Antisemitism is an existential threat to Jewish people. Decades of scholarship as well as a tragic historical record have demonstrated that the root of antisemitic ideas and actions rests upon a fundamental lack of appreciation, if not outright hatred, for Jews (Baum, 2012; Lipstadt, 2019). As Baum (2012) accurately observed: “Historically, Jews get killed when popular antisemitism reaches high levels” (p. 16). The consequences of individual and societal disregard for Jewish appreciation are severe.

Despite these realities, higher education scholars and leaders have paid limited attention to this topic. The lack of awareness, preparation, and concern toward Jews in college was on full display in the aftermath of the October 7th attacks and the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. Notably, the 2023-24 academic year has seen a flagrant increase in antisemitic behavior (ADL, 2023), multiple Congressional hearings on antisemitism and subsequent investigations into campus practices at highly selective institutions (Borter, 2023), and many incidents of Jews expressing profound concern for their psychological and physical safety (Klein, 2023) amidst nationwide protests (Serino, 2024). What recent events have revealed is that campuses – and the higher education community overall – are struggling to fully support Jewish students and cultivate forms of appreciation that are an urgent national priority (The White House, 2023).

The purpose of this study is to go deeper into understanding the campus climates and conditions that promote college students’ appreciative attitudes toward Jews. By appreciative attitudes, we specifically draw on the insights of Eck (2018), who distinguishes between tolerance as a mere awareness of religious differences and appreciation as a deeper and more humanistic valuing of those holding other worldview identities. Moreover, this study seeks to arrive at meta-inferences (i.e., inferences that intentionally draw on multiple insights across data streams; see Creamer, 2018, p. 15; Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009) that can produce novel insights and drive innovative practices.

This study is distinctive from our own and others’ previous topic efforts (e.g., Sasso & Davis, 2022) in two substantial ways. First, the study uses a sample of students taken during four years of college and, in its quantitative dimension, surveyed at three time points: beginning of the first year, end of the first year, and end of the fourth year. Such an approach has been consistently championed (Pascarella & Wolniak, 2004) as being optimally designed to draw inferences that pertain to students’ developmental trajectories as they progress through undergraduate experiences.

Second, this study relies on an integrative mixed methods design (Creamer, 2018) to guide its data collection, analyses, presentation, and interpretation. In this regard, the study introduces contexts, voices, and stories that reflect the phenomenon of Jewish appreciation through including the perspectives of college students in their own words. By incorporating contemporary mixed methods insights (Onwuegbuzie & Hitchcock, 2022) and centering the inquiry on drawing meta-inferences, this study generatively pushes methodological boundaries in the field of higher education.

To fulfill this study’s purpose, we ask the following question: How can the phenomenon of developing Jewish appreciation through engaging collegiate interfaith learning environments be understood comprehensively? Given the scope of this effort, this inquiry is supported by the intentional integration of questions that drive quantitative and qualitative methologicial and analytic choices. Quantitatively we asked: What is the relationship between collegiate environments/experiences and the development of undergraduate students’ appreciative attitudes toward Jews over four college years? Qualitatively, we located the quantitative results within the context of campuses and students and considered: How do students experience Jewish appreciation on their campus?

In the subsequent sections, we introduce our theoretical framework and review existing literature concerning our inquiry. We then detail our methods, inclusive of study design, data collections, and analytical strategies. After providing a thematic presentation of our results, we organize our discussion and implications through generated meta-inferences that integrate the quantitative and qualitative data to formulate a deeper understanding of Jewish appreciation.

Theoretical Framework

We frame this study using the Interfaith Learning and Development framework (Mayhew & Rockenbach, 2018, 2021) (Fig. 1). The framework presents a multifaceted model designed to better understand and guide inquiry into various aspects of college students’ growth and is well positioned to support longitudinal mixed-methods inquiry given several distinctive features. Viewed through a quantitative lens, the framework introduces clear guidance for variable measurement and operationalization. This includes capturing students’ pre-college characteristics (e.g., interfaith exposure, identities), entering and continuing levels of appreciative attitudes toward Jews, and appreciative attitudes toward the end of college. It also, importantly, positions the interfaith learning environment as a deconstructed set of measurable characteristics (see Berger & Milem, 2000), inclusive of formal and informal academic and social behaviors, disciplinary context, relational context, institutional/organizational context, and national context. Drawing on ecological models (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Renn & Arnold, 2003), each level and/or system within the interfaith learning environment specifies features that can be quantified with an emphasis on climate (Hurtado, 1994; Hurtado et al., 1998) and its constituent historical, structural, psychological, and behavioral dimensions. In short, the framework has aptly guided previous quantitative studies (e.g., Selznick et al., 2021, p. 303) and is a useful guide to quantitative measurement and modeling.

Fig. 1
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Interfaith learning and development framework (Mayhew & Rockenbach, 2021)

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Distinctively, this work also incorporates qualitative focus groups to offer voice, texture, and contextualized reflections from students about their experiences. Qualitatively, this framework provided guidance for creating a focus group protocol that centered experiences within specific, campus-based learning environments. The framework and subsequent inquiry also supported and aimed to inspire moments of critical reflection on how pre-college experiences and other life events may have informed students’ interfaith learning and development, in this case focused specifically on appreciative attitudes toward Jews. These qualitative expressions enhance the quantitative findings with the on-the-ground conditions that promote or hinder such change.

As a foundation for our longitudinal mixed-methods study, this framework provides a robust platform for holistically understanding correlates of development (quantitative), narrative expressions of development (qualitative), and a phenomenology of development (integrative). Operating on this platform allows us to answer our research questions and provide the meta-inferences that constitute the unique contributions of this study. As such, this approach comprehensively addresses critiques of this model (Nielsen et al., 2022) through de-centering Christianity and post-positivism and instead foregrounding a minoritized religious identity and multiple sources of evidence.

Literature Review

To support our inquiry into students’ development of appreciative attitudes toward Jews during college, we begin by providing a general overview of the experiences of religiously minoritized students in higher education before moving to explore the specific experiences of Jews on campus. After discussing Jewish students experiences through empirical and popular media, we review previous findings about interfaith appreciation in general and appreciation of Jews in particular.

