Forty-seven percent. That is the share of American Jewish college students who report having experienced some form of antisemitism on campus during the 2025-26 academic year, according to new research released in mid-April by Brandeis University's Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies. Thirty-seven percent — more than a third of all Jewish students surveyed — told researchers they believe their campus is outright hostile to Jews.

Those numbers, summarized this week by SheKnows and Inside Higher Ed, are not a statistical blip. They are the measured pulse of an academic year that began with the aftermath of the Gaza war, accelerated through the 2026 Iran campaign, and closes with a higher-education sector that has still, in too many cases, failed to provide Jewish students with the equal protection the law requires.

What 47 Percent Means

When nearly half of a protected class reports experiencing bias in a single academic year, the issue has moved past individual incidents and become structural. The Brandeis researchers compared the figure to bias experienced by other identity groups on the same campuses. Inside Higher Ed's reporting summarized the comparison: 47 percent of Jewish students, 34 percent of Muslim students, 31 percent of Black students, and 22 percent of Asian students reported experiencing at least one form of prejudice on campus because of their identity.

That Jewish students report bias at the highest rate of any group surveyed is a data point that should end any remaining doubt that antisemitism is a civil rights problem on American campuses. It is not a "controversy" to be managed. It is a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of shared ancestry and ethnic characteristics — a prohibition that covers antisemitic harassment and has been enforced since 2004 by the U.S. Department of Education.

The Political Geography of the Threat

The new Brandeis data also answers a question that partisan voices on both sides have tried to weaponize: where is the threat coming from? The answer, as the survey documents, is "both directions, but not equally."

Twenty-two percent of Jewish students said they were very concerned about antisemitism coming from the political left; 25 percent were very concerned about antisemitism coming from the right. Concerns about both sources are real, and both demand response. But the lived environment of a college campus is not symmetrical. As the October 2024 report of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce documented at length, the anti-Israel and anti-Zionist movements that have dominated campus organizing since October 7, 2023 are disproportionately concentrated in left-coded student groups and faculty networks. The Brandeis findings suggest that Jewish students feel the leftward pressure more acutely in classroom and residence-hall settings, while the right-coded threat is felt more often in online spaces and social media.

The policy response must address both. But institutions whose faculty governance, student life offices, and DEI bureaucracies have enabled the campus environment in which 37 percent of Jewish students feel hostility have a particular responsibility to self-correct.

What Congress Has Done — and What Remains

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce has now produced multiple investigative reports on campus antisemitism, each grounded in documented incidents, institutional emails, and deposition-level testimony. RealClearPolitics reported earlier this month that bipartisan committee work continues, with a focus on the financial and organizational networks that have fueled the campus protest movement.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights announced a public briefing on antisemitism on America's college and university campuses, adding federal civil rights weight to the findings that individual campus audits have produced.

Since taking office, President Trump has initiated multiple federal investigations into alleged campus antisemitism, temporarily withholding billions in federal funding from institutions that have refused to comply with Title VI. These tools are the most significant civil rights enforcement action on behalf of Jewish students in a generation. They should be sustained, expanded, and matched with due-process protections for the students who come forward.

What Universities Must Do Now

For every university president reading this report, the Brandeis findings are a call to action. The roadmap is not mysterious.

First, codify a working definition of antisemitism — the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition, which has been endorsed by 47 American states and the federal government — and apply it uniformly in Title VI enforcement. A campus cannot protect Jewish students from a form of bias it refuses to name.

Second, publish institutional data. Every university that has received federal funds should produce an annual public report on the number and disposition of antisemitism-related bias incidents, Title VI complaints, and disciplinary actions, in the same format used for other civil rights data.

Third, enforce time-place-manner restrictions on campus protest with the same evenhandedness applied to any other protected speech. When encampments block Jewish students from attending class or using the library, that is not expression. It is a civil rights violation.

Fourth, engage Jewish students as stakeholders, not as subjects. The Brandeis data was produced because Jewish students were asked. Every campus should be asking — through climate surveys, student government consultation, and open channels to Hillel and Chabad — whether Jewish students feel safe, and acting on the answers.

A Note on the Data Itself

The Cohen Center at Brandeis is not a partisan advocacy shop. It is one of the most rigorous research institutions studying contemporary Jewish life, and its surveys have been cited across the political spectrum for more than two decades. When an institution of that standing produces a 47 percent figure, the response cannot be reflexive dismissal or motivated reasoning. It must be accountability.

The Hillel International campus antisemitism tracker documents incidents in real time. The ADL's annual audit of antisemitic incidents has recorded successive record-breaking years. CNN reported in April 2025 that antisemitic incidents reached a record-breaking high partly fueled by campus protests. The Brandeis data is not an outlier. It is the convergence point of every serious measurement of the problem.

The Standard Iron Dome Press Applies

Iron Dome Press holds a simple standard: Jewish Americans are entitled to the same civil rights protection that every other identifiable community enjoys. On university campuses that take federal money, that standard is not aspirational. It is the law.

Forty-seven percent of Jewish students experiencing antisemitism in one academic year is a failure of the law as applied. Thirty-seven percent describing their campus as hostile to Jews is a failure of the institutions that set campus climate. Both failures have solutions. Both require will.

We will continue to publish the data as it emerges, to name the institutions that are doing the work, and to name the ones that are not. The parents of Jewish students sending their children to college this fall deserve nothing less.