By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh

The Anti-Defamation League has updated the anti-Semitism gradings for over a dozen colleges, reflecting changes made and new policies adopted by some of the schools.

As reported by JTA, the ADL issued letter grades for 135 campuses it assessed in its 2025 report released in March. In a sign that some schools have taken the gradings seriously, the ADL already updated these gradings, signifying improvements made. A total of 19 gradings were bumped up, with 11 colleges implementing new policies in the last month, and another 8 making the Jewish group aware of existing policies which were not factored into the initial gradings. In a statement, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called the revised grades “encouraging,” adding, “These important steps and policies send a clear message that antisemitism will not be tolerated on campus.”

The ADL antisemitism scores for colleges are based on a set of rubrics including 30 criteria— separated into categories: ‘Administrative Policies,’ ‘Jewish Life on Campus’ and ‘Campus Conduct and Climate Concerns.’ School gradings can be searched at the ADL website, and details of the findings are also reported. Prestigious schools including Barnard, Columbia, MIT, Princeton, Rutgers and Yale all scored “D” gradings in the report.

The good news is that the many of the schools are paying attention to the gradings. The ADL said that 84% of all the colleges it graded “engaged” with the group on their grades. In the recently revised grades, the ADL bumped up almost all the changed reports up by one letter grade— with the exception of the University of Minnesota, which jumped from an “F” to a “C.” In all, there were three “F” grades (at Minnesota, UC Santa Barbara and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo) that were improved in the update. Also, the updated gradings granted three more schools “A” grades—including at Purdue, Georgia and Arizona State University.

Some of the new policies that schools implemented to improve their grades included: creating new committees and advisory councils on antisemitism and Jewish life; incorporating antisemitism into anti-discrimination training and policies; enacting bans on masked protests; and starting Jewish alumni groups.

As per JTA, this is the second year that ADL has issued report cards for college campuses. Some critics argued that the gradings can be unfair in penalizing schools for antisemitic incidents, irrespective of the school’s response. In the first grading, issued in April 2024, only 85 schools had been graded. This year more schools were included and generally, as things have calmed down somewhat since the Hamas war broke out in October 2023, many schools have gotten better gradings this year. In 2024, just two schools got an “A”—namely Brandeis and Elon Universities, while this year eight schools received A’s. The number of “B” grades also jumped up, from 18 last year to 41 in 2025.

Shira Goodman, the ADL’s vice president of advocacy, said that about two-thirds of the schools graded last year contacted the ADL to see how they could improve their score, and some moved forward to implement policies from the “best practices” guide ADL provided. “We think that shows that things are working,” Goodman said.