The best teachers ask hard questions. As a parent of three, I want my kids to get plenty of hard questions. But too often, especially in college, hard questions cross a line, when Jewish students are pushed to answer for their identity rather than their ideas.

Beyond that, far too many Jewish students have personally observed antisemitic activity by a faculty member. Fewer than half feel comfortable letting their classmates know they are Jewish.

Antisemitic incidents on college campuses spiked after Oct. 7, 2023, peaking at 1,694 in 2024. That number fell by 66% last year, to 583, and campus antisemitism is no longer making headlines the way it did two years ago. That’s real progress, though some of the decline may also reflect underreporting. But any number above zero hits too close to home as a parent.

In the time since the encampment organizers folded up their tents, the fight has moved from the quad to the classroom, from a protest anyone could see to a comment in a lecture or a line in a syllabus. Some of this might look minor to the average college student, but I guarantee it is major to any Jewish student sitting there. And the damage does not stop with Jewish students. When prejudice is presented as scholarship, it shapes how non-Jewish students understand Jews, Israel, and antisemitism – and gives bias the authority of the classroom.

Sometimes it’s a matter of who gets asked to answer for what. ADL research has found a pattern of students being asked to speak on behalf of Israel or the Jewish community, effectively positioning them as representatives of a government rather than students in a seminar.

At Stanford and Princeton, course descriptions presented contested claims about Israel and Zionism as a historical fact, all before class convened for the first time. That gives Jewish students a signal about who will be allowed to disagree in the classroom and who won’t be.

At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a professor was reported to have started the first day of class with an assertion that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza. It’s hard to imagine that false and offensive comment doesn’t shape how he grades a Jewish student’s paper or what the rest of the class walks out believing.

None of this is confined to individual classrooms. Organized networks, led by Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine and now active on more than 130 campuses, have coordinated with student activists and at times helped shield them from discipline. Some of those same faculty assign grades that can make or break a scholarship or internship, and there is no guarantee that bias won’t seep into a recommendation letter.

ADL is responding with research and tools, because a university that lets this happen in its classrooms is not neutral, but complicit. We recently launched Campus Classroom Reporting, a confidential channel where students, faculty and staff can flag classroom antisemitism without navigating a formal complaint process. That matters because our research shows most students who witness or experience antisemitism never report it to anyone.

We have also released model policies on tenure, academic freedom and faculty conduct, grounded in Title VII, so administrators have real tools instead of the excuse that no clear standard exists.

Jewish students are walking into lecture halls every day hoping to be treated like every other student in the room. They deserve a professor that asks hard questions, judges their work fairly, and lets them show up as they are without having to defend themselves. That’s what we will keep fighting to guarantee. Θ

Jonathan A. Greenblatt is CEO and National Director of ADL (the Anti-Defamation League).