Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, co-founder and director of the AMCHA Initiative, tells AFN an "insidious," never-before-seen trend has been uncovered. The report, "Campus Antisemitism & the Assault on Jewish Identity," reveals "a looming crisis for the American Jewish community." There were 254 attacks on 63 different college campuses with large Jewish populations, and Harvard, the University of Chicago, Tufts UCLA, and Rutgers had the highest number of incidents.
"There is no other student identity group on campus that has been subject to the types of the collective, pervasive, and well-coordinated attacks against their identity as Jewish students who support the Jewish state," Rossman-Benjamin asserts. "None."
She says the recorded incidents include bullying, intimidation, and outright attacks on Jews in efforts to suppress pro-Israel voices and to block Jews from campus organizations.
"Academic departments … were issuing statements that were calling for a boycott of Israel, that were taking clear political positions, anti-Israel political positions [and] using antisemitic rhetoric," she adds.
Rossman-Benjamin says institutions of higher education where faculty members embrace the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement are 3-7 times more likely to see incidents of antisemitism occur.
"The threats to Jewish student identity come from their peers, professors, and even school administrators and reach every corner of campus life—the quad, classrooms, dorm rooms, student newspaper, social media platforms, student government, and more," the report concludes.
