The battle for hearts and minds will require a vastly different approach
Summer is over. Many Jewish students are returning to school with some trepidation. They are wondering whether their schools will increasingly enforce their own rules and maintain campus safety, or backslide into a new wave of out-of-control protests and disruptions. But regardless of where these students go, they will be facing a growing front in the battle against antisemitism that we are currently not well equipped to fight. This front is the battle for “hearts and minds” of America’s young adults, and more broadly adults all over the world. The battle for “hearts and minds” will require a different approach that doesn’t play to our typical strengths.
As a small demographic minority, the Jewish community’s energy and efforts have always been rightly focused on seeking the support of leaders to protect Jews. In the U.S. we are 7 million out of a nation of 340 million. Rather than aim at winning hearts and minds of the 333 million non-Jews in America, or more broadly on the 8 billion in the world, we relied on an underlying sense of shared values,and focused our efforts on a small number of non-Jewish leaders who could deeply understand our concerns and protect our rights.
This has historically been a very effective approach. It plays to our strengths and our instincts. When we see something antisemitic happening, our first instinct is to find the leader who can resolve the situation. This is how Biblically and historically we have always succeeded in keeping ourselves safe—from Joseph to Esther—by focusing on strong and fair-minded leaders.
In the United States, this has often meant working closely with elected leaders. But, it is also how we collectively fought antisemitism on college campuses over the last 22 months with a focus on engaging with college presidents and administrators. Through a combination of political action, legal action, and our direct partnerships with university administrators, we have been able to address the worst of the public antisemitism taking place on campuses.
But even though we battled back the out-of-control protests and encampments, last year Hillel still tracked a record number of antisemitic incidents on campus. These incidents aren’t as public. They are behind closed doors in dorms, cafeterias, fraternities and increasingly online. This current of more targeted antisemitism is difficult to defeat and can’t be solved solely through appeals to leadership. The sense of underlying shared values is eroding and with it our ability to rely solely on leaders to address our issues.
I first realized how completely the battle is shifting for Jews, both in Israel and in America, at a Rutgers Hillel event that I attended as Board Chair of Hillel International. We were in the throes of the encampments in the spring of 2024. Much of our discussion at the event was focused on figuring out how to get the Rutgers administration to enforce the school’s own rules and code of conduct. What was being said to the then president of the University? Where were we going with lawsuits? What were we asking our local and national political leaders to do to intervene?
The problem, as we all saw it, was a failure of administrative leadership—and the solution was to aim squarely at the top. Various efforts were deployed, from education to advocacy to lawsuits.
But, during the meal, I got an alert on my phone. The Rutgers student body had just voted overwhelmingly to divest from Israel. The students themselves voted. The vote was a landslide. Of the students that voted, 80% voted for divestment. I was shaken. The student body had no real decision-making authority, and the Rutgers administration never wound up divesting or took any University action against Israel, but somehow we had thousands of students believing it should have.
Over the last 22 months, this same situation has repeatedly played out at colleges and universities across the country. Since October 2023, not a single college or university in the United States has opted to divest or take any action against Israel. And every time it comes up with an administration, Jewish groups mobilize against it. But at the same time, there have been a flood of student votes all across the country and though we often are able to defeat these votes the vote itself is hurtful to Jewish students.
We all know that these student votes aren’t happening by themselves. They are organized by national organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). And SJP knows that no matter how students vote, administrators are not going to divest. But they don’t care. The votes aren’t about divestment. They are about demonization and delegitimization of Israel—and they are about isolating Jewish students. While we have been focused on administrators and politicians, SJP and groups like them are fighting a different battle. They are aimed at winning “hearts and minds” of young Americans, and more broadly around the world.
This dichotomy between the Jewish communal focus on “leaders” and our opposition’s focus on grassroots “hearts and minds” is playing out everywhere.
As Board Chair of Hillel International, I am mostly focused on the situation for Jewish students on college campuses. But this trend is much broader than campus. Whether looking at the headlines locally in our cities or abroad, or reading the latest poll numbers, it is clear that there has been a shift. The shift in views impacts the actions of our current leaders and also impacts who are future leaders will be.
There are many reasons for this shift but the battle on social media is substantial. The number of online antisemitic attacks involving Jewish college students nearly tripled in the most recent school year. Terrible, misleading ideas about Jews and Israel flourish online, and as just 2% of the U.S. population, and 0.2% of the global population, we know we have a steep hill to climb to get our messages in front of the remaining 99.8%. This is not something that lends itself to appeals to leaders.
Fighting a “hearts and minds” battle versus an “appeal-to-leaders” battle will require a mindset shift in our priorities and our methods. In addition to being effective at engaging a short list of leaders, we are going to need to be meaningfully better at telling our story to a broad swath of the population. This means significantly more effort (and more dollars) toward programs and organizations that aim at changing hearts and minds.
This means more efforts like Hillel’s “Campus for All” website and “Teach-In Tours” that reach students directly, and interfaith dialogue and bridge building efforts undertaken by campus Hillels and like-minded organizations. It also speaks to the role of other organizations like Project Shema, the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, JewBelong, and Itrek. Most major Jewish organizations have efforts aimed at a broader population…but not enough. One area we are all going to need to include is more support for Zionist progressive groups that have credibility in that space, and something similar on the right.
Israel also has a critical role to play. Israel has been fighting a long war against enemies intent on its destruction, and at great cost, has achieved stunning victories and continues to fight to bring home the hostages. The battle for hearts and minds is a different kind of war.
Public perceptions of Jews and the Jewish state, on campus and beyond, are impacted by both real developments and decisions – including how Israel proceeds in Gaza in its continuing war against Hamas and how the U.S. intervenes there – and by the enormous amount of traditional and social media that then filters and conveys those developments on a daily basis to billions of people around the world.
The hearts and minds front in the battle against antisemitism will require all Jewish institutions to re-think their priorities and focus areas. The challenge at hand is not a simple one but it’s one we cannot afford to lose.
