Abstract: Since 7th October 2023, the date when Hamas perpetrated the worst and most murderous single massacre against Jews since the Holocaust, there has been a surge in antisemitism in UK universities. This report offers a summary of research by the Intra-Community Professorial Group (ICPG) about antisemitism at UK universities since the 7th October attacks, aimed at understanding and documenting problems on and off campus and proposing evidence-based solutions to address them.
Key findings include:
1. There has been up to 34 percentage points increase in rates of antisemitic abuse in universities since Oct 7th. These include physical attacks, threats of rape, violence, verbal abuse, harassment, and use of Nazi imagery.
2. Jewish students are withdrawing from all aspects of university life, including lecture theatres and seminar rooms,
online learning spaces, social activities, and entire areas of campus. More than half of respondents reported being
fearful of being on campus, and three quarters being uncomfortable to be open about their Jewish identity. The
consequential impact on their ability to participate in university life, let alone their mental and physical health, is
profound.
3. There is compelling evidence that some universities are failing in their responsibility to adequately safeguard
Jewish students from verbal abuse and physical attack.
Abstract: In the lives of students in Luxembourg’s Liberal Jewish complementary school, flexibility and mobility are highly valued as key characteristics of modern living. Complementary school students feel they easily meet these criteria—they are multilingual, cosmopolitan, and their approach to Jewish life is flexible, and equally importantly, they look, dress, and comport themselves “like everyone else.” These factors are understood to facilitate multiple movements and belongings in the contemporary world. The students directly contrast their ways of being with those of more observant Jews whom they refer to as “religious”; the material, embodied, and visible nature of observant Jewish life is perceived to be an impediment to participation and success in the secular sphere. However, when Jewishness appears in these students’ secular school classrooms, it is most often represented by Orthodox-presenting men—often a man in a yarmulke. Further, these men and their yarmulkes are taken to represent all Jews, framed as a homogeneous group of religious adherents. For many complementary school students, these experiences can be jarring—they suddenly find themselves on the “wrong” side of the religious–secular divide and grouped together with those from whom they could not feel more distant. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and a material approach to religion, this article argues that the yarmulke comes to point to different levels and modes of observance and identities and enable different possible belongings in the secular public sphere as it travels across contexts that include different definitions of and attitudes toward religion and Jewishness.
Topics: Coronavirus/Covid, Main Topic: Other, Jewish Students, Jewish Schools, Schools: Seconday / High Schools, Youth, Mental Health, Surveys, Focus Groups, Jewish Youth, Jewish Youth Work, Youth Movements, Israel Tours
Abstract: During February and March 2020, the world was plunged into responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. This saw unprecedented restrictions to people’s lives in an effort to prevent the spread of a highly infectious disease.
In the UK, from 23rd March 2020, the entire population was put into “lockdown” by the government, effectively suspending almost all forms of activity outside the home. By the time of writing, in the Autumn of 2021, the UK has endured three lockdowns resulting in enormous disruption to every sphere of life. The country has not yet returned to normality.
The effect on every aspect of people’s lives – family, mental wellbeing, social, economic, educational and religious - has been immense. This study explores the effect of the pandemic on the Jewish lives of teenagers. It pays
special attention to three key moments in their Jewish development: bar/bat mitzvah; Israel
tour and summer camp; and their graduation from school.
Abstract: This report, which focuses on the past two academic years, uncovers a much higher number of antisemitic incidents
on UK campuses than had previously been reported. It shows that in some instances, university staff, academics
and student societies were themselves responsible for antisemitism on campus, and that university complaints processes are sometimes inadequate. In one case reported to CST, a Jewish student at the University of Warwick was even subjected to disciplinary investigation after he complained that a member of academic staff had made an antisemitic comment in a lecture. This was later dropped with no action taken against the student.
CST recorded a total of 58 university incidents in the 2018/2019 academic year and 65 university incidents in the
2019/2020 academic year, making a total of 123 antisemitic incidents during the two years covered by this report. The total for 2019/2020 is the highest total CST has ever recorded in a single academic year, despite the year being cut short as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, CST had recorded university incidents by calendar
year, and logged 25 such incidents in 2018; 22 in 2017; and 41 in 2016. The significant increase in university incident totals since 2018 reflects a sustained drive by CST’s campus team to encourage students to report antisemitic incidents. This increase in the number of university incidents therefore needs to be seen within the context of increased awareness among university students of the need and importance of reporting incidents to CST, as well as the rising levels of antisemitism in the UK more widely. It is likely that more incidents
remain unreported.
Abstract: „Antisemitismus ist an deutschen Schulen Normalität.“ Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt die im Dezember 2018 veröffentlichte Studie „‚Mach mal keine Judenaktion!‘ Herausforderungen und Lösungsansätze in der professionellen Bildungs- und Sozialarbeit gegen Antisemitismus“ von Prof. Dr. Julia Bernstein unter Mitarbeit von Florian Diddens, Ricarda Theiss und Nathalie Friedlender.
Für die Studie wurden 227 Interviews an 171 Schulen mit jüdischen Schülerinnen und Schülern, deren Eltern, mit jüdischen und nichtjüdischen Lehrkräften sowie mit Fachleuten aus der Sozialarbeit und aus Bildungsorganisationen durchgeführt. Die Befunde von Prof. Dr. Bernstein zeigen, dass antisemitische Äußerungen und Handlungen an Schulen normal sind und häufig nicht erkannt werden. Jüdische Kinder und Jugendliche erleben subtile Anmerkungen, diffuse Ablehnung, offenen Hass und Gewalt. Die offene Selbstpräsentation als Jüdin_Jude in der Schule wird aufgrund der Gefahr von antisemitischen Angriffen weitgehend vermieden. Die Perspektive der jüdischen Lehrer_innen zeigt, dass sie als offen auftretende religiöse Jüdinnen_Juden sowohl von der Schulleitung und im Kollegium als auch von Schüler_innen Benachteiligungen, teils sogar Anfeindungen erfahren.
Es ist die erste empirische Studie zu Antisemitismus im schulischen Bereich, die die Perspektiven von Jüdinnen und Juden in den Vordergrund stellt. Die Studie schlüsselt die Erlebnisberichte aus drei Perspektiven auf: die der jüdischen Schüler/-innen, die der nicht-jüdischen Lehrkräfte und die der jüdischen Lehrkräfte.
Abstract: During the 1990s, Jewish communal leaders in Britain reached a consensus that Jewish education, in the broadest sense, was the principal means of strengthening Jewish identity and securing Jewish continuity. This belief motivated considerable investment in communal intervention programs such as Jewish schools, Israel experience trips, and youth movements. Twenty years on, it is pertinent to ask whether, and to what extent, this intervention has worked. The Institute for Jewish Policy Research’s (JPR) 2011 National Jewish Student Survey contains data on over 900 Jewish students in Britain and presents an opportunity to empirically assess the impact such intervention programs may have had on respondents’ Jewish identity by comparing those who have experienced them with those who have not. Regression analysis is used to test the theory based on a set of six dimensions of Jewish identity generated using principal component analysis. The results show that after controlling for the substantial effects of Jewish upbringing, intervention has collectively had a positive impact on all aspects of Jewish identity examined. The effects are greatest on behavioral and mental aspects of socio-religious identity; they are far weaker at strengthening student community engagement, ethnocentricity, and Jewish values. Further, the most important intervention programs were found to be yeshiva and a gap year in Israel. Both youth movement involvement and Jewish schooling had positive but rather limited effects on Jewish identity, and short-stay Israel tours had no positive measurable effects at all.