Religiously Minoritized Students in Higher Education

Since its inception, higher education has favored white Christianity as a hegemonic norm and excluded other religious, secular, and spiritual (RSS) groups, including at some point Catholics, Native Americans, and Jews (Blumenfeld, 2006; Thelin, 2019). Although outright discriminatory policies are no longer formally employed in public higher education, the legacy of this historical exclusion remains (Schlosser, 2003; Small, 2020). As Broadhurst (2024) explained, “Non-Christian students have faced a history of marginalization on campuses, such as limiting quotas for Jewish students in the early twentieth century to outright hostility to Muslim students in the twenty-first century” (p. 11). Christianity continues to be the dominant paradigm in every aspect of campus life, from campus structures and chapels to academic calendars, holidays, and ceremonies (Broadhurst, 2024; Edwards, 2020; Seifert, 2007). Decades of research has shown that non-Christian students navigate campus environments fraught with insensitivity (Cole et al., 2020) and coercion (Shaheen et al., 2022). The realities of Christian hegemony in the campus ecology and the broader society have been reflected in the lived experiences of religiously minoritized students.

Importantly, the challenges to minoritized religions in contemporary higher education are manifested through structures and policies (Maples et al., 2021). The INSPIRES index (2024) is an online tool that gauges how welcoming campuses are to different religious groups across campus climate domains (e.g., institutional policies, extracurricular involvement, academic engagement). Their most recent findings based on over 300 U.S.-based campuses demonstrate startling shortcomings in campus preparedness to accommodate an increasingly diverse student population. For example, only a third of campuses offer kosher and halal options in their dining halls. Even fewer (20%) of campuses offer religious accommodations around fasting times (e.g., Yom Kippur). When it comes to academic accommodations of religious holidays, most campuses (72%) require students to approach faculty directly for an academic accommodation, with only a third requiring that faculty accommodate the students’ needs around religious holidays. Moreover, eight out of ten institutions do not have specific training to address issues of religious bias at the institutional level (INSPIRES, 2024). Campuses are ill-prepared to address the needs of students from minoritized religious backgrounds. This assertion rings especially true for Jewish students, whose experiences we present next.

Jews on Campus: Appreciation and Concern

In their 2008 study, Kadushin and Tighe posed a question with no easy answer: “How hard is it to be a Jew on campus?” (p. 1). Given the reality that Jews comprise roughly 2.4% of the U.S. population (Pew Research, 2021) and 0.2% of the global population (Jewish Agency, 2021), students who identify as Jews are numerically minoritized within collegiate communities (Sax, 2002). The historical foundations and expressions of minoritization run even deeper, including a legacy of admissions quotas (Thelin, 2019) and social exclusion (Oppenheimer, 2022). Notably, Kadushin and Tighe (2008) also directly engage several important considerations of exactly who is being referred to as “Jewish.” Fairchild (2010) incorporates Schlosser’s (2006, p. 424) summative consideration that: “All at once, Judaism is a culture, a religion, an ethnicity, and a set of traditions that is embedded in Jewish people’s expectations, belief systems and family dynamics” (p. 6). Looking at indicators of both positive identification and religiosity, Kadushin and Tighe (2008) found that those who hewed more toward cultural identification factors had an easier time being Jewish on campus compared to those who expressed more overt engagement with Jewish ritual life and practice.

With respect to academic scholarship, recent research has employed multiple larger-scale college-specific survey instruments (e.g., NSSE; Fosnacht & Broderick, 2020), generated original quantitative data on Jewish concerns (e.g., Wright et al., 2021), pursued qualitative approaches (e.g., case-study; Edwards, 2021), and offered conceptual/theoretical positions (e.g., Sasso et al., 2022) to explore campus climates for RSS expression and the experiences of Jewish students within these complex learning ecologies. Most recently, Selznick and Greene (2024) outlined the landscape of campus climates for Jews in terms of opportunities and challenges. The opportunities are exemplified by the formal presence of Jewish life on campus through organizations like Chabad on Campus and Hillel International in addition to specific programs and courses on Jewish studies that center Jewish experiences as a meaningful area of inquiry. Many challenges tend to persist through expressions of antisemitism (AJC, 2022) and individual- and systemic-level microaggression and dismissal of Jewish life and identity (Matherly, 2023).

Beyond peer-reviewed scholarship, organizational reports and popular press coverage provide substantial insight into Jewish student experiences. Prior to Fall 2023, substantial attention was being paid to revealing and addressing antisemitism. This included data collection and reporting by Jewish organizations such as the American Jewish Committee (e.g., AJC, 2022) and Anti-Defamation league (2021, 2022), federal policy attention (The White House, 2023), resources published through the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University (e.g., Saxe et al., 2016; Wright et al., 2021), and campus-level reporting (e.g., Redden, 2022). These efforts, as well as near-daily accounts of negative experiences on the platform @jewishoncampus, demonstrated that persistent issues regarding antisemitism, lack of appreciation, and outright fear existed among Jewish students heading into the 2023 academic year. Highlighting these concerns, the AJC reported in 2022 that “in the last five years, 42% of American Jewish college students or parents of college students reported that they have known someone who experienced antisemitism in a college setting” (para. 1) and reminded that “educational institutions have the responsibility to protect students, staff, and faculty from antisemitism, harassment, and hostile campus environments that are the results of real or perceived Jewish and/or pro-Israel identities” (para. 2).

As the ongoing aftermath of October 7th, 2023 demonstrates, many campuses were unprepared to handle these complicated realities despite many warning signs. This quickly created what Wright et al. (2023) found, in their recent survey of over 2,000 Jewish students across 51 campuses, to be “hot spots of antisemitism” (p. 1). While the events of the fall 2023 semester were more extreme in magnitude, to many they publicly validated the concerns of Jews and their allies concerning the very real threat of antisemitism on campuses and the lack of attention paid generally to religion as a cornerstone of inclusion and belonging (Mayhew et al., 2023). As Sasso and Davis (2022) observed: “Campuses and universities must continue to increase recognition of Jewish undergraduate college students as a historically marginalized identity” (p. 72). Though we are careful to remind throughout this manuscript that our data was not collected during fall 2023, we underscore that our findings reflect Jewish experiences and appreciative attitudes toward Jews during a period in which such topics were very top-of-mind for scholars, religious life personnel, and popular media yet harmfully overlooked on some campuses. This lack of attention led to disastrous consequences.

Predictors of Jewish Appreciation

Researchers have emphasized the importance of opportunities for students to engage with their peers across lines of difference, as these experiences cultivate a generative dissonance that can lead to an increased appreciation of commonalities and differences across religious groups (Edwards, 2021). Throughout various lines and modalities of inquiry, peer-reviewed studies encourage a centering, or perhaps from a historical perspective a recentering (Rine & Reed, 2019), of religion and spirituality as core elements of student development and salient identities of their own accord.

