Understanding Campus Fears After October 7 and How to Reduce Them

This report presents a non-partisan analysis of Antisemitism and Islamophobia among College Students and American Adults based on National Surveys Fielded December 14, 2023 to January 16, 2024. Many urgent questions face college campuses in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza, which kicked-off numerous student-led pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian protests, intimidation, and violence. In response, the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago (CPOST) conducted a study of the national campus environment. Based on two national surveys of 5,000 college students from over 600 four-year academic institutions, with an additional 5,000 American adults as a comparison set, which were fielded from mid-December 2023 to mid-January 2024, and with the benefit of a previous baseline survey of 8,000 American adults fielded in Spring of 2023, this study provides the most extensive survey evidence today about the extent of campus fears and changes in antisemitism after October 7. This study is also among the few efforts to disentangle different meanings of antisemitism and compare antisemitism and Islamophobia among respondents. The overarching finding is that campus fears related to the current Israel-Palestinian conflict are more intense among certain groups and widespread across the student body than previously known.