Jews have faced antisemitism and discrimination in universities and campuses in the United States, from the founding of universities in the Thirteen Colonies until the present day, in varying intensities. From the early 20th century until the 1960s, indirect quotas were placed on Jewish admissions. Quotas were first placed on Jews by elite universities such as Columbia, Harvard and Yale, and were prevalent as late as the 1960s in universities such as Stanford. A resurgence of antisemitism in US higher education in the early 21st century was directed in part by the growth of Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism by university students and facult in opposition to Israeli actions in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Supporters of Israel, including US politicians, have characterized protests in solidarity with Palestine, especially those during the Gaza war and genocide, as antisemitic. Critics of these characterizations describe them as weaponizing the accusation of antisemitism to silence solidarity with Palestine and the critique of Israel, despite physical attacks on Jewish students on American campuses.In 2025, Donald Trump announced major federal funding cuts to universities he has described as antisemitic. Under his administration, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has carried out a campaign of deportations of activists, (by cancelling their student visas) his administration has described as in-sighting antisemitic violence on campuses.
18th century and 19th century Only one Jew, Judah Monis, received a college degree from an American university before 1800. Monis was given a job at Harvard to teach Hebrew on the condition that he convert to Christianity. Despite having converted and married a Christian, he was not embraced by his Harvard colleagues.
Due to the low proportion of Jews in the overall American population (a quarter of a million out of 63 million), according to Nathan Glazer, "... before 1880 or 1890 there were too few American Jews for them to constitute a question".
20th century
At the beginning of the 20th century, US administrators in elite universities in the United States sought to solve what was called "the Jewish problem," referring to the idea that there were too many Jews on campuses. Administrators restricted Jewish enrollment and created the modern admissions process to restrict the number of admitted students of Jewish origin. According to the Washington Post, every major section of the application process, including geographic diversity, legacy preference, the interview and freshman class cap, was part of an effort to address "the Jewish problem" and reduce the number of Jewish students. Columbia University, Harvard, Yale and Princeton were among the first universities to restrict Jewish enrollment. Following these elite universities, hundreds of other US colleges restricted Jewish admission until the 1960s. According to Mark E. Oppenheimer, Vice President of Open Learning at American Jewish University, universities were once considered finishing schools for elite Protestant boys. Jewish students, on the other hand, saw universities as a means of social mobility and were less focused on university social activities. Instead, they prioritized academic performance and studying. This shift in attitude among Jewish students led to a transformation in the character of American universities, which the Protestant American elite viewed as a challenge.
Jerome Karabel, a sociologist of the University of California, wrote in "The chosen: The hidden history of admission and exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton" that Jews were seen as socialist proselytizers by nativists, as well as a genetically inferior race by some Americans. Jews were considered unacceptable by some elite social circles, according to Karabel.
Efforts to limit Jewish enrollment began in New York City, a metropolis where the Jewish population accounted for 30% of its inhabitants in the early 20th century. By 1920, Columbia University had a 40% Jewish enrollment rate, as reported by Oliver Pollak. During that time, as most Jewish students were financially disadvantaged, working night jobs to cover tuition costs and residing at home, Columbia University mandated that students live in on-campus dormitories and restricted scholarship opportunities. Additionally, Columbia introduced interviews as part of the admissions process, where university representatives could discern accents or other indicators of Jewish heritage, even if the applicant's name did not explicitly suggest it. According to Oppenheimer, this shift in the university's culture prompted elite Protestant students to withdraw from Columbia. Following the program's introduction, Columbia witnessed a 50% decrease in the number of Jewish students over two years. In 1922, Jews made up approximately 22% of the student body at Harvard University. To address this, Harvard initiated a program focused on geographic diversity, aiming to admit students from states with lower Jewish populations. Historians James Davidson and Deborah Coe assert that Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell was "the most significant proponent of restricting Jewish admissions".
US admissions tests were designed to fit a White Protestant elite education with questions on Classical subjects as well as Greek and Latin, which were not taught in schools where Jews and other immigrants learned. Yale, Dartmouth and other universities introduced legacy admissions that favored the Protestant elite.
According to sociologist Stephen Steinberg, Jews were most commonly restricted through character and psychological exams. Jews were often given descriptors that were in contrast to the values which the universities sought, and those Jews who managed to prove they exhibited such values were considered "pushy". School administrators who were mostly Protestant would characterize Jews with stereotypes and prevent their entry to universities.
