Report: Anti-Semitism Spikes on College Campuses

Alissa Lopez | July 27, 2016
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While liberals remain engrossed over the "hateful" treatment of Muslims in the United States that conservative rhetoric supposedly exacerbates, the Jewish community is easily forgotten -- or completely ignored, for that matter.

The AMCHA Initiative (AMCHA), an organization that fights against discrimination against the Jewish community, recently released their report on anti-Semitic activity on U.S. college campuses for the first half of 2016. The communities involved in this study reportedly have the largest Jewish undergraduate population.

From incident reports, social media accounts and postings gathered and observed, the evidence indicated a staggering 45 percent increase in anti-Semitic activity in 2016 compared to 2015.

The data indicated that approximately 100 more anti-Jewish attacks took place between January and June of this year in comparison to the same time frame in 2015. To make matters worse, there was a high correlation between anti-Israel sentiments, which have reportedly tripled from 2015 to 2016, and behaviors that directly targeted and harmed Jewish students.

More from the official document:

The number of incidents involving the suppression of Jewish students’ freedom of speech and assembly approximately doubled from 2015 to 2016.

The consideration of anti-Israel divestment resolutions in student government or by the student body was strongly linked to a surge in antisemitic activity.

Of the anti-Semitic expression, such as images or language used for the purpose of demonizing Israel, increased from 123 occurrences in 2015 to 194 in 2016. That’s a 58 percent spike.

Direct targeting of Jewish students -- which includes but is not limited to physical and verbal assault, destruction of Jewish property, genocidal utterance and intimidation -- went up from 42 in 2015 to 69 this year, reflecting a 64 percent increase.

There were a total of 113 schools included in this study, and the report discloses the names of the colleges and universities which had the largest surge in anti-Semitic activity from 2015 to 2016. Those schools include Columbia University, Vassar College, the University of Chicago, New York University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Florida and the University of Washington.

In an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, AMCHA Initiative director and co-founder Tammi Rossman-Benjamin expressed, "The surge in campus anti-Semitism in the past year is very disturbing.”

“The sheer volume of incidents is rising at an alarming rate, and how much a campus is afflicted is directly tied to the presence of anti-Zionist students and faculty and the level of anti-Zionist activity," she added.

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