US Jewish Students Seek Safer Colleges After Year of Rampant Antisemitism

Hundreds of Jewish students haven’t felt safe in standard Ivy League schools since Oct. 7th.

By David Isaac, JNS

In the wake of the anti-Israel protests that swept across U.S. college campuses following the Hamas invasion on Oct. 7, anecdotal evidence suggests that Jewish students have started voting with their feet and decamping from the worst-offending schools.

“We’ve seen an unprecedented number of students from top-tier institutions transfer to Yeshiva University, including from Columbia, Cornell and Barnard,” Yeshiva University President Rabbi Ari Berman told JNS.

On April 25, Yeshiva University announced that “in light of ongoing antisemitism and harassment on college campuses,” it would extend its deadline for transfer students until May 31.

Berman said this was the first time the school had received student transfers from Columbia in the middle of the year.

There was “no question” in his mind that the students were searching for a safer environment.

Although he wouldn’t share the number of students, he said it was high enough that the school needed to expand its infrastructure to accommodate everyone.

“We have more people in our system now than we’ve ever had before,” he said.

Eliana Samuels, 19, grew up in a religious home in New York, graduated high school in 2023 and took a gap year to study in Israel.

She’d planned to attend Columbia in the fall. “I applied early decision, which is binding. I didn’t see a problem with that, because I couldn’t really picture myself anywhere else,” she told JNS, noting her mother went to Columbia.

Even after the anti-Israel protests started, Samuels remained fixed on her first choice.

“I was set on Columbia, and I decided that regardless of what was happening on campus, I wanted to go because I imagined myself going there and nowhere else,” she said.

But the protests grew more virulent. On April 17, anti-Israel students set up their first tent encampment, which was dismantled by police.

The students set up a second. Disruptions reached their height with the protesters’ takeover of Hamilton Hall on April 30.

With Columbia becoming the center of nationwide protests, Samuels’ parents became increasingly worried.

They lobbied her to make a different choice—“any school that was better and more accommodating for Jewish students than Columbia,” she explained.

She also heard from friends on the Columbia campus. Their experiences ran the gamut. Some said the protests barely affected their lives.

Others spoke of professors and classmates “openly and loudly sharing their anti-Israel, antisemitic opinions.

They no longer felt safe speaking out in class or speaking to certain people that they were previously friends with,” she said.

Samuels transferred to Yeshiva University after learning of the extension of the school’s deadline.

“I don’t want to spend my university experience—a period that I think should be of growth and self-discovery—instead trying to dodge protesters and always having to be hyper-vigilant about professors and people on campus,” she said.

Brandeis University also extended its transfer application deadline to May 31.

“Jewish students are being targeted and attacked physically and verbally, preventing them from pursuing their studies and activities outside of class,” Brandeis President Ronald Liebowitz wrote in an email on April 22 explaining the decision.

The school received more than 90 applications during the extension period.

“Our own admission staff thought we would receive 35 or so new applicants,” Liebowitz told JNS.

While the students weren’t asked why they wanted to transfer, “I suspect that the overwhelming majority was applying in response to the atmosphere on their campuses,” he added.

The 90-plus applicants were in addition to the 600 applications Brandeis received during the regular transfer period, a higher than usual number.

The applicants weren’t just from Ivy League schools but “across the board,” said Liebowitz.

Through conversations with students, faculty and administrators, he discovered that tensions had been high at many schools.

Brandeis, whose mandate was to counter quotas against Jews at the time it was founded in 1948, has a more diverse student body than Yeshiva University. Only 35% of its students identify as Jewish, according to Liebowitz.

Brandeis reached out to “Jews and students from every background” in its April 22 transfer extension announcement.

“Not only Jewish students were feeling the impact of campus politics,” noted Liebowitz.

Emmit DeHart, 20, a transfer student from the University of Washington (UW), considered both Brandeis and Yeshiva University before settling on the latter, citing his wish for “more intensive Jewish studies.”

Although UW didn’t receive the same publicity as the Ivy League schools, DeHart said the school suffered through “huge” encampments—up to 100 tents, according to reports.

Two student encampments sprouted on the school’s Liberal Arts Quadrangle: One was organized by the Progressive Student Union and the second by the University of Washington United Front for Palestinian Liberation.

“I lived like 100 feet away from the encampment. It was very frustrating because to get to any of my classes, I had to walk 15 to 20 minutes out of my way,” he told JNS.

“I got lots of dirty looks because I wear a kippah every day,” said DeHart, who was very active in university Jewish life.

“I had people come up to me and say, ‘Free Palestine,’ ‘Death to Israel.’”

He admitted he began to feel unsafe on UW’s campus.

It didn’t help that the school’s administration appeared indifferent. He joined a Chabad-Hillel meeting with the university president.

“It was very frustrating because it didn’t feel like they wanted to do anything,” he said. “I wouldn’t say they were hostile. They just kept saying, ‘Yes, what they’re doing is illegal, but, no, we’re not going to do anything.’”

Eventually the administration reached a deal with the encampment protesters, who agreed to remove the tents in exchange for concessions, among them waiving tuition for 20 students from Gaza and dropping disciplinary action against student protesters.

“It just felt like a stab in the back to all the Jewish students and everyone who’s been really affected by the encampments,” said DeHart.

His parents weren’t enthusiastic about his decision to transfer. But after they saw the encampment, they understood. “They didn’t quite realize how bad it was,” he said.

DeHart said he’s just one of a growing trend of Jewish students leaving problem campuses.

He’s happy about his decision to go to a school “where being Jewish is normal and you can focus on your education without having to worry about all these protests and antisemitism.”

Samuels didn’t know whether she was part of a trend or not, but said “honestly, I hope so.”

While people who argue that Zionist Jews should stay and represent their side have a valid point, it’s not worth the discrimination and hatred those students will face throughout their university years, she said.

YU’s Berman said top-rated schools that have permitted antisemitism to spread are paying a price, noting he has heard from industry leaders now looking elsewhere for employees as they see elite universities “creating climates of hate.”

In May, 13 federal judges said that they would no longer hire law clerks from Columbia University or Columbia Law School, which had permitted anti-Israel and antisemitic protests to spiral out of control.

In April, activist investor Daniel Loeb, a Columbia graduate, told The New York Post that he was reconsidering whether to look to the Ivy League for his $11 billion hedge fund’s future staff.

YU’s Berman and Brandeis’ Liebowitz said faculty, too, are looking to escape antisemitic hostility. Liebowitz has held talks with three such faculty members.

YU has hired two. Mauricio Karchmer, a computer science professor, left MIT over its “unchecked antisemitism,” said Berman.

The second, Rebecca Cypess, left Rutgers University to become the new dean of Yeshiva College and Stern College for Women.

In a July 2 article in Tablet Magazine titled, “Why I Left My Faculty Position at Rutgers,” Cypess explained that she left not because of the antisemitic views voiced by students, but because the administration did nothing when opposing voices were silenced.

“While most universities today claim to promote the ideals of diversity and inclusion, I have seen firsthand how they instead have harbored intolerance and hate,” she wrote.

Berman and Liebowitz are loath, however, to see a Jewish exodus from top-tier schools.

“From a self-interested point of view, I’d love to see students from Princeton, Harvard, Yale come to Brandeis. But as a Jew, I’d say no,” said Liebowitz.

“It’s important that Jews stand up for their rights…Giving way to the prejudice and hatred that we’re talking about would be insane.”

Berman, who has been working with other college presidents to make their schools comfortable for Jews, said, “College campuses should not be free from Jews, but safe for Jews. We can’t fit everybody in Yeshiva University.”