Campus Antisemitism Task Forces

Colleges and universities have seen an alarming and unprecedented rise in antisemitic incidents and rhetoric since the October 7 Hamas led attack on Israel, including vandalism, support for terrorism, disruptions to classes and commencement ceremonies, intimidation and even physical violence. Between October 7 and the end of 2023, ADL recorded 732 antisemitic incidents on college and university campuses alone. In response to this crisis, ADL outlined the Six Asks: Policy Actions to Counter Antisemitism on Campus and developed the 2024 Joint Recommendations, designed in partnership with Jewish communal partners, that detail what colleges and universities should do to prepare for the 2024/25 academic year. Additionally, ADL developed a Campus Antisemitism Report Card that details the state of antisemitism on campus and grades universities’ responses.

Among ADL recommendations is a call to create a task force or advisory group focused on campus antisemitism. The current crisis calls for a collaborative approach to review, address and improve Jewish life on campus. ADL recommends that such a group includes Jewish student leaders, faculty, staff and other concerned internal and external stakeholders, including but not limited to representatives from Hillel and Chabad.

A number of universities, including Harvard University, the University of Virginia, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University and Columbia University (in partnership with Barnard College and Teachers College) have convened task forces to investigate campus antisemitism. Following initial investigations, these five groups published reports detailing their findings and recommendations for ongoing work to counter antisemitism.

We have reviewed these reports and evaluated them against our asks with the expectation that university leadership will begin to implement the recommendations. Alongside this assessment, we have developed a list of best practices that administrators and task force members can refer to, to inform the establishment and operations of campus task forces.

Best Practices

Existing task force reports illuminate a series of best practices regarding the compositions, charges and operations of task forces. Broken down by category, these include:

Establishing a Task Force

The post-October 7th sudden and unprecedented surge in antisemitism on college and university campuses nationwide underscores the value in administrators establishing task forces against antisemitism as a proactive measure, rather than as a remedial policy aimed at responding to spiking incident rates. ADL therefore recommends that all colleges and universities establish such task forces, regardless of their incident rates. Time and time again, we have seen how waiting to respond until antisemitism on campus peaks causes significant disruptions to the campus environment and leaves Jewish members of the campus community feeling unsafe and resorting to self-censorship and withdrawal from campus.

If incident rates are low, these task forces can prioritize the important charges of focusing on standardizing reporting systems, enhancing Jewish student life on campus and strengthening educational offerings and relationships with Jewish and Israeli institutions, organizations and academics. 

Publicize the establishment of the task force to the entire campus community, alongside a message of solidarity with Jewish students, staff and faculty, a condemnation of antisemitism and an explanation of the value of such task forces to safeguarding core campus values and minimizing discrimination on campus.

If establishing a task force is not a feasible option for your campus, consider participating in Hillel’s Campus Climate Initiative or Academic Engagement Network’s Improving the Campus Climate Initiative.

Assigning a Charge

Task forces should be assigned with clear charges that explicitly outlines what is and what is not within their purview. Their missions and operations should be underpinned with and informed by a definition of antisemitism that includes a reference to Israel, Zionism and/or anti-Zionism, with the ADL recommendation being the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

We recommend that task forces are assigned the following charges:

• Conduct an initial evaluation of the state of Jewish life and antisemitism on campus to guide the long-term strategy and aims of the task force.
• Establish clear and measurable goals with respect to improving Jewish life and addressing antisemitism on campus.
• Work toward comprehending the nature, state, prevalence, origins, manifestations and impact of antisemitism, including anti-Zionism, on the university campus, collecting and leveraging data from Jewish and non-Jewish members of the campus community. Assess online antisemitism as well as in-person incidents.
• Work with key internal and external stakeholders (including task forces established to counter other forms of hate) and subject matter experts, striving to integrate their expertise into the task force recommendations and to simultaneously inform their operations.
• Work in coordination with other initiatives aimed at addressing other forms of hate on campus to cultivate allyship and drive a whole-of-campus approach to combatting harassment and discrimination.
• Provide recommendations designed to reduce, address, track and investigate antisemitism, including anti-Zionism, on campus.
• Provide recommendations to strengthen relevant campus policies, including, but not limited to, the Code of Conduct, non-discrimination policies and protest and open expression policies.
• Provide pathways to implementing and evaluating the recommended policies, alongside recommended timelines and deadlines.

Clearly communicate these charges, and a timeframe for reporting, to the campus community so that students, staff and faculty know what to expect from the task force. Provide the campus community with a centralized email address for the task force so that students, staff and faculty know how to engage with the task force.

