POLITICS: Campus antisemitism is raging — but not at these heroic colleges

As antisemitism on college campuses remains rampant, too many administrators refuse to stamp it out — and parents of prospective students are increasingly alarmed.

This week the civil-rights group StopAntisemitism released its 2025 “report card” on 90 major American colleges and universities, and the results were frightening.

Two years after on-campus Jew hatred exploded in the wake of Oct. 7, the review found that leadership at many American colleges still tolerate vandalism, bullying and outright violence.

An appalling 16% of rated schools, including Harvard, Yale and Columbia, got F grades.

For Jewish families, the concern centers on the physical safety of their children.

Fully 39% of Jewish college students say they’ve had to hide their faith on campus, StopAntisemitism found.

But parents of all faiths, and of no faith, must take these findings into account.

They’ve watched as schools across the country ignored their own codes of conduct to allow outrageous misbehavior on their campuses.

If a college allows a tent city to occupy its quad, they wonder, what else will it permit?

If a university takes no action when Jewish students are blocked from going to class, who else will they fail to protect?

These parents watched in horror as campus protests devolved from “anti-Israel” to anti-America, and agitators started pulling down US flags — while administrators stood mute.

Antisemitism is just one sign of a larger sickness at our colleges: a pervasive anti-Western hatred that’s rotting our society from within.

But not all schools are flailing — and those that are fighting this tide deserve applause.

The best of them are taking preemptive action before antisemitism problems even begin.

Texas Southern University, a historically black college, maintains a strong interfaith program, including regular unity dinners, and collaborates with Israeli universities to create “formal entrepreneurial apprenticeship pathways” for students.

The work at TSU started under Brandon Simmons, the former chairman of its Board of Regents, who has since been tapped by Gov. Greg Abbott to oversee higher-education reform statewide.

“Antisemitism has not arisen as an issue at Texas Southern,” Simmons said proudly last week — and university leadership intends to keep it that way.

“Our students are the ones asking to expand opportunities, to visit Israel, and to understand global contexts because of their own faith, curiosity, and drive,” TSU Board of Regents member Benjamin Proler told me.

“They’re leaning into every opportunity to build bridges and strengthen interfaith understanding.”

Other schools are taking swift action to slap down antisemitic incidents when they do arise.

At Dartmouth this semester, when a Jewish student found a swastika drawn on a sign outside a dorm room, President Sian Leah Beilock immediately issued a public letter condemning what she called its “targeted harassment.”

“I am shocked and sickened,” she wrote, adding that the college was fully cooperating with local police investigating the incident.

“Antisemitism has no place at Dartmouth. [It is] in direct opposition to our policies and values.” 

What stood out about Beilock’s note is its forthrightness: no vague allusion to “hate” in general, no attempt to denounce additional bigotries as well.

The incident was antisemitism, period — and so many college presidents have been woefully unable to say as much.

Beilock has been equally upfront in her criticism of fellow campus leaders like ex-Harvard president Claudine Gay, who infamously told Congress “it depends on the context” when asked whether calling for genocide of Jews could be considered bullying on her campus.

“The testimony, I think, was an outcome of being a campus that wasn’t protecting the people,” Beilock told the All In podcast. It “wasn’t inclusive, and wasn’t calling balls and strikes [as] we need to.”

Dartmouth’s B rating on the new StopAntisemitism report card is highest grade of any Ivy League school.

And some schools have been stellar on this front for years.

The University of Florida, for example — one of 15 universities that notched an A grade from StopAntisemitism — has set the standard, enforcing clear, strict rules that stop hatred and harassment in its tracks.

Administrators have taken just minutes to break up attempts to create pro-Hamas encampments on campus, and anyone who disrupts classes or events, or blocks the path of other students, risks suspension or expulsion.

Seems basic for schools to enforce the rules they themselves have written — but that’s exactly where many universities have floundered.

Other A-rated schools, like Clemson University and Colby College, have built research and study-abroad programs with Israeli counterparts, and foster interfaith dialogue to short-circuit hatred.

Antisemitism is more than just bigotry — it’s also a “brain virus” that conditions people to believe that every failure, reversal or roadblock they experience is someone else’s fault.

It’s a poisonous mindset, and college kids are especially vulnerable to it as they try out new ideas and new personalities, new concepts and new dispositions.

Their schools should help them avoid the ruinous path of Jew hatred — and parents should direct their kids to the institutions that do this best.

Karol Markowicz is the host of the “Karol Markowicz Show” and “Normally” podcasts.