There has been antisemitism at universities since the medieval period. Antisemitism has manifested in various ways in universities, including in policies and practices such as restricting the admission of Jewish students by a Jewish quota, or ostracism, intimidation, or violence against Jewish students, as well as in the hiring, retention and treatment of Jewish faculty and staff. In some instances, universities have been accused of condoning the development of antisemitic cultures on campus.
In many jurisdictions, especially since World War II, discriminatory practices, including within the context of a university, are in breach of anti-discrimination laws, though antisemitic cultural values still persists on many campuses.Hotspots of Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Sentiment on US Campuses
Middle Ages to the early modern period In the early Middle Ages, higher education in Europe largely centered around the monastery and was dominated by Roman Catholic men. Jews were rarely admitted to universities and faced a hostile environment when they were. Many medieval anti-Judaism writings were authored by university faculty.
In 1264, a man named "Jacob the Jew" sold land for the purpose of establishing Merton College, one of the first colleges to be incorporated in Oxford.
On 7 September 1434, the Roman Catholic church placed a ban on conferring any university degree upon Jews at the 24th canon of the Council of Basel. However, some ignored this decree, with the Senate of Venice in Italy bypassing the papal ban by empowering an official to confer degrees in higher education without regard to religion; as a result, some Jews in the 16th century managed to obtain doctoral degrees from Italian universities, including Bologna, University of Ferrara, Pavia, Perugua, Pisa, Rome, and Siena. Between 1517 and 1721, the University of Padua conferred 228 doctorates upon Jews.
However, even when admitted to a university, Jews faced challenges from both their religious principles and discriminatory treatment. For example, to fulfill their religious principles of Sabbath and holiday observance, Jewish students resort to various strategies in connection with examinations. Discrimination was experienced, for example, when Jewish had to pay higher graduation fees than did the Christian students or, in the 15th century, when they were required to invite all other students to dinner. Additionally, Jewish physicians in the 16th century had few, if any, opportunities for medical research, teaching, or for admission to the leading hospitals.
Overall, Jews were said to be kept out of universities by "a formidable iron curtain."Brickman, William W., and Alfred Jospe. "Universities." Encyclopaedia Judaica, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 20, Macmillan Reference USA, 2007, p. 407. Yet there were exceptions, such as the offer of a faculty position to Baruch Spinoza, a Jewish proponent of freedom of thought, by Heidelberg University.
18th and 19th century With the Jewish emancipation period, Jewish students were increasingly admitted to universities, such as Polish Jews studying medicine at the University of Padua, Jews entering German universities, and Jews graduating from the Ivy League colleges in the U.S.Brickman, William W., and Alfred Jospe. "Universities." Encyclopaedia Judaica, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 20, Macmillan Reference USA, 2007, p. 408.
During this period, Johann Jakob Schudt, a Catholic author from Frankfurt, expressed concern over the Italian universities' disregard for the canon law of the Council of Basel. He criticized institutions such as the University of Padua for allowing "ignoramuses and even the despised Jews" to obtain degrees. Johann Heinrich Schuette later asserted in 1745 that awarding a medical doctorate to a Jew was inconsistent with Christian beliefs. As a result, Jews were largely excluded from the majority of European universities during this period.
The 19th century saw the tide of liberalism sweeping across England and academia, leading to the partial dismantling of old barriers. Government policies facilitated Jewish enrollments, thanks to the European Enlightenment. Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, issued a Patent of Toleration in 1782, Prussia enacted reforms starting in 1812.
During the 19th Century, Jewish scholars began to receive more regular appointments to university faculty, serving as professors at German, U.S., and even Russian universities.
However, Jewish students had to function in university settings that could be inhospitable. In Germany, Jews sometimes kept their Jewish identity under wraps, though they did form Jewish student associations by the 1880s. According to one scholar, they "students and student associations wove together a beautiful, vibrant and multifarious tapestry of German Jewish identity."Pickus, Keith H. Constructing Modern Identities: Jewish University Students in Germany, 1815-1914. Wayne State University Press, 1999. pp.12–13 There was an antisemitic backlash toward the end of the 19th century in Germany, when Jewish students encountered university faculty advocating modern racial antisemitism.Kampe, Norbert. "Jews and Antisemites at Universities in Imperial Germany (I) Jewish Students: Social History and Social Conflict." The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 30, no. 1 (1985): 357–394.
