.
You may think this is limited to the out-of-town college in a community with few Jews. Yet our own local Brooklyn College is under investigation by the United States Department of Education Office of Civil Rights for complaints alleging that Jewish Students in Brooklyn’s Graduate Mental Health Program were subjected to antisemitic harassment from both professors and peers. The complaint states that the professors are advancing the narrative that all Jews have “white privilege” and therefore contribute to the oppression of people of color.
At Rutgers University, the local Jewish fraternity had eggs thrown at it on Rosh Hashana. A 2021 Brandeis Center poll found that 50 percent of Jewish College students hide their Jewish identity, and more than half avoid expressing their views on Israel. A 2022 survey by the American Jewish Committee reported that 28 percent of American Jewish millennials say that the anti-Israel climate on campus has damaged their relationships with non-Jewish peers.
I believe it is time for us in the Yeshiva Day School community who value the benefit of a good college education to re-evaluate the cost-benefit ratio of sending our children to liberal arts colleges. While college was always a challenge for our youth, in the past we inoculated them with a solid year of post-high school Torah education in Israel and relied upon the strong Jewish values in our homes to protect our children. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, most of our local colleges had strong centers of Jewish life on campus and easy access to kosher food and local minyanim. Yeshiva kids were in general respected for their academic ability and the critical thinking skills developed over years of Talmud study.
However, in an environment where outward expression of one’s Jewishness can lead to verbal attacks from both students and professors alike, how can we continue to hide our heads in the sand regarding the dangers our children face on college campuses? How can we better support those students who do attend secular colleges, and what alternatives are available?
First, we need to stop evaluating our own excellence based upon the colleges our children attend. Investing $250K in Jewish education over 12-14 years, only to have it eradicated at a four-year institution that is unsupportive of the needs of the Orthodox Jewish student would seem to be poor economics. We should be choosing colleges for our children that afford them the best opportunity to live their lives Jewishly.
We are blessed today with both a strong Yeshiva University and the various Touro College campuses. However, I was puzzled this past week when the advertisement from Yeshiva University listing the incoming students had far more Bais Yaakov and right-wing mesivta students entering than those from Modern Orthodox day schools. Though YU ranks regularly in the top tier of colleges in the country, sadly, recruitment from our best Modern Orthodox high schools is not what it used to be. Are we so secure in the level of Yiddishkeit of our day school graduates that we can afford not to push Jewish alternatives?
The OU has a program called JLIC (Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus). Each JLIC campus offers a complete array of weekly shiurim and support for Orthodox Jewish students on campus. At out-of-town schools, the JLIC educators host students for meals on Shabbos and create the community that our Orthodox students need to thrive on secular campuses. With 22 JLIC campuses across the USA and Canada, including many Ivy League schools, one wonders why our Yeshiva high schools do not insist that students apply only to those schools with the supportive environment JLIC provides? However, if one looks at the annual advertisements in Jewish media put out by our top-flight Yeshiva high schools, you will find many whose graduates are attending campuses that lack an active JLIC. Why aren’t we directing the college advisors at our day schools to only recommend those colleges with active JLIC on campus?
Years ago, when I was principal at Magen David Yeshiva High School, we regularly sent our graduates to Hofstra University, which seemed to be local enough to provide for the religious needs of our graduates. One of our rabbis visited the campus only to be horrified that after the kosher cafeteria closed at 7 p.m., students were eating non-kosher, and with the closest minyan about 20 minutes away off campus, students had stopped davening or putting on tefillin. Needless to say, we stopped sending our students to that school.
Our local CUNY colleges were once cost-effective and local enough to support a rich Jewish and Orthodox lifestyle. It seems that much has changed as “wokeism” and extreme progressivism have taken over these campuses. Our yeshiva kids are targeted as being “privileged,” racist, and worse. Our deep feelings about Israel are attacked daily by fellow students and professors.
We must loudly protest to our elected officials that these campuses must remain open to our students and that they are entitled to proudly express their Judaism without fear of attack. Thankfully, leadership at some campuses, most notably Queens College, have responded by making it clear that antisemitism will not be tolerated. However, much more needs to be done.
Meanwhile, the question lingers: Why must we send our day school graduates to secular campuses where their beliefs, values and support for Israel will be under constant attack?
