The College Ranking Jewish Families Are Actually Waiting For

College move-in season just ended. Millions of families hauled mini-fridges up dormitory stairs, hugged their kids goodbye, and drove home with the same quiet question: Did we choose the right school?

A few weeks earlier, a federal judge in Boston threw out the government’s antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard, ruling that the incidents cited were “too isolated and episodic” to prove an ongoing violation of civil rights law. Whatever you think of Washington’s pressure campaign on universities, that ruling resolved a lawsuit. It did not answer the question Jewish families are asking this fall: not whether a legal standard was met, but whether their kid can wear a Star of David to the dining hall.

That question is not decided in a courtroom. It is decided on campus, by presidents, deans, and conduct offices, one enforcement decision at a time. 

My organization, Alums for Campus Fairness, just released a report identifying the ten strongest and ten most concerning campuses for Jewish and pro-Israel students in the 2025-2026 academic year. Every school was measured against the same five criteria: documented incidents, institutional response, the scale of organizing that targets Jewish students, the strength of Jewish campus life, and the surrounding legal environment. The findings rest on the public record: court filings, federal actions, university statements, and campus reporting.

The strongest campuses, led by Tulane, Florida, Vanderbilt, and Miami, share no single geography, size, or politics. What they share is behavior. 

When anti-Israel material turned up embedded in a Vanderbilt math course, the university confirmed within days that it had been removed and that a formal investigation was underway. Arizona State cleared an unauthorized encampment the same day it went up, then published plain-language protest rules so expectations were clear from day one. After outside agitators repeatedly used campus-bordering sidewalks as staging grounds, Tulane sought to lease them from the city, pursuing legal authority to control access that public-property rules would otherwise deny. At Binghamton, my alma mater, administrators meet weekly with Hillel and Chabad, and students themselves voted to rescind a BDS resolution. At Dartmouth, when a swastika appeared outside a Jewish student’s room, the president condemned it publicly, added patrols, and cooperated fully with police.

Syracuse and Washington University in St. Louis belong in this conversation, too. When two students threw pork into a Jewish fraternity’s Rosh Hashanah dinner, Syracuse called it “abhorrent” and backed the DA’s hate-crime charges within days. WashU has quietly become a landing spot for Jewish students by welcoming mid-semester transfer students seeking refuge from more hostile campuses.

The results were profound for Jewish students on campus. Tulane, where roughly a third of undergraduates are Jewish, recorded zero antisemitic incidents over the course of ACF’s review. So too did Florida, Vanderbilt, and USC.

Then there is the other list, led by DePaul, Berkeley, and The New School. At DePaul, two Jewish students tabling with an Israeli flag were assaulted, an incident that led to felony hate-crime charges. At Berkeley, “Kill all Zionists” was spray-painted in graduate housing, and a man was charged with hate crimes for setting fire to the mezuzah at the Hillel building. At The New School, the student government moved to defund Hillel, not for anything Hillel did but for what it is: a Jewish organization with ties to Israel. That is the newest front. The target is no longer just a war overseas. It is Jewish life on campus itself.

Put the two lists side by side, and the pattern is impossible to miss. The twenty schools identified in the report operate in the same country, downstream of the same war and the same social media. The variable is leadership. Campus antisemitism is not the weather. It is not preordained or impossible to change. 

Schools that published clear rules and enforced them from day one remained peaceful. Schools that negotiated with rule-breakers got more of it.

To be clear, none of this requires policing opinion. Criticism of any government, Israel’s included, belongs at a university. But pulling down a classmate’s mezuzah is not criticism, nor is it free speech.

Jewish families are already acting on what they see. Some describe a map being redrawn in real time, application by application, toward the campuses that take this seriously. Universities are competing for these families, whether they know it or not.

As the annual rankings land this month, I offer a different measure:

Parents: ask every admissions office what happened the last time a Jewish student on campus was targeted, and what the school did about it. 

Alumni: your engagement and your giving are leverage, so ask your alma mater which list it belongs on before you write the next check. 

And to university administrators: the strongest campuses have already written the playbook. The question is no longer whether this problem can be solved. It is why your school has not solved it.

Universities have spent years competing for students with rankings, amenities, and prestige. Now Jewish families are grading them on something far more basic: whether they can be trusted with their children.

Avi D. Gordon is the executive director of Alums for Campus Fairness.