As students protest against Israel’s military operations in Gaza in pop-up encampments at colleges across the United States, U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-MA, is calling out the demonstrations and urging university administrations to put an end to them.
On Tuesday morning, Auchnincloss posted a message on X (formerly known as Twitter) saying, “Students should get back to class and university leaders should focus on improving their grades, as well.”
The “grades” of which the congressman speaks are scores in the Antidefamation Defense League’s first ever Campus Antisemitism Report Card, which evaluates 85 colleges and universities with high percentages of Jewish students and bases grades on not only the frequency of antisemitic incidents but also how much of the ADL’s guidance those schools’ administrations have implemented into policy.
The ADL website says the assessments are meant “to serve students and their families looking for information about the current state of antisemitism on campus and how particular universities and colleges are responding.”
How did Massachusetts schools do?
- Amherst College: B
- Boston University: C
- Brandeis University: A
- Harvard University: F
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology: F
- Northeastern University: C
- Tufts University: F
- University of Massachusetts, Amherst: F
- Wellesley College: C
- Williams College: C
Neither Boston College nor Lasell University, both in Newton, received grades from the ADL.
Auchnicloss published an open letter Thursday morning to college administrations across the commonwealth urging them to fight antisemitism on campus.
“I commend Brandeis University for receiving one of two ‘A’ grades of any university assessed nationally and Amherst College for receiving a ‘B’ grade. I hope that these universities’ responses to antisemitism will serve as an example to others across the country,” Auchincloss wrote. “Concerningly, most Massachusetts universities included in the report received either a ‘C’ or an ‘F.’
According to the ADL, colleges and universities in America saw a 321 percent increase in antisemitic incidents on college campuses in 2023 compared with the year before.
Reports of antisemitic attacks have increased across the country since Oct. 7 of last year, when Hamas terrorists murdered more than 1,200 Israeli civilians. Since Oct. 7, Israel has been engaged in a continuous military campaign that has reportedly killed more than 30,000 people in Gaza.
“Antisemitism has long been overlooked on campuses, including well before October 7, 2023,” Auchincloss wrote. “At a time when antisemitic incidents on campuses are at historic levels, administrators must adopt new policies to address this scourge, enforce existing codes of conduct, and re-center faculty and staff on the mission to educate critical thinkers able to engage in civil discourse.”