As the climate on some campuses has turned threatening for Jewish students, we share essays from moms with kids at Yale, Northwestern and Brown. We also hear from a mother whose high school junior encountered protests on a recent tour of the University of Texas at Austin and from another whose son has decided to forego problematic schools like Middlebury.

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Amid protests and encampments, we canceled two recent college visits for our oldest child, a high school junior. Both schools were beloved family alma maters and within driving distance from where we live in Connecticut. Together, they might have helped him compare two different-sized colleges offering his intended major.

Over spring break, we planned to take a campus tour of Middlebury College, where my brother-in-law went to school. As my son drove, I googled the school’s record on antisemitism and read aloud the shocking details of a current Title VI lawsuit alleging a “hostile campus climate for Jews.” The February filing by StandWithUs, an organization that works to combat rising antisemitism on American college campuses and support Israel, described the administration’s objection to the word “Jewish” in literature for an October 7 vigil that called for students to “Stand in Solidarity to the Jewish People,” requesting instead to call it “Vigil for Lives Lost,” to be more inclusive.

Using my I’m-a-lawyer-even-though-you’ve-mostly-seen-me-cooking-and-carpooling-for-the-last-decade voice, I reminded my son that a lawsuit doesn’t mean the allegations are true or that the administration failed to protect Jewish students.

Still, my son voted to skip the visit, opting instead to see the University of Vermont, which has a “C” on the ADL’s Antisemitism Campus Report Card but was delightfully vacant of protests as school was not in session.

Six weeks later, I made a similar call, deciding against touring my husband’s alma mater, Brown, once an encampment went up on its main green. I wasn’t afraid for our safety, but rather fearful that my son wouldn’t want to go to college at all if he encountered the same kind of hate speech and vandalism I’ve been seeing on social media.

My kid is not an activist—pro-Israel or otherwise. He’s confidently Jewish, thanks to joyful family traditions and our warm congregation in a pocket of New England with a robust Jewish community. He started a sukkah-building business last fall, followed by an even more successful pickle-making enterprise with friends.

Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic, campus visits for prospective students remain, to a degree, nonessential. Instead, I’m spending my time researching my most pressing question: Which schools are willing and able to protect Jewish students while allowing free speech? As University of Florida President Ben Sasse quipped in his widely circulated Wall Street Journal op-ed, where are “the adults still in charge?”

I’m hoping my son’s application list will include schools with administrations that are meeting the moment to foster discussion and debate, illuminating our shared humanity and legitimate interests, rather than blindly permitting free speech and protest, or conversely, harshly shutting them down.

One constant a Jewish parent can count on: advice from other Jewish parents. A friend with twins at Tulane and a daughter at Cornell suggested looking for active Jewish student life through Hillel, Chabad or Greek life. Her kids typically ignore protests and feel less agitated about the administration than their mom.

Another friend kvelled about her son’s resilience in adapting to the new normal at George Washington University. According to her, he’s managed to have meaningful dialogue with protesters and anti-Israel faculty, build relationships and participate in Jewish events.

“My son would say, and I agree, that we need to face this head on,” she told me. “We need to not be afraid, and you should choose a school based on what you want as if this nightmare wasn’t happening.”

In darker moments, I worry these snapshots are false assurances that all is tolerable, when really it is not. Universities seem stacked with anti-Zionist administrators and faculty, even within Jewish studies departments. The protest machine is fast-moving, intimidating and divisive, twisting the advocacy of young people who want the war to end into a campaign for Israel to end.

If a parent’s role in the college process is about letting go, then parents today have a double duty: letting our kids go while knowing the climate for Jewish students on American campuses is in flux, and that their academic and social lives may be affected deeply. Or maybe not.   

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Jodie Sadowsky is a freelance writer with work published at CNN, The Forward, Tablet Magazine, Kveller and the Jewish Women’s Archive. A graduate of Cornell University and Boston University School of Law, she works on communications for Tzedek Box, a new ritual dedicated to the ancient Jewish pursuit of justice. You can find her on social media @LoveThemMadly.