As data from the Anti-Defamation League shows antisemitism growing on college campuses in recent years and spiking after the Hamas-Israel conflict, a New Jersey Institute of Technology researcher is doing her part to combat the trend by developing a training model that will help prepare mental health professionals who work with Jewish students.
Modern students are hearing people chant slogans without understanding the intentions behind the words, or finding swastikas and other anti-Jewish graffiti on their campuses, but they are not encountering suitably trained counselors and psychologists who understand their situations.
“Clinicians really need to do a better job of understanding identity issues of culture and experiences when it comes to not only Jewish students, but everybody — all students — so this is serving that need, it’s creating an empirically-based training model that doesn’t truly exist right now,” explained Julie Ancis, distinguished professor of informatics, in NJIT’s Ying Wu College of Computing. Her project is funded by a non-profit organization, Academic Engagement Network, created in 2015 to counter antisemitism. To read the full story.