NYU, Columbia, UCLA, Georgetown, CUNY Among Worst Anti-Zionists in AMCHA Faculty Barometer

New York University, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Columbia University and Barnard College, University of California (Santa Cruz), University of Washington, Georgetown University, University of California (UCLA), the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, University of California (Irvine) and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

In descending order, those 10 schools top the AMCHA Initiative’s new anti-Zionist faculty “barometer” of 725 schools, which the nonprofit released on Wednesday.

The nonprofit evaluated the worst offenders—of which NYU proved the most anti-Zionist—based on four factors: the number of professors who have publicly supported boycotting Israel, the presence of departments that have made anti-Israel statements, Faculty for Justice in Palestine groups on campus, and the number of events and statements from the school’s chapter of the anti-Israel faculty group.

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, co-founder and director of AMCHA, told JNS that there were some surprises in the nonprofit findings and a lot that was to be expected.

“Skimming through the worst offenders, you will see many of them made recent headlines for antisemitic activity,” she said. “This aligns with our research—spanning more than a decade—which has consistently shown a strong correlation between the presence of anti-Zionist faculty and the incidence of behavior targeting Jewish students for harm, as well as demonstrated that anti-Zionist faculty are likely to inject their anti-Israel advocacy and activism into their classrooms, conference halls and departmental statements, helping to foment antisemitism.”

The nonprofit’s most recent study “demonstrated that over and above the contribution of individual anti-Zionist faculty to campus antisemitism, faculty members’ association with each other as part of the anti-Zionist group Faculty for Justice in Palestine has played a pivotal role in the surge of violent antisemitism gripping U.S. campuses since the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023,” Rossman-Benjamin told JNS.

“Quite frankly, nothing really surprised us with respect to the rankings, as we understand the data from our years of investigating it,” she added. But some “may be surprised,” she said, that schools like Harvard and Cornell University, “which garnered considerable media attention over the last year because of antisemitic activity, weren’t ranked higher than they were.”

“This actually underscores one of the limitations of this tool, which measures the presence and activity of anti-Zionist faculty—a critical factor in understanding how welcoming or hostile a campus is likely to be for Jewish students, to be sure—but is not an all-inclusive measure of campus antisemitism,” she said.

Those who use the barometer ought to weigh other factors, including the anti-Zionist activities of students and responses of administrations, Rossman-Benjamin told JNS.

“We urge users of the anti-Zionist faculty barometer to also consult AMCHA’s other resources—including our databases of antisemitic incidents, anti-Zionist student groups and BDS activity, as well as our numerous investigative reports analyzing antisemitic trends on U.S. campuses—to get a fuller picture of the factors contributing to campus antisemitism,” she said.

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