Research about appreciative attitudes toward different groups such as Muslims (Shaheen et al., 2023), Atheists (Bowman et al., 2017), and Jews (Selznick et al., 2021) suggests that although appreciation may have common elements, there are nuances that distinguish specific intergroup attitudes. Our previous work on the topic of appreciative attitudes toward Jews has utilized cross-sectional (Mayhew et al., 2018) and two-timepoint longitudinal (Selznick et al.,  2021; limited to the first year of college) quantitative methods to engage questions concerning the factors that influence the development of Jewish appreciation among college students. Our most recent study of appreciative attitudes during the first year in college highlighted the role of an appreciative campus culture in shaping how non-Jewish students perceive their Jewish peers. This study also showed that students who engage in two or more organized interfaith activities and programs are more likely to increase their appreciation of Jews (Selznick et al., 2021).

The present study builds on the previous research in several ways. First, the latent growth modeling approach based on three time points provides insights into the longitudinal trajectory of Jewish appreciation and whether (and to what extent) growth continues after the first year in college. In addition, the present study incorporates qualitative data through an innovative integrative approach that serves to nuance the findings and contextualize quantitative data within the lived experiences of students. In other words, this study speaks not only to whether appreciation increased and its predictors but also to the mechanisms by which appreciation is fostered within the campus environment.

Methods

We now present the data collection and analytical strategies employed to answer our research questions concerning students’ development of and experiences connected to the phenomenon of Jewish appreciation, with an initial coverage of methodological literature. We also offer our positionality and provide initial limitations.

Full Integration Mixed-methods

Given the nature of our inquiry, we sought to incorporate contemporary perspectives for conducting mixed methods research. This research approach has become an increasingly popular practice to answer questions in the social sciences. As such, substantial scholarly attention has been paid to one of the most challenging aspects of this work: integration (Fetters et al., 2013; Lynam et al., 2020). As leading scholars Onwuegbuzie and Hitchcock (2022) observed in the conclusion to their edited volume, full integration engages a “1 + 1 = 1” (p. 570) paradigm in which all aspects of a study, its participants, and its data usage are integrated into a singular whole. This paradigm exists as a preferable option to the more commonplace “1 + 1 = 3” paradigm (low integration) in which various data strands and their integration are seen as more discretely additive. Creamer (2018) further offers that a fully integrated mixed methods study – one operating on a logic of inquiry in which integration exists as a continual and continuous process – can yield meta-inferences which generate novel insights from each strand and their sustained integration. Provided the longitudinal and nested nature of our quantitative data, we were further encouraged in our pursuits through the work of Bash et al. (2021) who noted: “MMR + HLM [Hierarchical Linear Modeling] studies are uniquely situated to contribute high-quality, valid findings that can accurately inform policy and practice” (p. 203). Expanding on such insights, we now detail our methods.

Integrated Mixed-methods Study Design and Data Sources

The “roadmap” to our fully integrated mixed-methods design (Creamer, 2018) is presented in Fig. 2. As depicted, bold lines indicate sequential pathways that reflect the longitudinal nature of this data collection over four college years. Dotted lines represent sustained integration, culminating in a more complete approach to drawing meta-inferences (Creamer, 2018). Through this design, we approached the robust integration perspective offered by Onwuegbuzie and Hitchcock (2022); the collection of quantitative data at multiple time points plus qualitative data to equal an integrated understanding of the complex phenomenon that is the development of appreciative attitudes toward Jews. Importantly, with respect to study efficacy, this design and the choices made within it are closely aligned with our theoretical presentation (Onwuegbuzie & Corrigan, 2014). In an effort to present the methods for this study in the most concise and integrated fashion, we use this roadmap to guide a more narrative presentation of our mixed methods approach rather than bracket out data, measures, and analyses separately.

Fig. 2
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Integrated mixed methods study design

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Phase I: First-year Quantitative Collection and Measures

The current study commenced in 2015 and was an extension by way of concept, theory, and measurement of previous empirical and conceptual work. Time 1 survey data were collected from first-semester undergraduate students at a geographically and mission-diverse set of 122 study institutions in Fall 2015. Institutional recruitment for the study was stratified by institution type, geographic region, selectivity, and affiliation. This recruitment approach resulted in an institutional sample frame that was representative of the landscape of United States higher education, thereby maxinimizing generalizability of findings at the national level. The total number of usable responses for Time 1 was 20,436. Time 2 survey data were collected from those with usable responses at Time 1 during Spring 2016. Time 2 produced a response rate of 43% and reflected all 122 colleges and universities. A publicly available report generated by the IDEALS project in 2017 provides comprehensive descriptive information of this first-year sample (Rockenbach et al., 2017).

During each wave of data collection, responses to a four-item construct designed to measure appreciative attitudes toward Jews were elicited. This construct was developed and refined through field use, item testing, and expert review (Rockenbach et al., 2017). Students were asked: (1) In general, people in this group make positive contributions to society; (2) In general, individuals in this group are ethical people; (3) I have things in common with people in this group; and (4) In general, I have a positive attitude toward people in this group. Students expressed their level of agreement on a five-point Likert scale (1 = Disagree strongly; 2 = Disagree somewhat; 3 = Neither agree nor disagree; 4 = Agree somewhat; 5 = Agree strongly). This construct, which serves as the criterion measure throughout our analyses, exhibited strong reliability at all time points (Time 1: α = 0.802; Time 2: α = 0.840; Time 3: α = 0.844). Subsequent work on this construct (Selznick et al., 2024) using item response theory (IRT) revealed that construct items demonstrated a full range of responses across categories (i.e., inclusive of the low-end), robust discrimination (a) parameters, and an absence of differential item functioning (DIF) when comparing Christians to religiously minoritized respondents.

Additionally, students were asked via the survey to provide substantial insight into their perceptions of campus climate (e.g., space for support, negative interreligious exchange, RSS identity, race/ethnicity, political affiliation). All latent constructs utilized previous measures found to be reliable and valid in earlier studies (e.g., Rockenbach et al., 2015; Selznick et al., 2021). For ease of interpretation, RSS majoritized (Christian-identifying), RSS minority (non-Christian identifying religion), non-religious (collapsed category of non-religious options), and another religion (stand-alone category) were modeled. Due to space limitations, we refer readers to the IDEALS report (2017) and previous studies for additional information on study variables and their operationalization.

Notably, variables with multiple categories (e.g., race/ethnicity) were effect coded, which allowed for estimates to be generated for each group against the overall mean score. As such, effect coded variables will generate positive (greater-than-mean), and negative (lower-than-mean) parameter estimates in our models. Though this may create parameter estimates that require additional interpretative attention, effect coding provides a quantitative mechanism for de-centering normative “reference groups” (e.g., White, Christian, etc.; Mayhew & Simonoff, 2015) by instead providing a parameter estimate for each categorical group in the dataset (Feldman, 2023). Collectively, these sets of measures and their subsequent responses quantitatively operationalize essential aspects of the conceptual model, including pre-college characteristics, academic choices, psychological perceptions of climate, and behavioral engagement.

