Flagship Jewish university sees record enrollment as anti-Israel protests rock elite US campuses
The antisemitism that has surfaced on U.S. college campuses since Israel was attacked by Hamas terrorists in October has sent Jewish students and faculty fleeing. Now, America's — and the world's — flagship Jewish institution, Yeshiva University, is bursting at the seams.
Yeshiva recently hit record-high enrollment, with transfer applications up 53%. The school had to lease an additional residence building to accommodate the surge in new students this semester, and more housing accommodations will be needed for the fall.
The influx of student transfers includes several from Ivy League institutions, notably Columbia, Yale and Cornell, where one former student said he spent his days "fighting Jewish hate." The crop of professors who have gone to Yeshiva from top-tier schools include a professor from MIT who left due to unchecked antisemitism on the campus.
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The private orthodox Jewish university with four campuses in New York announced it was at capacity before the fresh round of anti-Israel protests that began a few weeks ago at neighboring campuses Columbia and NYU.
But after watching the violent demonstrations spread and continue to rage at schools throughout the country, Yeshiva decided to open its doors to more Jewish students and faculty across the country who feel threatened by their campus climates.
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Although the deadline for transfer applications had already passed, Yeshiva President Rabbi Ari Berman reopened its transfer portal for undergraduate students last week and announced the school is also creating new faculty positions as it continues to receive inquiries from academic staff at top-tier universities looking for an institution with values that align with their own.
Rabbi Berman was in Jerusalem Oct. 7 when Israel was attacked. He told FOX Business in an interview that when he returned home to America, he was surprised by the absence of leadership at colleges and "how presidents of universities were not able to call out what was so obvious, which is that Hamas is a terrorist organization."
Berman then founded Universities United Against Terrorism, a coalition of higher education leaders in the U.S. who unequivocally condemned Hamas’ attacks on Israel. The group comprises more than 100 institutions of higher education, including public and private, faith-based and historically Black colleges.
The founders include the presidents of several major universities, including the University of Miami, the University of Texas - Austin, the University of Notre Dame and the University of Arizona.
Berman said in building the coalition there was a sense of moral clarity, with institutions coming together to say with no ambiguity that they stand with Israel and with the Palestinians who suffer under Hamas' cruel rule and that all people have moral conscience.
"And that is the clarity that we need today," Berman said. "And you can see the presidents that have not been able to educate — to state clearly what is at stake — and what's happening at this moment has repercussions.
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"What we're seeing right now is … these students have been indulged," Berman said of the protests. "They've been coddled, they've been acting inappropriately and scaring their fellow Jewish students since Oct. 7. And the college campuses that haven't educated the truth about the clear and unambiguous — a sense of Hamas being a terrorist organization — this is a fight against people who represent the greatest evil that has been committed to the Jewish people since the Holocaust."
Berman said all the bad news in the press about what is happening at several U.S. colleges is real, but he emphasized that many of his fellow university presidents are good people who are committed to creating a safe environment for all students. He added that the results of that are being revealed in the new college rankings, which businesses are looking at to hire their next generation of leaders.
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He reiterated that there are many great schools in the U.S. beyond Yeshiva whose leaders support Israel and recommended parents, students and recruiters look to schools that are part of the Universities United Against Terrorism coalition.
"Our enrollment has expanded greatly," he told FOX Business of Yeshiva, "but we can't take in every Jew in this country."