At a Canadian university, professors assigned readings that denied the Holocaust, and a student told a peer that it was “a shame Hitler did not finish the job.” Horrific as they were, the incidents are part of a pattern of widespread Jew-hatred, according to a federal Canadian government-led report on “campus antisemitism and student experience” issued on Aug. 4.
The study reaffirms “what we have been hearing from Jewish students on campus in Ontario for many, many years—that antisemitism on campus is running rampant and that the universities need to do more to safeguard the experiences of Jewish students,” Jay Solomon, chief advancement officer at Hillel Ontario, told JNS.
“It’s a wholesale failure of higher education institutions,” Solomon told JNS. “We need to do more as a society to ensure that Jewish students are able to be on campus and feel safe and express their identity.”
The Metropolis Institute, a think tank at the Association for Canadian Studies, released the study, which surveyed 900 Jewish students at more than two dozen Canadian colleges and universities, on behalf of the government.
The survey found that 90% of Jewish students were victims of or had witnessed antisemitism on campus in the past year. Of the latter, 71% reported seeing antisemitic graffiti, and more than 20% observed physical violence against Jews.
There were targeted actions, such as mezuzahs ripped from dorm room doors, at multiple institutions, per the survey, and about 33% of respondents reported course content or classroom discussions that were antisemitic or biased. A similar amount said that professors introduced Jews, Judaism, Israel and Zionism in unrelated ways to the subject matter.
More than 30% said that they had considered dropping a course or leaving the program due to antisemitic faculty or students, and professors were named in 18% of incidents.
“When people read the statistics, it’s damning, and it should be a wake-up call to university leadership, to the government and frankly to all Canadians,” Solomon told JNS.
Jack Jedwab, president and CEO of the institute and of the association and one of the study authors, told JNS that colleges and universities “can’t be particularly proud of their record in this area.”
“It’s saying quite emphatically that this is a systemic phenomenon,” he said.
Just a third of students who described events said that they reported them, and among those who did report incidents, about two-thirds said that they were dissatisfied with the response. More than half of those who remained silent believed that reporting Jew-hatred would not make a difference.
“We would expect that university leadership treats Jewish students in the same way that all other students are treated, and that is that they should be able to go to university, to to live on campus, to study on campus, to work on campus, in an environment free from harassment and intimidation and the kind of antisemitic bigotry that they had been experiencing,” Solomon told JNS.
“This survey confirms it, now, in real numbers,” he said.
Among respondents to the survey, 84% said that Jew-hatred is a serious problem on campus, and 95.7% said that they experienced or observed at least one incident in the past year. Some 70% didn’t think their school took Jew-hatred seriously, and 68% said that their campus is unsafe for Jewish students or not inclusive to them.
Some 72% of respondents—all of whom survey organizers found via Jewish student organizations and communal networks—limit what they say in class about being Jewish, and 57% avoid wearing or displaying Jewish symbols, because they fear for their safety, they said.
Holocaust denial and distortion happened “often” or “sometimes,” 45% said, and 81% said that they observed or experienced discriminatory treatment of Zionists.
“It’s absolutely a reflection of the reality on the ground,” Solomon told JNS. “It’s what we’ve been hearing from students for years, certainly and especially in a post Oct. 7 world.”
“Jewish students have been subjected to virulent antisemitism across our campuses in Ontario, and we have, of course, been working with them to support them and to ensure they have been reported to university leadership and taken seriously,” he said.
The report coming from the Canadian national government “makes a difference,” according to Jedwab.
“It’s very welcome to have the government support, commission and fund the study,” he said.
Though the data is consistent with what has been reported previously, it was “important to provide this documented evidence,” he told JNS. “There was a fair bit of survey work done.” He added that it “takes time to describe something that’s systemic.”
Marc Miller, the Canadian heritage minister, stated that the findings “echo what we are seeing across Canada.”
“Statistics Canada’s most recent data shows that 71% of all police-reported religion motivated hate crimes targeted Jewish Canadians,” Miller stated. (About 1% of Canadians are Jewish.)
Jedwab told JNS that he talked to Miller recently, and the latter “seemed very committed to taking action in this area.”
A follow-up report, based on reactions from 750 non-Jewish students, is expected in two months and will be publicized, according to Jedwab. It “will reinforce some of the things that the Jewish students are telling us,” he told JNS.
The Network of Engaged Canadian Academics, a faculty group formed in 2022 that focuses on campus Jew-hatred, issued a 10 point list of recommendations.
Universities must enforce existing rules against bullying, harassment and targeting any aspect of Jewish identity, including Zionism, the group said. It added that campaigns to boycott Israel undermine academic freedom by selectively cutting off scholarly exchange.
It also urges universities to revise diversity and human-rights policies to define Jew-hatred clearly and to address it and to provide mandatory antisemitism training for leaders, faculty, staff and students. Groups that represent mainstream Jewish communities must deliver that training, the network said.
Its other recommendations included annual assessments of hate on campus, centralized and transparent reporting systems, consistent use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred and appointing a special adviser on Jew-hatred on every campus.