First Integration

At this juncture quantitative results were initially analyzed, and a usable dataset was prepared by the research team. Based on these quantitative analyses, conversations with institutional champions of the overall research project, and efforts to ensure geographical and mission diversity, a total of 18 institutions were selected for qualitative case studies.

In more detail, this selection was based on two parameters: overall change level (high, moderate, low) on key model indicators (e.g., appreciative attitudes, pluralism) and overall level (high, moderate, low) of formal interfaith efforts (e.g., programming, space, etc.). Such a strategy generated a 3 × 3 institutional typology with at least one institution selected from each type (e.g., high change/high efforts; low change/low efforts, etc.). An additional touchpoint of integration, as would be found in a traditional explanatory mixed-method design, was the use of quantitative findings to inform the focus group protocol. Here, the qualitative case studies were selected based on quantitative findings, and the qualitative data collection was explicitly designed to probe quantitative indicators of student development on these campuses.

Phase II: Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis

Qualitative data were collected from 18 institutions that ranged in size from under 3,000 students to over 12,000 students and included public (n = 5), private nonsectarian (n = 5), Catholic (n = 4), mainline Protestant (n = 3), and evangelical Protestant (n = 1) institutions. Within institutions, data included focus groups covering a total of 268 students. Participants were recruited directly through their prior survey participation as well as through faculty and staff on each campus. A breakdown of the characteristics of case study institutions is included in Table 1. A full summary of student participant demographics is provided in Table 2. Each campus held at least one focus group and the number of groups ranged from 1 to 3. The number of total focus group participants at each site ranged from 6 to 24, with an average of 15 students-per-campus; the groups themselves ranged from 3 to 8 participants.

Table 1 Characteristics of case study institutions
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Table 2 Summary of focus group participant demographics
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The focus groups were conducted by two trained members of the research team by using a protocol generated in close consultation with the Time 1 and Time 2 quantitative findings and the overall objectives of the research project. Questions asked in the focus group included general inquiries (e.g., How would you describe the climate for religion, spirituality, and worldview on your campus?) as well as campus-specific probes that asked student to provide their perspectives on the quantitative data collected from that campus (e.g., How might you explain or make sense of this finding given your experiences on campus?). Students were also asked to share their experiences engaging in interfaith activities.

Using the qualitative dataset, a team of two researchers worked independently to code students’ focus group responses through a direct coding approach based on our theoretical framework. As outlined by Hsieh and Shannon (2005) and employed in previous mixed-methods studies examining campus climate (e.g., Swanson, 2022), this ‘strong-theory’ approach begins by “identifying key concepts or variables as initial coding categories” (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005, p. 1281). For the purposes of answering our research questions, an additional query was made using a keyword search to capture perspectives related to attitudes toward Jews (e.g., Jewish, Jew). To guide interpretation, qualitative excerpts were labeled based on the RSS identity of the speaker to distinguish the perspectives of Jewish and non-Jewish students. These excerpts became the subset of the data used for this analysis (Ruggiano & Perry, 2019).

Second Integration

One aspect of this review was to consider, in concert with the previous two waves of quantitative collections, the optimal Time 3 survey form. Upon review, minor revisions were made to the survey instrument; however, such revisions had no direct bearing on the current research questions.

Phase III: Fourth-year Quantitative Data Collection and Analysis

At Time 3, survey data were collected with a response rate of 36.0% and reflected views from students at 118 schools. For the purposes of this study, individuals who responded at two or more time points were included in the final quantitative sample, which reflected 9,470 students at 122 institutions. Provided the scope and scale of this collection effort, including the stratified institutional recruitment for the intial Time 1 survey, the quantitative data provide national representation of college contexts in the United States during the 2015–2019 data collection period. Table 3 provides full quantitative sample descriptive statistics; additional information on all constructs, including item text and psychometric properties, can be found in our previous studies.

Table 3 Survey sample descriptives (N = 9,470)
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Quantitative data were analyzed using latent growth modeling (LGM) constructed within a structural equation modeling (SEM) framework, an optimal approach for this three time point survey data structure given its unique ability to consider students’ growth trajectories and rates of change over time (Seclosky & Denison, 2018). Such a procedure allowed for the estimation of overall growth trajectories as well as the generation of robust parameter estimates of both intercept and slope for each model covariate (Grimm et al., 2017). Appreciative attitudes toward Jews was used as the criterion measure in all analyses. We further note here that considering the nested nature of our dataset (i.e., students within institutions), the perspectives of Bash et al. (2021) for studies incorporating HLM with mixed methods research, and the institutional context as positioned in our conceptual model, we also collected institutional information regarding opportunities and campus-practices through an institutional-level survey.

As a plain terms guide to interpreting quantitative results, the intercept parameter reflects students’ appreciative attitudes toward Jews as they began college. The slope parameter, meanwhile, reflects both the direction and magnitude of growth during college. Such a strategy has been noted for its ability to model and draw valid inferences from longitudinal data collection efforts geared toward estimating baseline levels (intercept) and growth trajectories (slope) on a latent trait (appreciative attitudes toward Jews) among a developmental population (college students; Seclosky & Denison, 2018).

Final Integration and Generation of Meta-inferences

Given our broader goal of integrating all sources of data to support meta-inferences of a single phenomenon (Bazeley, 2018; Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009), the full presentation of data were analyzed collectively to illuminate synergies within the data and derive strategies for integration presentation (McCrudden et al., 2021). What emerged was a clear integrated set of perspectives based on the four aspects of climate – historical/institutional, structural, psychological, and behavioral – originally proposed by Hurtado et al. (1998) and essential to our theoretical framework. Building on a climate-based logic of inquiry (Creamer, 2018), the findings of this study are presented along these four dimensions.

As a final step, meta-inferences were generated by leveraging this organization to address our overarching research question concerning the phenomenon of developing Jewish appreciation during college. As an authorship team, we reviewed all sources of data to carefully consider what was learned throughout the entirety of this study, including our need to present findings to a variety of research and practitioner audiences. After substantial discussions, each of considered both quantitative and qualitative data, we uncovered five meta-inferences, which are each reflective of how the integrated data sources offer evidence of the underlying phenomena studied (Onwuegbuzie & Hitchcock, 2022).

Positionality

Throughout the process of analyzing and interpreting data, all team members engaged in interpretive transparency, “a type of reflexivity that enhances the credibility of a study by explicitly linking the source of data to a conclusion or inference” (Creamer, 2018, p. 112).

