Colleges fare better on average as ADL grades them on antisemitism for a second time
The higher grades come as the Trump administration trains its sights on colleges with anti-Israel protests
Columbia University student protesters camped on campus to call for divestment from Israel, April 28, 2024. (Philissa Cramer)
(JTA) — For the second time, the Anti-Defamation League is issuing grades to colleges and universities based on their handling of antisemitism and anti-Israel activism. And at a time when the Trump administration has made colleges with pro-Palestinian protests a target, the group says most schools are showing improvement.
Eight schools received A’s, up from just two (Brandeis and Elon Universities) last year. The number of “B” grades also shot up, from 18 in 2024 to 41 this year.
Shira Goodman, the ADL’s vice president of advocacy, said in an interview that roughly two-thirds of the 85 schools graded last year had contacted the ADL to figure out how they could score better, and implemented policies from the group’s “best practices” guide.
“We think that shows that things are working,” she said.
Still, some schools continued to struggle by the ADL’s metrics. In just the last week, the group downgraded Barnard College from a planned C to a D — the same grade it got last year — after administrators told pro-Palestinian student protesters occupying a building that they would not be punished if they left. The school had recently become the first in the country to expel students over their pro-Palestinian activism.
The first set of grades, issued last April, drew criticism from Jewish campus groups, including chapters of Hillel and Chabad, who argued that the grades did not reflect a complex reality.
The new grades — for a broader set of 135 schools — reflect broader buy-in from Jewish campus professionals, who responded to and shared the ADL’s survey, Goodman said.
“One of the things we heard was, ‘You’re not talking about my experience on campus,’” she said. “We heard what their criticisms were. We wanted to make it better. And we think the fact that more Hillel, Chabad directors were providing us information is a good sign.”
Reached for comment, Hillel offered the same statement it made last year. “We do not believe it is constructive or accurate to try to assign grades to schools,” the organization said. “Efforts to do so, however well-intended, produce misleading impressions regarding the actual Jewish student experience at those schools.”
The new grades also come at a time when the landscape around campus protests — and the stakes in handling them — has changed.
Since last year, schools across the country have enacted a litany of new measures to penalize discrimination, disruptive protests and code-of-conduct violations. Now, after nearly a year and a half of the Israel-Hamas war — and more than six weeks into a ceasefire — the intensity of protests have died down.
At the same time, the Trump administration has escalated pressure on pro-Palestinian protesters and schools seen as abetting them. On the campaign trail, Trump threatened to target the endowments and accreditations of schools his administration judges to be inadequately responsive to antisemitism. And he signed an executive order soon after being sworn in that raises the prospect of foreign-born student protesters being deported.
Goodman said the ADL had helped schools improve the climate for Jewish students during both the Biden and Trump administrations. She also said she thought Republicans in Congress, who have held a series of high-profile hearings on campus antisemitism, have “drawn important attention and pressure and motivated action.”
She said, “Nobody wants to be next on that list, right? Nobody wants to be hauled into that committee.”
As an example of improvement, Goodman pointed to the University of Pennsylvania, which took so much heat over antisemitism after Oct. 7 — including during an antisemitism hearing convened by House Republicans — that its president stepped down.
Since then, Penn formed an antisemitism task force, put out a number of campus climate surveys, and hired for new positions related to policy enforcement, including one to coordinate Title VI concerns adjudicated by the federal education department. This year, the ADL bumped up Penn’s grade from a D to a C.
The ADL’s grades were devised using a rubric assessing whether schools regulate the “time, place and manner” of campus protests; mandate antisemitism training for faculty and staff; maintain “partnerships with Israeli institutions, universities, scholars and exchange programs”; or have “an active pro-Israel group or organization on campus” in addition to Hillel and Chabad.
Schools with anti-Zionist staff or faculty groups were dinged, although the group emphasized that “incidents of criticism of Israel that do not veer into anti-Zionism are not counted” in the tally of incidents figuring into the grades.
The new grades are being unveiled as the ADL opens its annual “Never is Now” conference in New York City. On the list of speakers are the heads of two universities: the University of Michigan, which went from an F to a C, and Washington University in St. Louis, which earned its second straight B while also admitting as midyear transfers Jewish students who experienced antisemitism elsewhere.
In a press release, the ADL’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, said that despite the gains, schools should still be doing better.
“Every single campus should get an ‘A’, this isn’t a high bar – this should be the standard,” Greenblatt said. “While many campuses have improved in ways that are encouraging and commendable, Jewish students still do not feel safe or included on too many campuses.”
Correction: This story has been corrected to show that Hillel International did not collaborate with the ADL on the survey.
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