US colleges ranked by abuse against Jewish faculty, students

On Wednesday, the AMCHA Initiative, as part of its recently launched Anti-Zionist Faculty (AZF) Barometer, a national campaign to combat faculty antisemitism on campuses, announced a new rating system that ranks schools by how much anti-Israel “faculty abuse” there is against students.

According to AMCHA (a Hebrew word for your people), “Anti-Zionist faculty played an astonishing role this past year in escalating antisemitic incidents, fomenting chaos, spreading anti-Israel propaganda, and pushing anti-Israel activities, including the academic boycott of Israel.”

The barometer ranked over 700 colleges and universities on a scale from 0 to 5, 5 (Extreme), 4 (Severe), 3 (Significant), 2 (Moderate), 1 (Minimal), and 0 (Negligible), based on four measures of anti-Zionist faculty presence and activity: faculty members’ public endorsements of academic boycotts of Israel, anti-Zionist departmental statements, the presence of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) groups, and FJP-sponsored events and statements.

AMCHA said, “These rankings provide a clear lens into influence of anti-Zionist faculty on a campus, indicating their potential contribution to campus antisemitism and enabling prospective students and their families to evaluate how welcoming or hostile a campus may be for Jewish or pro-Israel students.

All of the Ivy League schools except Cornell received extreme, severe, or significant ratings.

Columbia had the worst rating out of the Ivy League and the third-highest grade in the US, with 77 faculty boycotters and 27 combined FJP events and statements. Five of the university’s departments have committed to being anti-Israel.

Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania also received extreme grades. Brown and Dartmouth received severe grades. Harvard University and Princeton University were ranked significant. Only Cornell received a moderate grade.

However, the worst offender on the list was New York University (NYU), which has 148 faculty members in support of academic boycotts against Israel. Between Oct. 7, 2023, and June 30, 2024, the school’s FJP chapter had 44 events and anti-Israel statements.

According to the barometer, AMCHA listed the top ten worst schools as NYU, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Columbia, UC Santa Cruz, University of Washington, Georgetown, UCLA, CUNY’s Graduate Center, UC Irvine, and the University of Hawaii Manoa.

The AZF Barometer is also part of a national campaign against Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP). Universities with FJP on campus are typically plagued with antisemitism.

A recent AMCHA study found that the presence of FJP chapters on college campuses increased by more than seven times the likelihood of physical assaults on Jewish students and increased by over three times the chance that a Jewish student would be subject to threats of violence and death. The study also revealed that FJP prolonged the duration of encampment protests, which were likely to last over four and half times longer on campuses where FJP faculty were free to influence and provide logistic and material support to students.

In addition, professors at FJP schools spent 9.5 more days involved in protests than those at non-FJP schools, and academic boycott calls were nearly 11 times more likely in student demands at schools with FJPs. FJP chapters were established after the Oct 7 massacre in response to a directive from the US arm of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a self-described founding member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) which was co-founded by an umbrella group of organizations that reportedly includes Iran-supported Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both designated by the U.S. State Department as terrorist groups and committed to the destruction of Israel.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to cut federal funding and accreditation from schools that allow antisemitic activity on campus. Over 100 Title VI investigations have been launched into universities and school districts around the US since Oct 7, 2023, the majority of which relate to antisemitic conduct.

AMCHA’s director, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, said in a statement, “While much attention has been paid to the antisemitic behavior of anti-Zionist students and student groups and the inability or unwillingness of school leaders to address it, the enormous influence of anti-Zionist faculty on campus climate is often overlooked because much of it happens away from public view, in classrooms and conference halls, at faculty and academic senate meetings, and via internal communications. However, our research indicates faculty might be the most determinative variable when it comes to attacks on Jewish students.”

She continued, “By shining a spotlight on the role of anti-Zionist faculty, the AZF Barometer equips students, families, and stakeholders with the tools to advocate for safer, more inclusive campuses,” Rossman-Benjamin said. “We urge university leaders and policymakers to use this data to foster environments that protect the rights and identities of all students.”