Expressing this reflexivity, the authors of this study embody the collective ethos of the overall research project, holding multiple religious identities alongside a collective commitment to fostering productive (Shapses-Wertheim, 2014) exchanges across lines of RSS identity (RSSI) difference. Additionally, the authors approached this study with a common understanding that identifying and disseminating on-campus practices and experiences that support students’ progression from tolerance toward expressed appreciation can not only provide incalculable individual and societal benefits, but normatively reflects what higher education institutions should be striving to achieve. Finally, the authors bring into the design, interpretation, and extensions of this work multiple methodological perspectives and a wide range of expertise in data collection and analysis.

Attuned to the process of crafting this manuscript, we also recognize that the lead author self-identifies as Jewish. He has been involved with formal Jewish organizations, including Chabad on Campus. This organization’s on-campus leaders have been instrumental in his own Jewish identity development and have generously provided guidance and support throughout his engagement with the broader project. The author himself has experienced expressions of flagrant and subtle antisemitism and shares with his co-authors a deep concern regarding the increasing normalization of antisemitic actions in the United States and around the world. Importantly, this authorship team is intentionally diverse with respect to RSSI, encompassing one author who self-identifies as Muslim, two who identify as Christian, and one who identifies as Spiritual. Certainly, these positionalities informed our orientation toward the work and guided our interpretations of theory and data to arrive at findings and meta-inferences.

Limitations

There are several important limitations to consider with respect to this study. To begin, we are readily aware of concerns raised by Kolek (2012) and others who urge consideration of student self-selection into research studies. We are fully understand that college students choose whether to participate in survey- and focus-group-based research for a variety of reasons that may include the attractiveness of the incentives, their own interest(s) in the research topic, their own identification patterns, and the alignment between academic schedules and data collection periods.

We also acknowledge critiques pertaining to several epistemological and/or axiological concerns with respect to our modes of inquiry and their presentation. Throughout the entirety of the study period, inclusive of writing and revising this manuscript, the research team has remained mindful of how our own perspectives, RSSIs, and intellectual trajectories have informed decisions. This included considerations for modeling student development through use of longitudinal data (e.g., Pascarella & Wolniak, 2004); the extent to which a study drawing on both post-positivism and constructivism can produce credible findings (Hall, 2013); and epistemic trajectories specifically concerning religion and spirituality. We hope that our approach still provides a comprehensive, albeit imperfect, expression of full integration (Creamer, 2018).

Findings

First, we examined the extent to which the phenomenon we describe as students’ development of appreciative attitudes toward Jews occurred over four college years. Across our full quantitative sample of students, we see a positive and statistically significant slope (B = 0.162, p < 0.0001), which provides initial affirmation that, on average, growth on our outcome measure occurred during college. Figure 3 visualizes this growth.

Fig. 3
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Growth trajectory of appreciative attitudes toward Jews over four college years

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Our subsequent integrative analysis probed the “how” and “why” of this phenomenon. Provided the structure of our quantitative data and our qualitative coding approach, we present our integrated findings along four general dimensions of climate. These are: historical/institutional, structural, psychological, behavioral. This organization emerged from the inductive and deductive nature of mixed methods presentation and acknowledges that climatic dimensions were at once found to be significant within our HLM analysis and voiced throughout the qualitative focus groups. Table 4 provides a joint display of findings (McCrudden et al., 2021). We note that all quantitative results in Table 4 represent parameter estimates accounting for all quantitative covariates presented in Table 3; for ease of presentation, we have only presented variables holding statistically significant slope parameters.Footnote 1

Table 4 Joint display reflecting statistically significant variables, select qualitative enhancements, and meta-inferences
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Historical/Institutional Dimensions

This domain of climate reflects historical (e.g., public vs. private) and institutional-level conditions that shape climate. The two are certainly intertwined, reflecting realities of place, population, and perspectives (Hurtado et al., 1998). Within these dimensions, a positive slope was associated with private (vs. public) institutions (B = 0.048, p < 0.05). Lower levels of change were associated with overall institutional pluralism (B = -0.025, p < 0.01), total religious and spiritual programs provided on campus (B = -0.016, p < 0.05), and total religious and spiritual spaces provided on campus (B = -0.015, p < 0.01). These findings indicate that private institutions have at least a quantitative advantage when compared to the public institution peers with respect to developing students’ appreciative attitudes toward Jews, as well as that space, programs, and pluralistic cultures might be insufficient at a campus level to promote development.

Perhaps the most salient finding was that campus-wide institutional appreciative attitudes toward all RSSIs were associated with lower levels of appreciative attitudes toward Jews at the beginning of college (B = -0.110, p < 0.001) but a positive trajectory (B = 0.092, p < 0.001). It is this finding – that an overall level of appreciative attitudes toward RSSI differences might accelerate such development with respect to Jews specifically – that we see most prominently reflected throughout the qualitative focus groups. As one student observed:

I feel like one of the factors on this campus that keeps it so safe is people are very quick to shut down people who are against any sort of religion. Even if they're not that religious themselves; like if I were to hear anything anti-Semitic, I would for sure shut it down because that's not okay. I feel like everyone in the room would do something similar. Because that's just the climate of this campus is we're very protective of each other.

The significant quantitative pattern – negative at the intercept and positive over time – coupled with qualitative insights support the finding that students who experience the campus as open to all religions and safe for all forms of religion expressions are more likely to develop appreciative attitudes towards Jews.

Another important aspect of institutional-level realities reflected varying degrees of support for Jewish students and faculty with respect to academic policy, specifically how student accommodations were (or were not) made for observing the many Jewish holidays that occur throughout the academic year and especially during the early weeks of the Fall semester (e.g., Rosh Hashanah). As one student noted “Not having school off for Yom Kippur was a really weird thing for me.” Findings also reflect that campus climates and cultures concerning Jewish appreciation exist within and must be responsive to national contexts and events. For example, one student recalled how their campus meaningfully and supportively responded to the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in October, 2018. As they explained: “I think it’s because of the diversity initiative organization and then because of the [interfaith] center on campus that…we can come together.” Through these reflections, students provide substance to the notably significant slope parameter reflected in the quantitative findings; appreciation must be an institutional value for it to grow among individual students.