Over the winter of 1939–1940, a literature professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York, Max Otto Koischwitz, gave a series of antisemitic lectures and, as a result, was first put on mandatory leave and then resigned. He returned to his birth country of Germany and was employed by the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft as a propagandist until his death from tuberculosis several years later.
Stanford University, under President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, admitted in 2022 to having limited the admission of Jewish students in the 1950s, which he called "appalling antisemitic behavior". According to the Stanford committee, Stanford stopped or limited recruiting students from schools with high ratios of Jewish students. Between 1949 and 1952, following the introduction of the quota, for example, the number of students enrolled from Beverly Hills High School declined from 67 to 20, while Fairfax declined from 20 to 1. Stanford also misled investigations, parents and alumni who inquired for decades.
In the 1970s, quotas on Jews gradually disappeared, and admission of students of Jewish origin rose in American higher education.
21st century In 2001, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement was established by anti Israel NGOs at the Durban Conference in South Africa. In 2005, the BDS movement began to pressure American universities to cut ties with Israeli academics and Israel. Although such efforts mostly failed, the US Civil Rights Commission issued a report in 2005, which states that "antisemitism persists on college campuses and is often cloaked as criticism of Israel". Jewish students were said to feel isolated and targeted for harassment by BDS activists often.
Reinterpretation of Title VI Attorney Kenneth L. Marcus, while working at the Office for Civil Rights of the US Department of Education (2004–2008), reinterpreted Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which had been established to protect against racial discrimination in Jim Crow laws affecting education, to include protections against discrimination on the basis of religion, particularly "when an affected student's 'shared ancestry' would have been treated as a 'race' in earlier jurisprudence."Brownlee, Jason. "Efforts to Weaponize Title VI against Pro-Palestine Speech on University Campuses." Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights, vol. 30, no. 1, Fall 2024, pp. 52-88. HeinOnline. According to Jason Brownlee, Marcus "subsequently became one of the preeminent advocates for applying Title VI against speech and events criticizing Israeli repression of Palestinians, deeds Marcus considered antisemitic," and advocated for the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
In 2022, the American Jewish Congress released a report stating that a third of Jewish students felt unsafe or uncomfortable on campus due to their Jewish identity.
In Autumn 2023, before the October 7 attack, a Palestinian literature festival was held on the University of Pennsylvania (Penn)'s campus. Critics of the event pointed to controversial guests, including Roger Waters, who had called for the destruction of Israel as well as used antisemitic language.
During the Gaza war
Following the start of the Gaza war in 2023, there were protests led by pro-Palestinian student groups. In an article about the student protests, Jonathan Chait noted that most pro-Palestinian protesters do not "engage in anti-semitic harassment." However, Chait wrote that a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) statement celebrated the attack and claimed that all Israeli Jews were legitimate targets. The organization is supported and financially sponsored by the American Muslims for Palestine, which, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is linked to Hamas. A bipartisan group of lawmakers called for a federal investigation into SJP's funding. Columbia University and Rutgers University suspended their SJP chapters in late 2023.
On November 1, 2023, amid a rise in antisemitic incidents at college campuses, two dozen major law firms submitted a letter to 14 American law school deans, reminding them that the firms have "zero tolerance policies for any form of discrimination or harassment, much less the kind that has been taking place on some law school campuses."
In December 2023, the Presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn testified before Congress regarding the state of antisemitism in their universities. They were asked if "calling for the genocide of Jews" is against the codes of conduct in Penn, MIT and Harvard. The three presidents answered that it was a violation depending on the context. The President of Harvard, Claudine Gay, and the President of Penn, Lizz Magill, subsequently resigned following criticism. In August 2024, Columbia President Minouche Shafik also resigned following criticism, and this came alongside the resignations of three Columbia deans who were accused of sending text messages with antisemitic tropes. In December 2023, the United States Congress launched an investigation into antisemitism at American universities.
In late 2023, a protest that began on the outskirts of Penn's campus resulted in the targeting of a Jewish-owned restaurant in Philadelphia with chants of "genocide". The New York Times reported that some Jews at Harvard had stopped wearing openly Jewish headwear, with author Mark Oppenheimer commenting that seeing "newly resurgent antisemitism against this backdrop of fairly recent, wonderful acceptance is a very, very painful thing for a lot of Jews". After her resignation, Claudine Gay apologized for her testimony before Congress. One Jewish student told the New York Times that some students may have different definitions for their chants and gave the benefit of the doubt. Another student remarked that after October 7, there had been a major shift and felt the campus was an alien place, saying his classmates explicitly praised Hamas and denied the rape and abduction of Israeli women.