We recommend that task forces are not time bound and are instead tasked with providing annual updates on the campus climate, alongside new data-driven recommendations where needed. However, in the event that task forces are established for a specific period of time, we recommend that their data collection and campus climate assessment efforts are continued by another department (e.g., DEI, student affairs or departments in charge of handling incident reports).

Composition

Task forces should be composed of relevant stakeholders (such as Jewish organizational representatives, antisemitism subject matter experts, Jewish staff and faculty members and Jewish students). Task forces should also strive to have representation from internal and external stakeholders, including external independent monitors and representatives from key campus departments, such as student affairs, DEI, general counsel, teams handling incident reports and campus security and law enforcement. Such internal representation will ensure that the recommendations proposed are feasible and take the campus context into consideration, while external representation will ensure that experts in antisemitism or the experiences of Jewish students will be on hand to offer their specialized insights. We further recommend that all members of a task force are a definition of antisemitism that includes a reference to Israel, Zionism and/or anti-Zionism, with the ADL recommendation being the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

Task forces designed to jointly address antisemitism and other forms of hate (e.g. anti-Muslim hate) should have representation from stakeholders and subject matter experts from all groups they are charged with helping.

Task force members should receive an initial antisemitism training to ensure that all members (particularly those who do not deal with the issue of antisemitism on a day-to-day basis) have a sound understanding of what antisemitism is.

Finally, task forces and their internal faculty or external members should be publicly announced. Students who may be members of the task force do not need to be publicly announced if there are security concerns.

Critically, it should be clear exactly to whom the Task Force reports and how the recommendations will be accepted and implemented, (for example, will a Board of Trustees be tasked with voting on implementation?).

Operations and Data Collection

Task force members should meet regularly to discuss the topics of Jewish life and antisemitism on campus, set and implement research agendas and develop their recommendations. To support the operations of the task force, a mission statement that leverages the charges of the task force should be collaboratively developed and publicized. When commencing operations, task forces that have not been instructed to use a definition of antisemitism that includes anti-Zionism should strongly consider using such a definition, particularly to ensure all members of the task force are aligned on what antisemitism means and how it can manifest. The ADL recommendation is the IHRA definition. As well as grounding operations in a shared definition of antisemitism, the task force should also strive to leverage the campus mission and values statements to inform and validate their work.

Data collection – via listening sessions, qualitative interviews, campus climate surveys and curricula assessments – should be an integral component of the task force agenda, underpinning the scope, content and nature of the recommendations and the rationale behind them. Such data collection efforts should be standardized and repeated annually (whether by task forces or by groups tasked with regularly assessing campus climate) to gather longitudinal data and assess year-over-year changes in the campus climate. They should reach beyond experiences of in-person incidents to encompass online antisemitism affecting members of the campus community, particularly with respect to incidents occurring on campus social media platforms. Likewise, incidents affecting members of the campus community that occur off-campus should be tracked. Administrators should make all incident reports and relevant data available to task force members – with appropriate confidentiality limitations – to ensure the task force can operate unimpeded. 

As well as producing recommendations for administrators, task forces should consider taking steps to address antisemitism on campus themselves. This may be via the organization and promotion of educational opportunities created by external partners and organizations working in the field of antisemitism or via sharing resources, guidance and training materials through the task force homepage. While this is not the core component of task force operations, such efforts allow task forces to begin raising awareness of antisemitism and testing the very recommendations they may be proposing to the administration.

Cadence of Reports, Recommendations & Pathways to Implementation

Task forces should produce annual, or more frequent, publicly available reports on Jewish life and antisemitism on campus, outlining key recommendations based on the findings, concrete implementation plans, and progress updates. Condensed versions of long-form reports should be provided to ensure the recommendations are digestible and easily accessible to all audiences. 

Reports should include the definition of antisemitism used within the research, with the IHRA definition being ADL’s recommendation. Reports should also include data points, to showcase the prevalence of antisemitism on campus, and should highlight specific experiences from members of the campus community to underscore the impact of antisemitism. For each recommendation, reports should also outline pathways to implementation and for evaluation, including timelines, deadlines, proposed key performance indicators and, where possible, budgets for suggested programs. Finally, reports should outline the potential positive and far-reaching impact of their recommendations, for Jewish and non-Jewish members of the campus community alike.

Mapping Task Force Recommendations onto ADL’s Six Asks

The subsequent sections provide thorough summaries of the six task force reports to date. However, we have also undertaken an exercise to map five of the task force proposals onto ADL’s Six Asks to assess whether they have taken our recommendations into consideration. The grid below summarizes this analysis. The University of Virginia task force report was omitted from this grid due to its primary focus being the promotion of religious diversity and belonging and not antisemitism.

Campus Recommendations Aligned to ADL's Six Asks