Structural Dimension

This dimension reflects how the compositional diversity of the campus can shape individual students’ perceptions of the climate, as well as how such structural elements shape students’ developmental trajectory toward any one outcome, in this instance appreciative attitudes toward Jews. The quantitative results reflecting political identification – an individual-level feature of the student population – merit attention given their statistical significance in our fully controlled model. Students who identified as very conservative (n = 285) entered college with substantially lower-than-average appreciative attitudes (B = -0.239, p < 0.001) yet demonstrated a more positive growth trajectory (B = 0.078, p < 0.05) than those of other political identifications; a similar pattern (intercept = -0.151, p < . 001; slope = 0.039, p < 0.05) held for students who identified as conservative (n = 1512). The reverse trend was demonstrated on the other end of the political spectrum. Students who identified as very liberal (n = 1148) began college with much greater-than-average appreciative attitudes toward Jews (B = 0.237, p < 0.001) yet saw this growth decelerate during college (slope = -0.068, p < 0.01); a similar pattern (intercept = 0.164, p < 0.001; slope = -0.048, p < 0.001) was evidenced among students who identified as liberal (n = 2868).

An expanded aspect of this finding, heard repeatedly throughout the focus groups on this topic, reflected attitudes and subsequent actions concerning Israel and the concept of Zionism. As one student noted about their newly reformed interfaith collective: “We’re not a political organization, but we’re pro [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions], so technically there's things that are still making us political.” Another student reflected on a classroom experience:

I had this one class [where] everybody got into a really heated debate on the Israel Palestine issue, and so that was something that was really polarizing…It seemed like the professor was really staunch on his view of Israel existing as a nation state but a bunch of other people who accept both sides are completely valid. That was definitely one time where it felt like, okay I really don't know which side to pick.

While the five categories provided (very conservative, conservative, moderate, liberal, very liberal) reflect high levels of within-category heterogeneity on many viewpoints, including Jewish appreciation and Israel, these qualitative dimensions reveal the prevalent connection between political attitudes and Jewish appreciation on campus. They also importantly surface considerations toward Israel and how associated positions (e.g., BDS; see Sheskin & Felson, 2016) were and still are very much a feature of contemporary campus climates.

Psychological Dimension

The psychological dimension reflects student’s perceptions and affective experiences of their campus at both the individual and group level. This dimension held two statistically significant slope results. First, the perception that campuses provided safe spaces (e.g., campus and classes are safe places to express one’s worldview; faculty are perceived as accommodating religious observances) for support and expression was positively associated with more growth (B = 0.048, p < 0.001) in appreciative attitudes. The qualitative data offer robust evidence concerning the value that Jewish religious organizations – namely Hillel and Chabad – provide to Jewish and non-Jewish students through their presence in the collegiate ecology. As one student remarked:

One of my good friends has found her home on campus….off campus. It is like a family. It's [a] husband and wife and their two kids and you can go over there and cook meals, come for Chabad dinners. I think that both Hillel [and] Chabad just kind of fill in gaps for each other. They offer different experiences…Obviously, all the students that I know that whether or not they've attended [Chabad], whether or not they're Jewish have had positive experiences.

Importantly, the presence of religious personnel such as the Chabad rabbi who “brings his family on campus like three or four times a week, and just walk[s] around and talk[s] to everyone and show[s] people maybe if there’s some sort of holiday going on, some culturally significant activity or food or discussion” also creates space for those positive exchanges between Jews and non-Jews that can spur appreciation. As another student observed: “I’m somebody who’s not religious but I think it’s interesting to look at…a lot of social spaces related to Judaism like Hillel and things like that where it’s a place of connection and a place of pride for a lot of people,” which she viewed as important within contexts and experiences of antisemitism.

Second, negative RSS engagement – having hurtful, tense, unproductive, and/or prejudiced experiences with others holding different worldviews than one’s own – was associated with lower development of appreciative attitudes toward Jews (B = -0.020, p < 0.05). Aligned with the literature guiding this inquiry, we found expressions of antisemitism in the qualitative data that provide additional substance to this quantitative result. Our evidence points to the antisemitic realities that low levels of Jewish appreciation can produce. In such an environment where relationships are tenuous and hostile, the opportunities to improve appreciation may be limited at best.

In the words of one focus group participant: “As a Jewish student on campus I was surprised by the amount of antisemitic comments I came across. Things were said to me, things were said not knowing that I was Jewish, although my friends were.” Another student we spoke to experienced antisemitism in a much more threatening way:

I’ve been followed, I’ve been shouted at…For being Jewish, and I’m not the only one….I’ve had people shout things at me, I’ve had people change their behavior to do specific things to offend me. I’ve had people do things that they would never do otherwise…they will make jokes and do really antisemitic things just because they know I’m there…I’ve stopped reporting it, because nothing ever came of it.

Students also shared more specific micro-aggressions, such as those who were told they didn’t “look Jewish”, social media exchanges concerning Israel that “turned into a pretty clearly antisemitic comment later in the comments,” and those who recognize that while antisemitism might not be manifest on campus, it occurs within the wider off-campus community, thereby affecting the overall collegiate interfaith learning environment.

Behavioral Dimension

Finally, this dimension reflects actual patterns of behavior between and among students. Within the behavioral dimension, though certainly informing student experiences on campus rather than collegiate experiences in themselves (see Rockenbach et al., 2015), findings indicated that students who had greater exposure to precollege interfaith activities (e.g., attending a religious service outside one’s own tradition, sharing a meal with someone from another religious/non-religious perspective, etc.) began college with higher-than-average appreciative attitudes (B = 0.175, p < 0.001) though this trajectory was in some ways attenuated during college as evidenced by the slope parameter (B = -0.047, p < 0.001). Additionally, students who engaged in two or more formal academic activities (e.g., discussed shared values between religious and nonreligious traditions in one of your courses; brainstormed a solution to a societal issue by working with students from other religious or nonreligious perspectives) demonstrated more pronounced growth in appreciative attitudes during college (B = 0.044, p < 0.01).

Within the focus group conversations, we heard substantial mention of courses centered on religion and/or that open doors to reflecting on one’s own perspectives. Reflecting on religion courses, one student expressed their increased awareness of Jewishness as a complex “identity marker” and also the extent to which Jewishness reflected a choice or, instead, an externally ascribed identity. Here and in other exchanges, findings suggest that college classroom can be a space for fostering exchange, even on difficult topics across RSSI differences. Such spaces can also open students’ perspectives to the Jewish calendar, how academic policies may differentially affect students and faculty, and how much one “chooses” their own identities.

Additionally, engaging in two or more informal social activities (e.g., attended religious services for a religion that is not your own; had conversations with people of diverse religious or nonreligious perspectives about the values you have in common) was associated with more positive development of Jewish appreciation (B = 0.098, p < 0.05). Commenting on this, one student observed: “I feel like the student affairs, faculty and staff do a good job of trying to…give the opportunity to every student to learn about different faiths.” There was also sustained, primarily positive conversation in the focus groups concerning student-led faith-based organizations (e.g., Jewish-specific); partnerships (e.g., Jewish-Muslim exchange); and interfaith (e.g., welcoming of all traditions) organizations, conversations, and groups. As one student reflected, part of the nature and purposes of college is to “talk to people that are different from you…you want to learn things that are outside of your faith tradition.”

