Campus anti-Semitism is forcing Jewish students across the world to conceal their religious identity, according to a new Anti-Defamation League (ADL) survey. The report, published Tuesday, found that nearly 80 percent of Jewish students have hidden their identity at least once in the past year.
Seventy-eight percent admitted they felt “the need to hide [their] Jewish identity from others at [their] university.” Another 81 percent said they had kept their Zionist identity secret. ADL senior vice president of international affairs Marina Rosenberg called the results “nothing short of dire.”
“This survey exposes a devastating reality: Jewish students across the globe are being forced to hide fundamental aspects of their identity just to feel safe on campus,” Rosenberg said.
The ADL surveyed 1,727 Jewish students across 60 countries, including major democracies such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada. Disturbingly, 34 percent of respondents said they knew Jewish peers who were physically threatened, and 19 percent said they knew peers who were assaulted.
The results mirror rising tensions in the United States. The ADL recorded more than 10,000 anti-Semitic incidents in the year following Hamas’s October 7 terror attack, including 1,200 on college campuses—a sixfold increase from the previous year.
President Donald Trump has responded by pressuring universities to act. His administration has already secured multimillion-dollar settlements with Columbia University and Brown University, with ongoing cases against UCLA and Harvard.
