Andrew Guckes | Staff Writer
The ADL released its 2025 report card on college campus antisemitism this month, with many local schools scoring bad grades largely due to the prevalence of antisemitic incidents, even as some schools scored passing reviews and trended upwards thanks to strong responses by administration.
Lehigh University is the only school in the region to get a worse grade than it did last year, going from a C to a D, although Drexel University, Haverford College, Muhlenberg College and Temple University were not included in the first iteration of the ADL’s annual review of on-campus climate for Jewish students. Drexel scored a B in its first year of review by the ADL, with Haverford registering an F, Muhlenberg earning a B and Temple getting a C.
Swarthmore College, which received a D last year, got another D this year. The other two area schools — Penn State University’s main campus in University Park and University of Pennsylvania — improved their scores from last year. Penn State went from a C to a B, and Penn went from a D to a C.
ADL Philadelphia Regional Director Andrew Goretsky was quick to offer praise for the schools who did make the necessary changes to improve their campus environment for Jewish students.
“We commend Pennsylvania State University, University Park, and The University of Pennsylvania for rising to the challenge and seeing improvement from the previous year,” he said. “Yet there is much more to be done. Administrators must address antisemitic incidents in their schools and enforce codes of conduct to ensure all students are safe.”
So, what exactly do those changes look like? How does a school go from a negative environment for Jews to a positive one? And what do the schools with negative reviews have to do to change?
It starts with school policy. Following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, 83 percent of Jewish college students reported that they experienced antisemitism, according to an ADL study. The organization said that, in the past year, more than 50% of surveyed schools have enacted major policy changes in response to increasing antisemitism on campus.
Penn State earned a B grade thanks to the university’s repeated condemnation of antisemitism on campus, as well as organizations like the Center for Spiritual and Ethical Development and the Bias Response Network. The former is a multifaith community that works in part to alleviate antisemitism on campus, while the latter is a university system that protects various groups from discrimination.
Most notably, however, is a program created within the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence called “Avoiding/Confronting Antisemitism and Islamophobia.” It arms Jews with strategies to combat antisemitism while also offering a place for cross-cultural exchange and comparison between two groups that have a lot to gain from increased dialogue.
Penn also made necessary changes to its school’s systems to combat the rising tide of antisemitism. In September, Interim President Larry Jameson announced the creation of what is called the Office of Religious and Ethnic Inclusion. It has the explicit mission of targeting antisemitism and Islamophobia, although it will also oversee other types of discrimination and bias. Jameson began his tenure in December 2023 following the resignation of President Liz Magill. Magill’s departure was widely supported after she garnered national headlines for comments downplaying hypothetical calls for the genocide of the Jews on campus in a Congressional hearing on antisemitism.
Also in 2023 was an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in regard to a Title VI violation at Penn. The Brandeis Center and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education alleged that the school failed to protect Jewish students from harassment. That case is still ongoing.
The common thread among all schools is incidents of antisemitism in the last year and a half. What differs from school to school is the severity of the incidents and the response.
While Penn had a strong tide of antisemitism, university leadership made decisive changes.
At Haverford College, the F grade comes largely from the disparity on campus between Jewish students, staff and programming and anti-Israel and antisemitic students, staff and programming, as well as the severity of the messages at the school’s anti-Israel rallies.
Protesters have held signs with messages like “resistance is not terrorism” and “decolonization is not a metaphor” in support of violence against Israelis, while some of the school’s student groups protested and disturbed a workshop on antisemitism in October of this school year. Two months before that, a student was allegedly ridiculed by classmates and pressed on their stance on Zionism after peers found out they were Jewish.
On the administrative side, President Wendy Raymond expressed concern about the teach-in’s original title of “Mass Death on All Fronts,” and noted that it echoes antisemitic conspiracy theories about Israel. However, she also did not condemn the disruption at the antisemitism workshop.
The school has also announced plans to hold an education event with Project Shema, which trains and equips Jews and allies with strategies to digest and counter antisemitism. This fall, they started a program called “Meeting the Moment: Community in Dialogue,” which will hold events focused on antisemitism and Islamophobia, as well as other biases.
Temple has struggled with a litany of antisemitic incidents, made worse by the school’s location within the city, which makes it more easily accessible for outside agitators. While the school is about 7% Jewish according to Hillel international, the comfortability of Jewish students on campus has been an ongoing debate in the past year and a half after a break-in at a Jewish fraternity and various instances of antisemitic graffiti.
That break-in led to specific security training for Temple’s AEPi chapter. Temple, thanks to its relatively strong Jewish student life and support from the larger Jewish community, had some of these systems in place prior to Oct. 7, 2023. In 2022, the school established what it called the Blue Ribbon Commission on Antisemitism and University Responses, which has responded strongly to the issue. One of its recommendations was to create a special advisor on antisemitism, which the university accomplished.
