The people hired to teach young American Jews are, by a majority, on the record against the Jewish state. The widest study ever conducted proves it.
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A June 2026 AP-NORC poll of more than 1,000 Jewish American adults found that New York’s pro-Hamas, socialist mayor holds a +5 net favorability among American Jews. Netanyahu sits at -27. A third of Jewish respondents said Israel is committing genocide in Gaza!
That is not the accident of one election cycle. It is an output. And among the many machines of the American Jewish community producing it are the professors standing at the front of the classroom.
The widest audit of its kind ever conducted – “Who Teaches Judaism in America?”, by the Ronn Torossian Foundation – examined 2,499 faculty and institutional records across Jewish Studies, Israel Studies, Hebrew, and Holocaust Studies programs at American universities, cross-referenced against nine petition campaigns from May 2021 through Spring 2026. Every entry is tied to a named public act. It replaces a decade of anecdote with a number.
The numbers:
Of the 2,499 records audited, 51.9 percent are publicly on the record against Israel.
Among the 1,014 professors who actually teach these fields, it stands at 39.5 percent.
At the Ivy League universities, 72.3 percent of records.
And fourteen holders of endowed chairs – at schools including Columbia, Penn, UCLA, Brandeis, Penn State, and the University of Washington, funded by Jewish donors to strengthen Jewish scholarship – are among the signatories to documents calling Israel an apartheid and genocidal state.
Judaic Studies Professors, Calling Israel “Colonialist”
They endorsed the academic boycott of Israeli universities. They signed statements calling Zionism “settler colonialism” and a system of “Jewish supremacy.” They signed petitions branding Israel’s war “genocide” – some within days of October 7. They demanded the end of all U.S. aid to Israel.
The “Not in Our Name” letter drew 3,400+ signatures – the largest Jewish faculty petition ever recorded. “Faculty for Justice in Palestine” runs 130+ campus chapters.
And every petition since 2021 has been larger than the one before it. The trend does not plateau. It compounds.These are the people educating American youth about what it means to be a Jew.
Not a fringe – the field itself
Columbia leads the country with 41 faculty on the record. Princeton follows at 35, Penn State at 32, NYU at 31 – and by a separate national barometer, NYU carries 148 documented faculty boycotters, the worst in the nation. Yale sits at 30.
When the people setting the syllabus at the most prestigious programs in the country are, by a supermajority at the Ivies, on record calling Zionism “settler colonialism” and Israel an apartheid or genocidal state, that is not a fringe. That is the field itself.
And the climate it produces is measurable. Campuses with five or more BDS-supporting faculty are 7.2 times more likely to see antisemitic incidents. Where “Faculty for Justice in Palestine” operates, the likelihood of physical assault on Jewish students rises more than sevenfold. These same professors line up openly with pro-Palestinian groups – and go silent on the antisemitic attacks that follow.
The professor who signs the boycott petition and the hostile room the Zionist nineteen-year-old walks into are not two separate stories. They are one.
Donor cash, turned on the donors
The most prestigious seats in the field were built by Jewish philanthropists to defend Jewish scholarship – and now sit among the signatories. Columbia’s Yerushalmi Chair. UCLA’s Gilbert Foundation Chair of Israel Studies. Penn’s Meyerhoff Chair. Wake Forest’s Rubin Presidential Chair. Brandeis’s Kraft-Hiatt Chair. Clark’s Rose Professorship of Holocaust Studies.
At the University of Washington, a donor pulled a $5 million endowment after the holder of its Israel Studies chair signed the May 2021 declaration branding Zionism “settler colonialism.” Will the other donors follow?
And the audit is deliberately conservative. Supporting a two-state solution, criticizing an Israeli government, opposing a specific policy – none of it counts here as “anti-Israel.” This study measures hostility to the Jewish state’s existence, not political argument. The 51.9 percent is the floor.
The way out
For a Zionist on an American campus, Jewish Studies is a leftist den – an annex of a faculty culture hostile to everything the Jewish state stands for.
So let’s say it plainly: Progressive Diaspora Jews are today among the enemies of Israel and the Jewish state – including, this study proves, a majority of the scholars hired to teach Judaism itself.
They are tenured. They will not be fired, and they will not resign. The infrastructure will not reform from within.
And to Zionists on campus: you can turn to Chabad – which lights the candles, sets the table, and never asks a Jewish kid to apologize for loving Israel. And most logical of all, come home – to Israel, the Jewish state.
Ronn Torossian is an Israeli-American entrepreneur, author, and philanthropist. “Who Teaches Judaism in America?” was conducted by the Ronn Torossian Foundation. The names of faculty, omitted in this article, can be found there. Torossian recently completed studies on Claude in Israel.
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