Summary

Drawing on our quantitative and qualitative data, this section introduces findings that address our research questions. With respect to the quantitative inquiry, we found that appreciative attitudes toward Jews develop during four college years and provide statistical results from our LGM analyses that support claims on core markers (i.e., positive slopes) of growth as well as indicators associated with less growth (i.e., negative slopes). Turning to the qualitative line, we understand students’ perspectives on how, in what ways, and across what contexts (e.g., academic, social) Jewish appreciation manifests on their campus, as well as how contemporary realities and concerns inform the college experience.

Our final section provides meta-inferences that more directly address our topline research question and emerged from our final integration (see Fig. 2 and Table 4). These five areas reflect the innovation of this study: leveraging novel integrative insights (Creamer, 2018) from the longitudinal, mixed nature of the data to better understand development of Jewish appreciation. While such findings certainly speak to existing literature emerging on broader forms of appreciation across lines of RSS difference (Fosnacht & Broderick, 2020; Shaheen et al., 2023) they also provide insights specific to appreciative attitudes toward Jews (Mayhew et al., 2018; Selznick et al., 2021), Jewish student life (Selznick & Greene, 2024), and Jewish student experiences (e.g., Wright et al., 2021). In this way, they can inform modes of practice and action specific to Jewish students during contemporary, challenging times.

Meta-inferences and Future Directions

In our final section, we frame our remarks through five meta-inferences (Creamer, 2018) that respond to the overarching research question: How can the phenomenon of developing Jewish appreciation through engaging collegiate interfaith learning environments be understood comprehensively? We remind readers that our integration approach was based upon a logic of inquiry that sought to explore a phenomenology of development; that is, those features of person, place, and experience that collectively shape students’ appreciative attitudes toward Jews over four college years.

Drawing closely on our findings, we identified five meta-inferences. These are: 1) Campus policies and actions inform Jewish appreciation; 2) Jewish appreciation is a complex, ecological phenomenon shaped by dynamic local, national, and global concerns; 3) Jewish appreciation is developed, both prior to and during college, in the contexts of Christian normativity and religious/secular/spiritual minoritization; 4) On-campus Jewish organizations (e.g., Chabad, Hillel) elevate Jewish appreciation at the student- and campus-level; and 5) Well-supported peer exchanges are instrumental to building and sustaining appreciative climates that embrace Jews. We briefly discuss each meta-inference and offer accompanying implications.

Campus Policies and Actions Inform Jewish Appreciation

As demonstrated across the findings, and with reference to our conceptual model, institutional practices are substantially important in creating contexts for Jewish appreciation to develop. The emergence of a positive climate hinges on many actions, great and small. We see across the data streams that decisions pertaining to aspects such as academic policy (e.g., religious accomodations), group recognition, and responses to anti-Jewish incidents (e.g., Tree of Life) hold ramifications not only for Jews, who may come to feel welcomed or not on their campus, but for all campus community members.

Moreover, findings supporting this meta-inference reaffirm the importance that space – physical, emotional, spiritual – plays in fully appreciating students across RSSIs. Practically, this insight could motivate stakeholders to see important value in fully supporting the existence, realization, and self-organization of such spaces. Prioritizing Jewish appreciation at the institutional level can indeed build on Eck’s (2018) argument as stakeholders ask: Are we proceeding toward a space of acceptance or is tolerance simply good enough? How do we show, not only tell, that we care? Conversely, given the findings, campuses must also consider how much negative RSS engagement they are willing to accept before taking action. The way such questions and issues are addressed and acted upon must ideally engage a dynamic and recursive process. Fostering Jewish appreciation should be a proactive, ongoing, and collaborative effort, not a one-off response during emergencies.

Jewish Appreciation is Complex and Global

Findings from this study enhance existing perspectives on this topic as well as offer profound nuance to two Jewish-specific topics: Jewish identity formation and perspectives on Israel. First, Jewishness and appreciation thereof must be considered in light of the history, culture, and religious practices of Jews (Schlosser, 2006), as well as with respect to intersectional perspectives on socialization (Edwards, 2021). College can be a profound period of development for one’s own RSS identity as well as the positioning of this identity within a pluralistic world. We suggest based on the findings, then, that Jews be given full consideration and resources as they seek to navigate their own identity development during college – an experience that is not always assured (Klein, 2023; Redden, 2022).

Relatedly, as revealed by the salient findings and reflecting well-documented realities (ADL, 2023), a unique tension arises in the space of Jewish appreciation given its identity valences with Israel and broader concepts of Zionism. As tensions in the region persist, there will need to be greater instead of less attention paid to instances where students’ free speech concerning the national policies of Israel crosses into hate speech against Jews (e.g., Wright et al., 2023).

Our findings on this meta-inference are generally encouraging, suggesting that students themselves hold an awareness of these issues and the importance of exchanges that seek to include, rather than shout over, the voices of others. Still, as harmful rhetoric in the United States and abroad escalates against “the other” and antisemitism becomes a more overt feature of political platforms, such issues must remain at the forefront for the benefit of sustaining productive interfaith ecologies.

Jewish Appreciation is Developed in the Context of Minoritization

On most college campuses in the United States, a scope represented by our institutional sample, Jewish students are minoritized. As detailed in the literature review, this is an aspect not only of numerical representation in the national population, but a byproduct of historical practices of exclusion most notably at highly selective institutions (Oppenheimer, 2022). As we heard in our focus groups, it is common for a student in their own words to be “one of very few Jews on this campus” and for this identity experience to exist within overlapping contexts (e.g., temporal, numerical, historical) of Christian normativity.

In concert with work in this topic, we continue to emphasize that faith, worldview, and spirituality be central rather than peripheral to institutional conversations concerning diversity, equity, justice, belonging, and perhaps most prominently inclusion. With specific reference to Jewish appreciation, we suggest that policies that support Jewish students will cultivate more fertile ground for appreciation for all RSSIs. As we heard consistently and encouragingly throughout the focus groups, non-Jews are often very aware of antisemitism and in many instances actively seeking to support Jewish peers. Of course, the students we spoke to comprise a self-selected group; we can hope, however, that practices that intentionally promote the inclusion of Jews signal to many more community members that while Jews are a minority, explicit and often hurtful minoritization has no place in a collegiate interfaith ecology.

