Universities across the country are rushing to establish antisemitism initiatives, but the explosion of new centers, task forces, and programs is raising alarms among the very experts who have spent decades studying the subject.
The movement picked up speed after October 2023, with major institutions announcing new research centers, policy institutes, and fellowships dedicated to combating antisemitism. New York University, the University of Michigan, Emory University, and dozens of other schools have launched antisemitism-focused programs backed by major donations or administrative support. Gratz College even launched what it claims is the first PhD program in antisemitism studies.
But Jewish studies scholars say many of these initiatives are substituting political ideology for academic rigor, undermining the expertise of established faculty in history, religion, and literature departments.
At the University of Washington, faculty members who felt campus had become too "anti-Israel" created a new center to address what they called antisemitism on campus. The center is led by a public health professor rather than a Jewish studies scholar, and so far has hosted two events featuring pro-Israel voices and distributed a newsletter. The university has given the center access to official branding and fundraising infrastructure despite claiming it does not formally endorse the group.
Susan Glenn, a history professor and Jewish studies faculty member at UW, said the center represents an effort to sideline scholarly expertise. "They're undermining expertise and substituting it with ideology even though they claim to be doing exactly the opposite," she said.
The wave of new antisemitism initiatives follows mounting political pressure from lawmakers, donors, and the Trump administration, which have targeted universities over allegations of antisemitism and pro-Palestinian sentiment on campus. Many scholars worry that these new centers are less about advancing understanding of antisemitism than about reshaping campus political culture under the guise of academic rigor.
Lila Corwin Berman, director of the center for American Jewish history at New York University, noted that university administrators are responding to political pressure rather than genuine academic needs. "They're making a public-facing performance about dealing with antisemitism, and the calculation is not being made through rigorous evaluation of scholarly expertise," she said.
The fragmentation of antisemitism studies into new, separate institutions marks a departure from how universities typically organize academic fields. Rather than anchoring scholarship in existing departments of history, literature, or religious studies, the new centers often operate as standalone entities with their own leadership structures and funding streams.
Some universities have also adopted the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which scholars have warned could be used to censor academic speech. The Justice Department launched an investigation into the University of Washington after the school removed a Middle East center director for describing Zionism as "cancerous."
Political battles are also unfolding within established Jewish studies departments themselves. At Indiana University, which houses one of the country's most prestigious Jewish studies programs, administrators removed the department head following pressure from donors. The moderate historian was replaced with a vocally pro-Israel scholar. Faculty at other universities described administrations attempting to bypass traditional hiring processes to appoint more pro-Israel faculty.
Some scholars welcome the expanded focus on antisemitism as a field of study. Maurice Samuels, who founded Yale's Program for the Study of Antisemitism in 2011, said the growing recognition of antisemitism as a distinct field represents progress. But he acknowledged the political weaponization of the issue. "Yes, antisemitism is being used to attack universities," he said. "And yes, it's a valid object of study."
Sander Gilman, a retired Emory professor and author of multiple books on antisemitism, warned against instrumentalizing the subject. He argued that antisemitism has been exploited as a "cudgel for many other purposes." A real academic's job, he said, is to question, not to advocate.
The new positions created by these initiatives are largely non-tenure-track, short-term contracts that exacerbate the broader precarity facing academics during a period of deep university budget cuts. Some scholars have described the funding opportunities as a "devil's bargain," forcing researchers to choose between financial security and intellectual independence.
At the University of Michigan, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute took a different approach, studying hatred against all religious and ethnic communities rather than focusing narrowly on antisemitism. That stance initially angered some donors and alumni who wanted a more explicitly pro-Israel center, while pro-Palestinian students viewed it skeptically. But the institute has been able to host substantive debates on contentious issues like genocide in Gaza without collapsing into political tribalism.
Jeff Veidlinger, the institute's director, said universities must keep scholarship and academic rigor at the forefront if these initiatives are to contribute meaningfully to understanding a serious problem. "Both sides would have preferred less nuance," he acknowledged, describing how the institute managed criticism from multiple directions by maintaining scholarly standards.
Hadas Binyamini, who recently completed her PhD in history and Hebrew and Judaic studies, emphasized that studying antisemitism remains legitimate and important. But she distinguished between genuine scholarship and what she called the concerning trend of new antisemitism centers that operate outside traditional academic structures and oversight.
Author James Rodriguez: "Universities are weaponizing antisemitism as a political battering ram when they should be letting actual scholars lead the conversation."
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