The Future of Jewish Students at Elite Universities

Should Jewish students abandon Ivy League universities and other elite schools where antisemitism has exploded since Oct. 7?

This question, which would have previously been unthinkable given the Jewish community’s allegiance to prestigious higher education for the past 80 years, is now quite common.

Bret Stephens has written that, for the rising high school senior, “maybe it’s time to forgo the fading prestige of the old elite for the sake of something else, something new.”

William Daroff, former CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said, “If they don’t want us, we should go elsewhere.”

I graduated from Princeton and have three advanced degrees from Yale. I taught at Princeton for 18 years and am currently president of American Jewish University (AJU) in Los Angeles. I am therefore particularly animated by these questions.

The animus faced by Jewish students at some universities should certainly not be underestimated. Rabbi David Wolpe’s hair-raising account of his year at Harvard described the university as “an institution rife with antisemitism and anti-Zionism.” This affirms that parents’ concerns about sending their children to certain campuses are real.

Some schools have stepped up and offered Jewish students a safe alternative, including Brandeis and Yeshiva Universities. We may also see new entrants, like the University of Austin, that promise to avoid the ideological ruts that institutions have fallen into.

All these initiatives are to be praised. The more alternatives that students have, the better; and higher education is certainly in need of new entrants to challenge the status quo.

However, it would be a profound mistake for Jewish students to abandon select institutions of higher learning because of the fear of what they may confront. Students would miss out on conversations that are often wonderful educational opportunities, albeit ones that may be diminished by the current climate.

Moreover, the campus climate is a fickle thing. What is considered a “safe” school can suddenly experience highly visible, albeit numerically small, activists demanding a “global intifada” before the end of term.

If Jews abandon some schools, the institutions will only sink deeper into the antisemitic swamp. However, asking an 18-year-old to be part of the process to change the Near Eastern Studies Department is a heavy burden.

The best argument for Jews to continue to go to Harvard, Columbia and other institutions where they face profound and sometimes institutionalized animus is sad: This is the world in which we live. We may be doing a disservice to students by encouraging them to attend “safe” universities that do not prepare them for a world where Jew-hatred—often, though not always, tied to Israel—is in play.

Anti-Israel bias segueing into antisemitism is apparent in medical centers, the publishing world, gaming, music contests, unions and seemingly almost every other aspect of work and play. It is better to prepare in college for what the antisemites and anti-Zionists say and do than be shocked after four years on a bucolic college green without encampments.

The biases of peers can be more deeply felt in the residential college experience, where students work and play together more than elsewhere. I have been touched by stories of college students devasted after losing their friends because they defended Israel. But it is also the case that the modern college campus offers more support—in the form of Hillel directors, Chabad rabbis and some sympathetic college officials—than is found in the “real world.”

Over the last nine months, we have learned that sending our children to college without an adequate Jewish education is sending them intellectually unarmed. The future of the Jewish college experience depends on better primary and secondary education. This has become a critical AJU initiative.

Several years ago, AJU discontinued its four-year undergraduate program to explore new and innovative ways to educate. One of these programs is the Jewish Learning Experience, which, in the fall, will offer a college-credit course on Israel to high school students across the country. This course will educate students about Israel before they arrive at contentious college campuses and better prepare them to meet the intellectual and social challenges they will encounter there.

None of this is to absolve college officials on all campuses from trying to make their schools as free from hate as possible. However, Jewish students cannot wait for that task to be completed. Along the way, they will learn some important life lessons.