Digital Library
2021 From Scholarship to Swastikas Explaining Campus Antisemitic Events
Topic:
Antisemitism & Antizionism
Principal Investigators:
Ayal K. Feinberg, PhD
Study Date:
2021
Source:
Academic Engagement Network (AEN)
Key Findings:
This article provides needed clarity on why antisemitic events vary across American colleges and universities through quantitative analyses of hate crime data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report and antisemitic bias-incident data from the AMCHA Initiative.
- Jews are more likely to be the victims of hate crimes at colleges and universities than other minority groups. While hate crimes with anti-Black, anti-Asian, and anti-LGTBQ+ motivations are also significantly more likely to occur at American colleges and universities, antisemitic motivations increase the likelihood of the event taking place on campus more than any other target group.
- Jews are more likely to be the target of hate crimes on campuses than in other locations. With the exception of places of worship and unspecified locations, antisemitic hate crimes are significantly more likely to occur at American colleges and universities than other locations.
- Colleges and universities with an active Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter are significantly more likely to report antisemitic incidents. Specifically, campuses with an SJP chapter suffer 253% more incidents than campuses without one.
- The presence of a Chabad operating on campus results in 101% more antisemitic incidents, compared to campuses without a Chabad. The presence of an active Hillel does not appear to have a significant effect on antisemitic incident variation.
- Reported antisemitic incidents increase when a campus hosts Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) activities. In the month during and immediately following IAW and related events, antisemitic incidents are significantly more likely to be reported on college and university campuses.
Although it is outside the scope of this article to engage in a normative debate regarding whether and how BDS is antisemitic, the models it employs clearly shows that the presence of an organized student group committed to BDS activism on campus significantly increases the likelihood of an institution of higher education experiencing antisemitic bias incidents.
Methodology:
This article reviews scholarship focused on hate crime variation and antisemitism, with a particular focus on research examining the contemporary experience of Jewish students across American colleges and universities. The findings on antisemitic hate crimes and bias-incidents at American universities and colleges are the result of incident-based analysis rather than through surveys or interviews.
Data examining hate crimes in this article comes from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report Hate Crime data (UCR). This article utilizes data collected by the AMCHA Initiative (AMCHA), which reports antisemitic bias incidents on American college and university campuses based on whether the activity met the threshold of antisemitism provided by the IHRA working definition of antisemitism.
This article utilizes several dependent variable measures for its analysis. All models examining reported antisemitic hate crime variation come from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports Hate Crime (UCR) data, which reports hate crimes at the incident level, from 2003-2017.
Because this article utilizes several different data sets and data measures to test its hypotheses, it tailors its methodological approach to each data set and specific related hypothesis. It employs logistic regression analysis utilizing the UCR data to examine how bias type explains hate crime occurrence at college and university campuses, and how location type influences the likelihood of hate crime having an antisemitic motivation, each with binary coding.