AMCHA Initiative on Wednesday launched its new Anti-Semitism Tracker with a powerful, user-friendly search engine that provides the public with an unprecedented access to information and photo documentation about anti-Semitic incidents that occurred on campus between 2015 and 2018.
AMCHA claims it is the only organization that makes its database of all reported incidents of campus anti-Semitism accessible to the public. It says it monitors more than 400 college campuses across the US for anti-Semitic activity, and recorded 468 known anti-Semitic incidents in 2015, 642 in 2016, 653 in 2017, and 394 so far in 2018.
Using the website’s new search engines, users can tailor searches by city, state, zip code, geographical region, year, date range, university, and category. Some of the incident categories include physical assault, discrimination, destruction of Jewish property, genocidal expression, suppression of speech/movement/assembly, verbal assault, intimidation, harassment, condoning terrorism, comparing Jews to Nazis, and accusing Jews of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust. Users can also search and run customized reports by keyword, such as “swastika.”
One category of the search engine is solely devoted to chronicling BDS activity, allowing users to easily access BDS events, divestment votes, event shut downs and disruptions, as well as to locate faculty who have signed publicly-accessible petitions calling for an academic boycott of Israel.
“An important part of AMCHA’s mission is to document and expose incidents of campus anti-Semitism and make this information easily and readily available to the public,” stated AMCHA’s director, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin. “We hope our new searchable databases will make it easier for parents, students, alumni, researchers, journalists and anyone in the community to access the information they are looking for.”
AMCHA also unveiled new photo and video libraries where colleague organizations, the public, authors, publishers and journalists can access, and republish (subject to copyright obligations) photo and video documentation of recent incidents. In addition, through the new web page, students may submit photos and videos of the anti-Semitism they witnessed on campus or elsewhere in real-time.
“Today every student has ready access to a camera on their phone,” added Rossman-Benjamin. “They will now have the opportunity to take a more active role in documenting and exposing the anti-Semitism they witness.”
Many of AMCHA’s most popular website tools, including its swastika tracker, divestment scorecard, anti-Zionist campus group locater (including campuses with Students for Justice in Palestine chapters), disruption tracker and ‘Student Voices’ page with more than 700 student testimonials, will now include enhanced search capabilities as well.
