Brandeis has extended its application deadline for transfers and promised to make room for students seeking an environment “free of harassment and Jew-hatred.”
Brandeis was founded in 1948 to serve Jewish students barred by quotas from Ivy League universities. About one-third of students are Jewish at the secular university.
Sixty-four percent of Jewish parents say their child dropped at least one college from their application list due to anti-semitism, according to a Hillel International poll. Ninety-six percent are worried about antisemitism on campus and 80 percent focused on campus safety in their college search process.
On some campuses, anti-Israel protesters have told Jewish students to "go back to Poland," "go back to Germany," or -- at the University of Illinois, Chicago -- "go back to Brooklyn."
Jewish students -- and others -- are looking southward for friendlier colleges, writes Eric Spitznagel on the Free Press.
Since 2019, applications to colleges in the South have surged by 42 percent -- 62 percent for state schools, according to Common App data. Many more students are coming from northern states.
Brandeis and Elon University in North Carolina were the only two universities in the country to get an A grade from the Anti-Defamation League" for "protecting Jewish students against hate, Spitznagel writes. "More than half of Elon University’s entire enrollment for 2023 hailed from northeastern states, with Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York leading the charge."
Scott Katz, who grew up in a Philadelphia suburb, chose Elon in 2022. “I definitely feel very safe on campus regarding my religion,” he says.
Also popular for northerners are Clemson, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, North Carolina State, University of Miami and flagship state universities in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.
Michael Powell writes about Columbia's "liberated zone" in The Atlantic. A Jewish student pushed out as an "intruder" -- her friend had a Star of David necklace -- said she wasn't worried about her physical safety. “They’re Columbia students, too nerdy and too worried about their futures to hurt us,” she told Powell. But she was "taken aback by the sight of fellow students chanting like automatons" as they locked arms and advanced on the three Jewish classmates.