Jewish Students Rethink Harvard, Penn in College Applications
High school seniors and their parents are reevaluating where they want to attend after the turmoil that followed the Hamas attack on Israel.
Dunster House on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Photographer: Mel Musto/BloombergJonathan Katz always thought the University of Pennsylvania was a welcoming place for Jewish students. After the school’s responses to the Hamas attack on Israel, his daughter didn’t apply. And she skipped Harvard too, focusing instead on the University of Chicago and Princeton.
As colleges across the US erupted in controversy after the Oct. 7 attacks, and the subsequent invasion of the Gaza Strip, high school seniors were in the middle of filling out college applications. For many Jewish parents and their kids, the tense protests and heated debates over antisemitism that roiled campuses meant reevaluating which schools were safe and where they should apply.