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Dive Brief:
- Despite a significant decline in antisemitic incidents overall between 2024 and 2025, incidents at non-Jewish K-12 schools remained relatively level at 825 in 2025 compared to 860 in 2024, according to an audit published by the Anti-Defamation League Wednesday.
- College and university campuses, however, saw a sharp decline, with incidents dropping from nearly 1,700 in 2024 to 583 in 2025.
- The Anti-Defamation League recommends “proactive and comprehensive” efforts to combat antisemitism in K-12 schools including staff training, consistent policies, incident investigations, and transparent reporting. Curriculum and instruction should also be based on facts and free of bias, especially on topics related to Judaism, Israel and the Holocaust, ADL says.
Dive Insight:
“While incidents at other types of locations are more often driven by organized group activity, both from the anti-Israel and white supremacist spaces, at K-12 schools, most incidents involve individual, peer-to-peer behavior, such as antisemitic harassment or students vandalizing classrooms with swastikas,” according to a May 6 news release by ADL.
Following Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023 and the resulting Israel-Hamas war, incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia in schools spiked so much that the U.S. Department of Education reminded district leaders of their responsibilities to protect Muslim, Jewish, Israeli and Palestinian students.
The department also launched a number of investigations into districts and colleges over allegations that they were failing their duties under Title VI, the federal statute that protects students from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, national origin and shared ancestry.
The department began resolving those investigations in September 2024, a little less than a year after such investigations were first launched.
However, since the second Trump administration entered office in January 2025, the status of those investigations and many others is unclear.
The administration has, however, launched a number of antisemitism investigations of its own into districts and colleges.
On Friday, the department launched an investigation into Florida’s Bay District Schools, following allegations that Jewish students faced antisemitic bullying, including Nazi salutes, mock yarmulkes, repeated stereotypical comments, conspiracy theories about Jews, and swastikas drawn in textbooks and across school campuses.
“No child should ever be targeted for abuse at school because of his or her identity. When that happens, school districts have an affirmative obligation under federal law to step in, fix the problem, and take action to ensure it does not happen again,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a Friday statement. “When districts fail to meet that basic obligation, they will face consequences.
Last month, the Education Department launched a probe into the New York City Department of Education over allegations that Jewish students faced discrimination because of actions by a group of pro-Palestinian teachers.
The National Education Association also came under scrutiny over antisemitism allegations after the Louis D. Brandeis Center Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on April 29. The complaint claims NEA’s Jewish members “have been harmed by the NEA’s discrimination against Jewish members and its toleration and promotion of a hostile environment.”
