Confronting antisemitism among the educated
May 7, 2021
(JNS) A March 29 article in the online news magazine Tablet titled “Are Educated People More Antisemitic?” reported that a carefully crafted survey of Americans by authors Jay P. Greene, Albert Chang and Ian Kingsbury found that the more highly educated did exhibit a greater level of antisemitism.
The authors note that this result runs contrary to the widely held assumption linking intolerance, including intolerance of Jews, to ignorance and viewing greater education as the solution. It refers to commonly cited studies supporting that conviction, such as the Anti-Defamation League’s Global 100 study of antisemitism across the globe. The authors suggest that the problem with such studies is that they entail questions that a more educated person would likely know had “right” and “wrong” answers, and would be predisposed to respond in the more socially acceptable way. They crafted their questions not to t