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ADL Updates Report Card Grades After Spike in Antisemitic Activity on Campuses
Which schools raised their grades and which schools are falling behind?
Given the extreme volatility of the current campus climate, ADL today announced revised grades for some of the 85 schools assessed in our Campus Antisemitism Report Card, an initiative released in a beta version in April that assesses each of those schools’ campus climates and administrative policies related to countering antisemitism.
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| Some of the changed grades were largely based on responses to campus disruptions. |
The Report Card tool assigned grades to provide campus leadership, parents, students, alumni and other key stakeholders with a mechanism to evaluate the state of antisemitism on campus and how schools are responding.
“When we released these grades last month, we did not dare to imagine how much more challenging this school year would get for Jewish students,” said ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. “The incidents of recent weeks connected to the encampments and other on-campus protests are putting students’ safety at risk and even prompting some schools to cancel graduation. It is completely unacceptable that some university leaders have let the situation get this out of hand.”
To date, ADL has tracked more than 2,600 arrests; Jewish students are feeling threatened and, in some cases, unsafe. While some college and university administrations have met the moment and implemented additional protections, many have not.
ADL reassessed each of the 85 schools included in the Report Card, taking into account recent escalations, the impact on levels of antisemitism on campus, and responses from university leadership. Grades changed for several of the schools that we have told you about here. For example, the University of Michigan, Northwestern University and UCLA each dropped to an F, while the University of Virginia rose to a D and Rice University came up to a C.
Universities have the opportunity to submit updated information in October if they wish to have their grades reassessed, and we will continue to update the Report Card on an annual basis each April.
The Campus Antisemitism Report Card is a vital part of ADL’s Not On My Campus campaign, which calls on U.S. colleges and universities to commit to a ‘no tolerance policy’ for antisemitism and provides online tools and resources for students, parents, and alumni, empowering them to demand more from college leadership, and building collective action to hold schools accountable for their inaction.
View all of the updated Report Cards here, then click here to send a letter demanding that the leaders of the schools you care about do better in combating antisemitism today.
CUNY, Michigan. Neither the University of Michigan nor the City University of New York adequately investigated complaints about antisemitic harassment on campus linked to the Israel-Hamas war, according to the results of investigations
by the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). In its resolution agreement, the University of Michigan agreed to a series of steps to assess and improve the campus climate and policies, and CUNY agreed to investigate or revisit investigations of a number of complaints and report back to OCR. These resolutions are just the first of what we hope will be many; OCR has opened more than 100 Title VI investigations since Oct. 7.
TAKE ACTION: Click here to insist on full funding for OCR’s work to protect Jewish students.
UCLA. The media coverage seemed to sigh in relief
as dozens of UCLA graduation ceremonies brought joy to graduating students and their families after encampments and protests brought tension to the campus. The most recent demonstration, on June 10, ended with 25 protesters under arrest and ordered to stay away from campus for two weeks, so security measures for commencement were stepped up. There were no high-profile disruptions reported at other University of California school commencement ceremonies over the weekend.
Colorado. BDS demonstrators linked in media reports to the group SDS Denver (Students for a Democratic Society) were confronted by pro-Israel counter-protesters outside the home of a University of Colorado Regent, Ilana Spiegel. The groups were kept separate by law enforcement. Spiegel noted that the BDS demands of the protesters were not, in fact, ignored.
They were rejected. “The Board of Regents has not ignored the demands of protestors. We said: ‘No regent is offering any policy changes in response to the demands.’ In my opinion, that is saying NO.”
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Stanford. Hundreds of Stanford University graduates walked out
of commencement ceremonies, with some citing BDS objectives for the demonstration. This comes a week after students were arrested for barricading themselves in the offices of the Stanford President and Provost; those protesters were identified by the University, which suspended a number of them. This week, an editor from the student newspaper who took part in that office takeover was demoted by the newspaper and then resigned.
UC San Diego. Sharing his first in-depth insights into his decision to remove a large pro-Palestinian encampment last month, University of California, San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla says he feared the violence
seen at some other schools. “We have a 2,000-acre campus we have to protect. My job was to keep them safe.” Police arrested 66 people during the dismantling and during the sometimes violent protests that followed. At the University’s commencement ceremony this weekend, thousands of students and spectators enjoyed the event largely without protests.
Minnesota. Amid heavy scrutiny,
the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies revoked the offer to Raz Segal to head the institution. This backpedaling came after two members of the center’s advisory board resigned in protest and several Jewish leaders voiced their concerns over his characterization of the Israeli military operation against Hamas as “a textbook case of genocide.” As the region’s JCRC noted in their letter pushing to revoke the job offer, the work of the center “is too important to be led by an extremist.”
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