Graham W Wright

Ensuring that Jewish educational initiatives address the growing diversity of the US Jewish community requires, in part, understanding the background characteristics of participants and how a given educational program affects the trajectory of Jewish engagement for those with little, moderate, or a substantial amount of prior Jewish education and experiences. The present paper undertakes this analysis using the example of Birthright Israel. First, using latent class analysis, we develop a data-informed typology for classifying different religious and cultural childhood experiences of American Jewish young adults. We then examine the extent to which each group in the typology is impacted by participation in Birthright Israel, using an analytic approach that compares pre- and post-trip responses for both individuals who participated in Birthright Israel and a comparison group of those who applied but did not participate. We find that for some measures, Birthright Israel has a significant impact on participants with a variety of background experiences, while for other outcomes, Birthright Israel’s impact is concentrated among those with the least exposure to Jewish life.

Since October 7, 2023, antisemitism on American campuses hasbecome a contested political issue. Scholars of antisemitism arguethat the relationship between antisemitism and political ideologyfollows a “horseshoe” pattern, with higher levels of antisemitichostility on both the far right and far left. However, existing empiricalresearch has yet to establish this connection, in part becauseantisemitism may be expressed differently on opposite sides of theleft-right political spectrum. To address this challenge, we develop ameasure of antisemitism grounded in both formal definitions andempirical data about how US Jewish college students perceive anti-Jewish and anti-Israel statements and then measure the prevalenceof these attitudes among non-Jewish US college undergraduates. Wefind that explicit anti-Jewish attitudes are more common amongthose with far-right political identities, and beliefs about Israel thatformal definitions and most Jewish students find antisemitic aremore common among those who identify with the political left.

This study explores how faculty at US universities think about contentious political issues and how these issues are addressed in the classroom. We examine the political identities and viewpoints of faculty, their levels of political activism, their concerns about being targeted because of their political views, their approach to addressing current political controversies in the classroom (climate change, racism in America, Donald Trump and American democracy, Russia-Ukraine, and the Israel-Palestine conflict), and the extent to which they hold hostile views about Jews and Israel. The study is based on a survey conducted in spring 2025 of more than 2,200 faculty at the 146 Carnegie-2021 classified R1 universities, who taught undergraduates in the 2024-25 academic year. This study provides insights about the role faculty play in shaping the climate on campus, in light of the intense focus on US institutions of higher education around issues of viewpoint diversity and antisemitism and the ongoing related federal investigations and funding cuts to university programs.

This report explores the impact of financial insecurity on the college trajectory of Jewish young adults. The findings are based on survey data collected in spring 2024, from 2,164 Jewish respondents, and from 19 in-depth follow-up interviews conducted in spring 2025. All respondents were 23-24 years old at the time of data collection.

The report examines how those who grew up with the most financial need (16% of all respondents) compared to their peers who grew up in more affluent circumstances with respect to their journey from high school to college and beyond.

In summer 2024, Birthright sent over 4,500 young American Jews to Israel on 10-day, peer-educational trips, just as it had been doing since 2000. Unlike at any other period, these young Jews chose to go to Israel while multiple military conflicts were ongoing, and when a spike in antisemitic hostility related to criticism of Israel was occurring at many of the college campuses they attended. The unprecedented context of summer 2024 trips raises important new questions about the Birthright program and US Jewish young adults in general. This report explores the kinds of young Jews who chose to apply to Birthright during this challenging summer and participants' beliefs when they arrived in Israel. The report also examines whether the quality of the experience was disrupted by the war, the extent to which the Birthright trip influenced participants' relationship to Israel, and the trip's effect on their responses to hostile discourse surrounding Israel after returning to the United States.

In the 2023–2024 academic year reports of antisemitism on U.S.

college campuses surged. At the same time, contentious

debates about what antisemitism means reignited, in particular,

with respect to criticism of Israel. The present study addresses

this debate through a bottom-up approach that centers on the

perspective of the targets of antisemitism. Surveys conducted

during the 2023–2024 academic year with Jewish students on

over 50 campuses reveal wide agreement that certain statements

about Israel are inherently antisemitic and that these

views remained stable over the academic year.

The Jewish Futures Project (JFP) has been following a panel of respondents who applied to go on a Birthright Israel trip between 2001 and 2009. The panel includes Birthright participants, and others who applied to the program but did not go. The findings from the JFP’s seventh wave document the stability of Birthright’s impact on many domains of Jewish life, including participants’ relationship to Israel and their Jewish religious and social engagement. A particular area of exploration is Birthright’s impact on choices participants make about the Jewish education and socialization of their children.

Data for the seventh wave of the study were collected through an online survey that took place between May 2023 and January 2024. A total of 2,218 panelists responded to the survey, representing an overall response rate (AAPOR RR2) of 40% (59% for Birthright participants and 31% for nonparticipants).