When Eliza arrived on her West Coast college campus in the fall of 2020, building community was difficult due to the raging COVID-19 pandemic. Yet over time she forged a network of friends, anchored by her sorority.
Three years later, those relationships were severely tested by events over 7,000 miles away: the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack in Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.
Due to her support for Israel, she was ostracized by people she once considered close friends, including her sorority sisters. Walking around campus, she removed her Star of David necklace. To be clear, Eliza was not concerned about her physical safety. But she sensed a social penalty for being Jewish and wanted to avoid dirty looks and political confrontations.
As the civilian death toll in Gaza mounted, progressive campus activists, including some Jews, fervently adopted the Palestinian cause as an extension of their battles for racial and social justice. Opposition to the war has become a generational cause for earnest Zoomers, akin to the Vietnam War for baby boomers and opposition to South African apartheid for Gen Xers.
Critics contend that protesters are unfairly holding Jewish classmates accountable for the actions of the Israeli government – especially since Jewish Americans are not unified in their attitudes about the war and very few hold dual citizenship in Israel. Where protesters see manifestations of anti-Zionism – opposition to the existence of a Jewish nation state in present-day Israel – many Jewish students, staff and parents see antisemitism, pure and simple.
Eliza – a pseudonym, like all the student names in this article – was one of 36 undergraduates across the country whom I spoke with as part of a study of Jewish students’ responses to the conflict and its consequences. Their views on Israel and the war ran the gamut – but regardless, most felt unsettled by the death, abductions and destruction abroad, as well as the protests outside their dorms.
Many of them were surprised to find themselves wrestling with what it means to be Jewish in the U.S. and questioning their place in American society. But for more than 100 years, college campuses have been a testing ground for Jewish identity – and Americans’ acceptance of their Jewish compatriots.
The parents of today’s students, in particular, find themselves in a state of whiplash. Most attended college in the 1980s and ’90s, at the height of a golden age of Jewish life on American campuses. They view their children’s experiences not merely as a reversal but a betrayal.
“I went to college in the 1990s, and cannot recall........