Digital Library
How Hard Is It to Be a Jew on College Campuses?
Topic:
Antisemitism & Antizionism
Principal Investigators:
Charles Kadushin, Elizabeth Tighe
Study Date:
2008
Source:
Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, Brandeis University
Key Findings:
This study focuses on the challenges of being Jewish on campus, particularly in terms of social involvement and the ability to practice religion, much like the challenges that face students who are members of other ethnic and religious minorities. Investigators of this study were interested in the ways in which the size of the Jewish minority affects Jewish students’ senses of how easy it is to practice Judaism on college campuses.
Researchers examined data from 1,087 Jewish students at eight elite colleges and universities in the United States. The greater the percentage of Jewish students on campus and, individually, the more Jewish students feel connected to other students, including Jewish friends, the more at ease they feel. Those more engaged in Jewish religious practices experience greater difficulty, especially if there are no kosher dining facilities on campus. Both the “invisible hand” of social structure and the practical matters of Jewish observance affect Jewish students’ personal sense of ease.
The percentage of Jewish undergraduates on the eight campuses varies from 6.5% to 24.9%. There is considerable variation in the minority status of Jews—enough to test whether being a larger or a smaller minority makes a difference. The primary dependent variable, ease being Jewish, was assessed with the following question: “How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements about your campus? . . . It is easy to be Jewish on this campus?” The large majority of Jewish students on these elite campuses believe that it is easy to be Jewish on their campuses. To the extent that Jewish students manage to create their own Jewish interpersonal environment while nonetheless feeling connected to other students on campus, they find it easier to be Jewish, even given the overall percentage of the campus that is Jewish. This reinforces the view that being in a majority helps—in this case the “majority” is a constructed social circle.
Furthermore, the data from this study support the idea that the smaller the percentage of Jews on campus, the harder they believe it is to practice their religion. Indicators of religiousness that involve more active commitment—engagement in Jewish practices or mizvot, knowledge of Hebrew and basing one’s whole life on religion—make it harder to be Jewish on campus. In addition to simply keeping kosher, doing so while living on campus is an added negative factor. However, if there are full kosher dining facilities on campus, keeping kosher becomes a very strong positive.
Researchers also identified things that did not affect reported ease of being Jewish: the perception that the campus is pro-Palestinian, or activity in a Jewish students’ organization such as Hillel. Neither a sense of animosity as a negative, nor organizational activity as a positive, affected what may be a deeply held emotional orientation.
Methodology:
Researchers utilized data from Brandeis University’s Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies’ (CMJS) Survey of College Campuses, conducted in the spring of 2003. The survey was designed to assess the social environment on campuses, with particular focus on religion, religious practices and attitudes. The survey was administered on 19 campuses and focused primarily on assessment of Jewish life. On all campuses, samples of Jewish students were identified through local Hillel offices.
The analysis focuses on data from eight of the 19 campuses on which the Hillel samples were supplemented with random samples of all undergraduates. The inclusion of a random sample of all undergraduates both ensures that the responses are more representative and enables assessment of the campus climate among all students, Jewish and non-Jewish. These eight campuses also represent the range of secular campuses that Jewish students typically attend. Four of the eight campuses were estimated to have relatively high proportions of Jewish undergraduates (ranging from 20% to 30%) based on Hillel estimates, and four were estimated to have lower proportions of Jewish undergraduates (6–17%).
The sample consists of 1,087 Jewish undergraduates recruited either through the random sample of all undergraduates or through the Hillel mailing lists. All of these students were invited to participate in the survey by e-mail, which contained a unique URL for each student that linked the respondent to a web server housed at Brandeis University. Each student was offered an instantly redeemable $10 gift certificate to Amazon.com upon completion of the survey. The overall response rate across the random sample and Hillel lists was 39% (AAPOR, response rate 3), with a range on different campuses from 30% to 49%.