UNITED STATES — The release of the American Jewish Committee’s State of Antisemitism in America 2025 report confronts Americans with a troubling reality: antisemitism is not a relic of history but a growing, present-day threat to Jewish life — and to the health of American democracy itself. The findings, drawn from extensive survey data and firsthand accounts, paint a portrait of a community under pressure, quietly but significantly reshaping how it moves through the world.

More than half of American Jews reported changing their behavior in the past year out of fear of antisemitism — avoiding certain places, concealing their identity, or withdrawing from public life. The data is striking not merely for its scale, but for what it reveals about the normalization of threat as a backdrop to daily Jewish experience in the United States.

AJC CEO Ted Deutch, speaking following his appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, warned that Jews feel less safe than at any point in recent memory — and called for what he described as a “whole-of-society response” to antisemitism. The challenge, he stressed, does not belong to any single political faction: hatred of Jews has found expression across the ideological spectrum, from the far-right to the far-left, and demands unified rejection from all quarters of American public life.

In a parallel release, AJC and Hillel International published new data detailing how Jewish college students across the United States are altering the way they engage with peers and present themselves on campus. The findings describe students who remain resilient and engaged, but who do so against a backdrop of persistent hostility. Emory University student Oz Alon has spoken publicly about one of the most insidious dynamics at play: the use of the label “Zionist” as a coded vehicle for antisemitic attacks — a linguistic maneuver that allows hatred to operate beneath the surface of political debate while targeting Jewish students for who they are, not simply what they believe.

Nearly half of Jewish students, according to some surveys cited in the data, report experiencing antisemitism on US college campuses — a figure that demands serious attention from university administrators, faculty, and policymakers alike.

FFN Commentary

Manel Msalmi

Founder & President, European Association for the Defense of Minorities
Expert on the Middle East, Human Rights Advocate & Interfaith Peace Activist

“The AJC’s 2025 report is a wake-up call not just for the United States, but for every democracy in the world. Antisemitism is not a Jewish problem — it is a societal disease that, when left unchallenged, corrodes the foundations of pluralism and rule of law. The data on college campuses is particularly alarming: young Jewish students should be free to learn, debate, and thrive without fear. The manipulation of political language to mask antisemitic attacks is especially dangerous because it allows hatred to masquerade as legitimate discourse. We must call it out, on the right and on the left, without hesitation. We must stand together against all forms of hate — our shared future depends on it.”

The AJC report goes beyond diagnosis: it equips leaders throughout American society — elected officials, university administrators, community organizations — with the latest data on how antisemitism is impacting their constituents and students, alongside concrete policy best practices and recommendations for countering it effectively. The ambition is not merely to document hatred but to build the institutional infrastructure to dismantle it.

Central to that effort is the question of online hate. With 73% of American Jews reporting exposure to antisemitism on social media or online platforms within the past year, the role of technology companies and legislative action has become impossible to avoid. AJC is calling on Congress to take concrete, actionable steps to counter the surge of anti-Jewish hate on social media and as amplified by AI systems.

The report’s publication arrives at a moment of broader reckoning for American institutions. Universities, in particular, are under scrutiny for how they have — or have not — responded to the surge of antisemitic incidents on campuses since October 2023. The AJC data offers administrators not only evidence of the problem’s scope, but a framework for responding to it with both rigor and care.