Formal Jewish Organizations Facilitate Appreciation at the Individual and Campus Levels

Though our quantitative construct was able to account for numerous aspects of space and psychological safety, limited previous work was able to nuance this consideration beyond generalized inferences. Qualitative focus group data shed important light on this finding and specifically include the mention of two formal Jewish organizations that operate on campus – Hillel International and Chabad on Campus International. We note when introducing these claims that at no point in the focus group were students asked directly about these organizations by name; such qualitative findings emerged from the experiences and interactions of the students themselves. These features noted, our findings collectively support the meta-inference that formal organizations serve to elevate Jewish appreciation at both the student- and campus-level.

Certainly, these organizations provide a physical, cultural, and religious space for Jewish students to engage their identity in community with others. Additionally, as we see across our data streams, they also offer platforms for productive interfaith exchange between Jews and non-Jews; serve as locations for students to have meals and conversations across difference; and provide representation and knowledge resources to campus communities through their personnel and presence. Given these findings, we hope that campuses invested in Jewish appreciation and interfaith exchange welcome and institutionally support these vital campus organizations through ensuring formal recognition, involving their representatives in decision-making, and publicly acknowledging their many positive contributions to campus ecologies.

Well-supported Peer Exchanges are Instrumental

Well-supported peer exchanges are instrumental to building and sustaining appreciative climates that embrace Jews. This meta-inference, which is closely aligned with the broader knowledge base of college student development, is one that we hope readers of this study will seek to share widely, weave throughout their practice, and champion within their spheres of influence. As demonstrated by this study, developing Jewish appreciation is a phenomenon that, though it of course involves Jews, extends through academic life, social experiences, relational contexts, institutional practices, and inter/national contexts; it shapes, and is shaped by, the entirety of the interfaith learning environment. This context includes features that are distinctive to Jews (e.g., Israel, antisemitism), shared by Jews and other minoritized groups (e.g., historical exclusion), and generalized to students across colleges and Universities (e.g., space for expression).

Provided these contours, we highlight as an enduring meta-inference the importance of peer exchanges. It is through these exchanges that students across all RSSIs learn from and with one another and through these exchanges that Jewish students grapple with their own identities in their classes, their communities, their country, and their world. Such exchanges also can positively or negatively create contexts for safety in one’s expression of their Jewish identity, which has a direct relationship to their academic and social success in college (e.g., Selznick et al., 2021). It is difficult to learn and develop in environments where one is unwelcomed.

Future Directions

How can the findings from this study be acted upon in the present climate? We suggest several possibilities for research, theory, policy, and practice. Concerning research, we see many opportunities to expand on our study and the work of others (e.g., Wright et al., 2023) to understand Jewish students’ experiences. This can come to include qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methodological approaches to more thoroughly understanding how Jewish students experienced and made meaning of the immediate aftermath of October 7, 2023, as well as how they are developing Jewish identities during college. Additionally, we see a need to understand and further nuance findings from this study – especially those concerning political identification, climate perceptions, and behaviors – in a post-October 7th landscape.

Turning to theory, we see opportunities to extend the reach of our conceptual framework along two dimensions. First, we urge consideration for theoretical perspectives that more directly engage Jews and Judaism (e.g., HebCrit; Rubin, 2020) with respect to minoritization. Starting from a Jewish-specific lens may create distinctive openings to grasp Jewish appreciation more robustly on campus as experienced by Jews and campus communities overall (Selznick & Greene, 2024). Second, we offer this study as evidence that fully integrated mixed-methods strategies – those which identify and collect data on an underlying phenomenon – can generate synergistic meta-inferences. Future theoretical work might consider opportunities for extending more generalized mixed methods principles toward higher education and/or student developmental questions. This could include more sustained consideration for the merger of mixed methods knowledge, theory-in-practice models, and advanced analytical techniques (e.g., HLM) applied to college contexts and populations.

Concerning policy, we see encouraging developments at the federal level (The White House, 2023) and State level (e.g., Virginia) to combat antisemitism more aggressively. Feeding into our practice recommendations, we also hope this study might have an impact in terms of more ‘small p’ institutional policies. As was made painfully evident during the 2023–2024 academic year, many institutions have a long way to go in terms of creating and, even more importantly, consistently implementing policies connected to building Jewish appreciation. We hope that findings from our study can be part of wider-ranging efforts toward ensuring that when Jews and their allies feel unsafe, violated, and persecuted because of their identity, campus actors are empowered to take swift and stringent action. As we see time and time again in college impact research, failure to implement policies and protect minoritized groups not only affect those people in that moment, they contribute toward creating sustained climates of hostility that affect everyone (Hurtado et al., 1998).

Such attention has become especially important in light of ongoing campus protests (Serino, 2024). Reflecting on these current events in the context of our findings, we observe that some protest messages (from the river to the sea) intended as peaceful may broach hate speech, potentially making Jewish students feel unsafe on college campuses. When campuses actually position Jews as minoritized – a finding embedded in this study – the intention/impact framework for making meaning of minoritized student experiences must hold. The impact of some protest messaging on minoritized Jewish students matters more than the intention of the protesters in their messaging. Once Jewish students are actually treated as minoritized as a matter of policy, campus protocols for hate can be readily enacted. Any hesitation for enacting said protocols should be reason for pause and concern – at best as misunderstanding, at worst active expressions of campus-based antisemitism. We ask: Why is hate so hard to define and policies so challenging to enact for this minoritized group—for Jewish students specifically?

Finally, while we have alluded to several implications for practice above, we offer one additional insight that has emerged recently. As a collective of scholars that have been working on interfaith issues for well over a decade, we see this moment and the findings from this study as ample evidence that colleges and Universities must no longer ignore issues concerning religion, nor have them continue to exist as part of their diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice (DEIBJ) work in name only. While some colleges (e.g., Dartmouth) have developed climates that were remarkably well prepared to support Jewish students and allies during the fall 2023 semester, many more colleges were unprepared to the point of generating negative national headlines, profoundly disturbing media (e.g., videos, open letters), and Congressional oversight. Campus climates matter not only to current students, but to prospective students, alumni, and community members. One immediate action item we suggest implementing is investigating and, when necessary, revising academic accommodation policies and trainings to ensure that Jewish students are not forced to confront hostility in the name of religious observance (see Mayhew et al., 2023).

Conclusion

Amidst this challenging backdrop, we encouragingly see overarching trends and narratives that reflect progression and growth. That we see such development reinforced and expressed through students’ college experiences inspires us to believe that, even during times of profound conflict, college can be the place where change is made; that developing Jewish appreciation is still possible. To this end, we position college experiences – these social locations in which differences are not always seen as deficits, learning and pluralism are core values, individual and societal development can occur simultaneously, and leaders strive to create spaces for identity flourishing – as participating in the fundamental work of tikkun that Jews view as an essential responsibility of human existence.

Colleges can repair the world. The question is: will they?