{"id":39716,"date":"2025-06-16T12:45:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T12:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=39716"},"modified":"2025-06-17T06:40:50","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T06:40:50","slug":"conflicted-disillusioned-disengaged-the-unsettled-center-of-jewish-student-opinion-after-oct-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/conflicted-disillusioned-disengaged-the-unsettled-center-of-jewish-student-opinion-after-oct-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Conflicted, disillusioned, disengaged: The unsettled center of Jewish student opinion after Oct. 7"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jonathan Krasner<\/a>, Brandeis University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As commencement season comes to a close, many campuses remain riven by the Israel-Hamas war. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the undergraduate class president was banned from walking at her graduation<\/a> after delivering a fiery \u2013 and unauthorized \u2013 speech accusing her school of complicity in Israel\u2019s campaign to \u201cwipe out Palestine off the face of the earth.\u201d Anti-Israel protests broke out at graduation ceremonies across the United States, from Columbia<\/a> to the University of California at Berkeley<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Hamas\u2019 Oct. 7, 2023, attack and Israel\u2019s retaliatory invasion of Gaza, many American campuses have been punctuated by vigils, demonstrations and disruptions<\/a>. But the loudest voices aren\u2019t necessarily the most representative. Activists\u2019 pronouncements on either side fail to capture the range of student opinion about the war and its reverberations at home, including the documented rise<\/a> in antisemitism and Islamophobia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is certainly true for Jewish students \u2013 buffeted by the war, the hostage crisis, campus protests and federal politics. Since January 2025, the Trump administration has used campus antisemitism and anti-Zionism as a pretext to assault<\/a> higher education<\/a> and implement hard-line immigration policies<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, one of the most striking findings of my study<\/a> on Jewish undergraduate attitudes, published in May 2025, is how many students described themselves as conflicted, uncertain, disaffected and even detached. Interviews across the country convinced my research team<\/a> that any attempt to gauge Jewish student opinion with either\/or categories are reductive and misleading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving beyond numbers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the wake of Oct. 7, my office hours quickly became a refuge for distraught Jewish students as they processed their thoughts. Few were content with pat answers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Students at USC attend a vigil on Oct. 10, 2023, days after Hamas\u2019 attack on Israel. Luis Sinco\/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I began wondering how representative they were. Tufts researchers Eitan Hersh<\/a> and Dahlia Lyss found that since Oct. 7, more students were valuing and prioritizing their Jewish identities<\/a>, even while an increased number were hiding their Jewishness on campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Brandeis colleagues Graham Wright<\/a>, Leonard Saxe<\/a> and their research team, meanwhile, found that a clear majority of Jewish students said they felt a connection to Israel<\/a> but were sharply divided in their views of its government. While most considered statements calling for the country\u2019s destruction to be antisemitic, they differed about where to draw the line between reasonable and illegitimate criticisms of Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These findings were instructive. But I was interested in learning more about the \u201chow\u201d and the \u201cwhy\u201d behind the numbers. Over the spring 2024 semester, my team and I interviewed 38 students on 24 campuses across 16 states and the District of Columbia. Participants reflected the broad religious, political, economic, geographical, sexual and racial diversity within the American Jewish population<\/a>, particularly among Jews under 30. Some of the campuses were relatively placid; others were hotbeds of protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u2018missing middle\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As my team analyzed transcripts, we identified six categories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About one-third of the Jewish students we spoke with were actively engaged on either side of the conflict, whether through demonstrations or online advocacy. \u201cAffirmed\u201d students\u2019 connection to Israel deepened after Oct. 7. \u201cAggrieved\u201d students, on the other hand, had joined anti-war protests<\/a> and voiced anger at Jewish organizations for ignoring Israel\u2019s culpability for Palestinian suffering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many more of our participants, however, were ambivalent, despondent or even apathetic. As journalist Arno Rosenfeld put it in an article about my research, the majority of Jewish students inhabit a \u201cgreat missing middle<\/a>\u201d in Israeli-Palestinian discourse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two-thirds of the students we spoke with are in this \u201cmissing middle,\u201d divided into four categories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n