Abstract
Despite the academic successes of Jewish students on college campuses in the United States, challenges remain, particularly in terms of social involvement and ability to practice religion, much like the challenges that face students who are members of other ethnic and religious minorities. In this paper we examine data from 1,087 Jewish students at eight elite colleges and universities in the United States. The greater the percentage of Jewish students on campus and, individually, the more Jewish students feel connected to other students, including Jewish friends, the more at ease they feel. Those more engaged in Jewish religious practices experience greater difficulty, especially if there are no kosher dining facilities on campus. Both the “invisible hand” of social structure and the practical matters of Jewish observance affect Jewish students’ personal sense of ease.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Chaves, M., and P. Gorski. 2001. “Relgious Pluralism and Religious Participation”.Annual Review of Sociology 27:261–281.
Dillon, S. 2007. “A Great Year for Ivy League Schools, but Not So Good for Applicants to Them.”New York Times, April 4, B3.
Finke, R., and R. Stark. 1998. “Religious Choice and Competition.”American Sociological Review 63:761–766.
Finke, R., and L. Iannaccone. 1993. “Supply-Side Explanations for Relgious Change.”Annuals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 527:27–39.
Finke, R., and R. Stark. 1988. “Religious Economies and Sacred Canopies: Religious Mobilization in American Cities, 1906.”American Sociological Review 53:41–49.
Finke, R., and R. Stark. 1989. “Evaluating the Evidence: Religious Economies and Sacred Canopies.”American Sociological Review 54:1054–1056.
Finkelman, S. and Scherman, N. 1986.Reb Moshe: The life and ideals of Hagaon Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. Mesorah Publications: Jerusalem/Staten Island, NY.
Garson, G. 2007a. “Scales and Standard Measures.” North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC,http://www2.chass.ncsu.edu/garson/PA765/standard.htm (viewed Jan 10, 2007).
Garson, G. 2007b. “Testing of Assumptions.” North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC,http://www2.chass.ncsu.edu/garson/pa765/assumpt.htm (viewed January 10, 2007).
Greenberg, M., and S. Zenchelsky. 1993. “Private Bias and Public Re- sponsibility: Anti-Semitism at Rutgers in the 1920s and 1930s.”History of Education Quarterly 33:295–319.
Iannaccone,L. 1998. “Voodoo Economics? Reviewing the Rational Choice Approach to Religion.”Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 34:76–88.
Kolko, V. 2003. “A History of Jews in American Higher Education.” Masters Thesis, Indiana University, Bloomington.
Montgomery, J. 2003. “A Formalization and Test of the Religious Economies Model.”American Sociological Review 68:782–809.
Perl, P., and D. Olson. 2000. “Religious Market Share and Intensity of Church Involvement in Five Denominations.”Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 39:12–30.
Phillips, R. 1998. “Religious Market Share and Mormon Church Activity.”Sociology of Religion 59:117–130. Raudenbush, S., and A. Bryk. 2002.Hierarchical Linear Models: Applications and Data Analysis Methods, Second Edition. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Raudenbush, S., A. Bryk and R. Congdon. 2000. “Hlm 6 Hierarchical Linear and Nonlinear Modeling” (computer program). Lincoln-wood, IL: Scientific Software International, Inc. Rubin, J. 2003.The Road to Renaissance: Hillel 1923–2002. Washington, DC: Hillel Foundation. Saxe, L., and A. Sales. 2006.Particularism in the University: Realities and Opportunities for Jewish Life on Campus. Waltham, MA: Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, Brandeis University. http://cm.js.org/files/JewishLifeonCampusB%20(4).pdf (viewed May 2, 2008). Synnott, M. 1979. “The Admission and Assimilation of Minority Students at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900–1970.”History of Education Quarterly 19:285–304. Voas, D., Crockett, A. and D. Olson. 2002. “Religious Pluralism and Participation: Why Previous Research Is Wrong.”American Sociological Review 67:212–230. Wechsler, H. 1984. “The Rationale for Restriction: Ethnicity and College Admission in America, 1910–1980.”American Quarterly 36:643–667. Notes We thank the AVI CHAI Foundation and the Jewish Life Network for their financial support. Leonard Saxe and Amy Sales directed the project from which the data were drawn. Kenneth Frank and David Livert provided helpful comments. Shahar Hecht helped with initial analyses of these data, editing, and preparing earlier versions of this manuscript. 1. FromReb Moshe: The life and ideals of Hagaon Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, Finkelman, S., and Scherman, N. (1986). This was also the title of a well-known play attributed to the great Yiddish writer, Shalom Aleichem. Although attributed to him, the play was not actually written by Shalom Aleichem and was loosely based on his 1912novel,The Bloody Hoax. (cited by Tal Cohen (http://www.forum2.org/tal/books/ bloody.html) 2. NJPS 2000/01 analysis conducted by first author. 3. Analysis of bri data conducted by the first author. 4. For a report on the study as well as methodological details see Saxe and Sales, 2006. 5. The student directory is the equivalent of a campus white pages telephone book, with minimal information including students’ names, undergraduate statuses, campus telephone numbers and e-mails. 6. Classified as “doctoral-research universities, extensive” based on Carnegie classification codes for the year 2003 (http://www.carnegie foundation.org/classifications/, viewed May 2, 2008). 7 While the distribution appears skewed, “A common rule-of-thumb test for normality is to run descriptive statistics to get skewness and kurtosis, then divide these by the standard errors. Skew should be within the +2 to -2 range when the data are normally distributed.⋯ Kurtosis also should be within the +2 to-2 range” (Garson, 2007b). Skewness here is -1.49 and kurtosis 1.62. 8 The program used was HLM 6 Hierarchical Linear and Nonlinear Modeling (Raudenbush, 2000). 9 “Mokken scales are similar to Guttman scales but they are probabilistic whereas Guttman scales are deterministic. That is, in Mokken scales a respondent answering an item positively will have a significantly greaterprobability than null to answer a less difficult item in a positive way as well, whereas in perfect Guttman scales answering an item positively means the respondentwill answer all less difficult items positively also. ⋯ Loevinger’s H is based on the ratio of observed Guttman errors to total errors expected under the null assumption that items are totally unrelated.⋯ The arbitrary but customary criterion for validating a set of items as a Mokken scale is that H and all Hi must be 30. A rule of thumb is to speak of a ‘strong scale’ for values exceeding 0.50, a ‘moderate scale’ for values from.40 to .50, and a ‘weak scale’ for values from .30 to .40. ⋯ H is a better approximation to the classical reliability coefficient rho than Cronbach’s alpha, which has been widely used to measure the internal consistency of a scale. Specifically, alpha strongly underestimates rho when there is large variation in item difficulties” (Garson, 2007a).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kadushin, C., Tighe, E. How hard is it to be a Jew on college campuses?. Cont Jewry 28, 1–20 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03020930
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03020930