Anti-Defamation League Examines Campus Antisemitism

The Anti-Defamation League launched a new initiative aimed at identifying and combating antisemitism in college classrooms and curricula, including concerns involving faculty conduct, course materials and campus organizations.

The Jewish advocacy organization and antisemitism tracker released two reports examining what it described as less visible forms of antisemitism at universities. The initiative also includes guidance for colleges and universities and a confidential system for students, faculty and staff to report incidents they believe involve antisemitism.

The effort comes after college campuses became a major focus of demonstrations related to the Israel-Hamas war, particularly during a wave of protests and encampments in 2024. While those demonstrations represented some of the most visible disputes over antisemitism on campuses, the ADL said its new initiative is focused on how similar issues can arise inside classrooms and academic institutions.

One of the reports identified several patterns the ADL said it found at universities across the country. Those included faculty presenting political claims about Israel and Zionism as fact, assigning material that amplifies the viewpoints of designated terrorist organizations, singling out Jewish or Israeli students in classrooms and advocating for universities to withdraw investments connected to Israel.

Among the universities cited in the report were Columbia, Northwestern, Princeton, Stanford and Yale, along with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Missouri.

The report pointed to course descriptions and materials at several universities as examples. Courses at Princeton and Stanford characterized the Israel-Hamas war as a Palestinian genocide, according to the ADL. A reading included in the Princeton course described what it called “Israel’s genocidal project” as being visible during the war in Gaza while arguing it had been unfolding since 1948. The report also cited a Yale seminar that referred to Israel as a “settler-colonial structure of occupation and violence.”

At the University of California, Berkeley, a 2025 comparative literature course initially referred to the Israeli military in the Palestinian territories as the “Israeli Occupying Force” and described Hamas militants as “revolutionary resistance forces” opposing colonialism and imperialism. The university later revised the course description to remove specific references to Israel and Hamas, although the revised description continued to include discussion of “Indigenous Palestinian resistance against settler-colonialism.”

The ADL also cited assigned readings at UC Berkeley and Columbia written by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The organization is designated as a terrorist group by the United States, European Union, Canada and Israel. The ADL characterized the use of those materials as amplifying pro-terrorism narratives.

The report also addressed allegations involving the treatment of Jewish and Israeli students. It referenced findings from Columbia University’s Task Force on Antisemitism, which documented accounts from Israeli students who reported being subjected to derogatory comments from other students and professors.

A second ADL report examined faculty organizations that the group said have increased their collaboration with anti-Israel student organizations since the 2024 campus protests. The report identified the American Association of University Professors, the Coalition for Action in Higher Education and the Sanctuary Campus Network among the organizations it examined.

Along with the reports, the initiative provides recommended practices and model policies for colleges and universities responding to antisemitism. It also establishes the Campus Classroom Reporting mechanism, which the ADL describes as a confidential reporting and support channel for students, faculty and staff who encounter antisemitism in classrooms or course curricula.