Universities graded on addressing antisemitism
ADL gives Harvard, Stanford and MIT an ‘F’
Harvard, Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were among the top universities to receive an “F” on a Campus Antisemitism Report Card issued Thursday by the AntiDefamation League.
In a first-of-its-kind report, the ADL graded 85 colleges across the nation on their policies and administrative actions taken to protect Jewish students and combat antisemitism. Of them, two received an “A,” 17 received a “B,” 29 received a “C,” 24 received a “D” and 13 received an “F.” The report card comes at a time when the line between free speech and hate speech is debated across the country and a slew of college administrative scandals have followed the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
“Every campus should get an A – that’s not grade inflation, that’s the minimum that every group on every campus expects,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Like all students, Jewish students deserve to feel safe and supported on campus.”
Harvard was one of the first universities to make national headlines about how those on campus were responding to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Days after war broke out, a coalition of student groups co-signed a letter blaming Israel for the attack. Many of them were then publicly identified.
After an influx of reports of antisemitic actions and concerns about students’ safety, Harvard President Claudine Gay and University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill testified in December before Congress about antisemitism on college campuses. Their comments sparked intense national criticism.
Gay testified that hate speech and calls for the genocide of Jews are
antisemitic, but said whether they violated Harvard’s code of ethics depended on context. Within a matter of weeks, Gay and Magill had both resigned from their positions.
After several Jewish students filed a lawsuit against Harvard claiming it fosters antisemitism, the school’s interim president, Alan M. Garber, announced two new task forces: the Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and the Presidential Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim and Anti-Arab Bias. Both began their work on campus in February.
Other top schools have faced similar lawsuits and administrative scandals over reports of rising antisemitism on their campuses since Oct. 7.
In March, two students from MIT filed a lawsuit against the university. With help from the StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice, the students allege MIT allowed antisemitism that resulted in intimidation, harassment and assault.
Stanford – which, along with Harvard and MIT, received a failing grade from the ADL – is now facing a lawsuit from a former lecturer whom it suspended after he was accused of calling Jewish students “colonizers.” The ADL said it created the report card to give parents, students and others a mechanism to evaluate how administrators are responding to antisemitism on campus.
The two schools that received an “A” in the ADL report are Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and Elon University in Elon, North Carolina.
Brandeis was the first private university to revoke official recognition of its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter after the Oct. 7 attack, and Elon was praised for its transparent process for reporting antisemitic incidents, an advisory council to address antisemitism, and active Jewish student organizations.