20th and 21st century During the 20th century, there was strong growth in Jewish student enrollments and the inclusion of Jewish scholars in university research and teaching. However, Jewish enrollments were limited by policies in Poland, Hungary, Romania, and, during Stalin's regime, the USSR.Brickman, William W., and Alfred Jospe. "Universities." Encyclopaedia Judaica, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 20, Macmillan Reference USA, 2007, pp. 413-14. During the Nazi era, German universities harbored antisemitesKnowles, Adam. Heidegger's fascist affinities: A politics of silence. Stanford University Press, 2019.Steinweis, Alan E., Suzanne L. Marchand, Christopher J. Probst, Anders Gerdmar, Thomas Schneider, Johannes Renger, Bettina Arnold et al. The Betrayal of the Humanities: The University During the Third Reich. Indiana University Press, 2022.Ericksen, Robert P. "The Nazification and Denazification of the University of Göttingen." The Betrayal of the Humanities: The University during the Third Reich (2022). and Jewish students and faculty were among the many targets of antisemitic persecution.Remy, Steven P. The Heidelberg myth: The nazification and denazification of a German university. Harvard University Press, 2002.Klausinger, Hansjoerg. "Academic anti-semitism and the Austrian school: Vienna, 1918–1945." Atlantic Economic Journal 42 (2014): 191-204.Ericksen, Robert P. Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and universities in Nazi Germany. Cambridge University Press, 2012.Shattock, Michael. "German universities and the Nazi regime: why did they succumb so readily?", History of Education, 42:4, 528-536, DOI: 10.1080/0046760X.2013.772251
Demonstrating an interest in scholarship and education, in the face of persistent antisemitism, Jews also established universities, including Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1925), Yeshiva University (1928), and the Jewish-sponsored, secular Brandeis University (1946).
By the 1970s, Jews also started to serve as the administrative leaders at universities, including presidents or rectors at universities in Prague, Padua, Queens College, the University of Chicago, M.I.T., Brandon University, and Rutgers.
Antisemitism itself became an object of university research and teaching during the 20th century. For example, in 1920s Sweden, Hugo Valentin "staked out a new approach to the topic of antisemitism, in which Jewish characteristics and the so-called Jewish question, while not completely absent, were placed within parentheses. Instead, he presented antisemitism and individual antisemites as problems in their own right...."Bortz, Olof. "Hugo Valentin's scholarly campaign against antisemitism 1920s to the early 1950s." Scandinavian Jewish Studies v.34 n.1 (2023). p.52 Besides extensive historical research, there has been in-depth research on antisemitism in psychology.Kressel, Neil J., and Samuel W. Kressel. "Trends in the psychological study of contemporary antisemitism: Conceptual issues and empirical evidence." Basic and Applied Social Psychology 38, no. 2 (2016): 111-126.Bergmann, Werner, ed. Error without trial: Psychological research on antisemitism. Vol. 2. Walter de Gruyter, 1988. The sociology of antisemitism can be traced back to Jewish scholars of early sociology, including Franz Boas, Arthur Ruppin and Georg Simmel,Morris-Reich, Amos. "From Assimilationist Antiracism to Zionist Anti-antisemitism." Antisemitism and the Constitution of Sociology (2014): 160. and includes Talcott Parsons' 1942 article, "The Sociology of Modern Anti-Semitism," and other studies in the post-War era.Anti-antisemitism, Ambivalent Liberalism. "Talcott Parsons's “The Sociology of Modern Anti-Semitism”." Antisemitism and the Constitution of Sociology (2014): 249. By the 1980s, some universities had established Holocaust research centers around the world, which also served to foster research on antisemitism."Major Research and Resource Centres on the Holocaust." Holocaust and Genocide Studies 4, no. 2 (1989): 257-259.
Since 2000, evidence of antisemitic incidents on university campuses across North America, Europe, and Australia have been recorded by a number of sources. Though the circumstances surrounding the reported incidents are disputed, some maintain that campus activism supportive of the Palestinians and critical of Israel has created an atmosphere of anti-Jewish intimidation that erupts periodically in hate speech and even violence.Zoloth, Laurie. "Fear and Loathing at San Francisco State" in Rosenbaum, Ron. Those who forget the past. Random House, 2004, pp. 1–3. Others acknowledge that antisemitic incidents have occurred, but dispute the extent of them, and contend that commentators have conflated political anger with ethnic or religious hatred in an attempt to chill legitimate debate.Butler, Judith. "No, it's not anti-semitic", The London Review of Books, August 21, 2003. "Here, it is important to distinguish between antisemitic speech which, say, produces a hostile and threatening environment for Jewish students—racist speech which any university administrator would be obliged to oppose and regulate—and speech which makes a student uncomfortable because it opposes a particular state or set of state policies that he or she may defend. The latter is a political debate, and if we say that the case of Israel is different, that any criticism of it is considered as an attack on Israelis, or Jews in general, then we have singled out this political allegiance from all other allegiances that are open to public debate. We have engaged in the most outrageous form of 'effective' censorship."Mearsheimer, John J. and Walt, Stephen. "Policing Academia" in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy , Kennedy School of Government Working Paper Number:RWP06-011, March 13, 2006, p.24.
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