Developing Appreciative Attitudes Toward Jews: A Multi-Campus Investigation

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper was to examine the institutional conditions and educational practices associated with the development of first-term students’ appreciative attitudes toward Jews. Using a longitudinal design, we administered a theoretically derived and empirically validated measure of interfaith experiences to 7,194 first-term students enrolled in one of 122 institutions. Analytically, we weighted data to reflect national figures regarding first-year students and used hierarchical linear modeling to account for students nested within institutions. Results indicated that development during the first term in college was related to having space for support and spiritual expression, attending two or more interfaith activities, and productively engaging in provocative experiences that spurred dissonance and subsequent meaning making about worldview diversity. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Jewish
• college
• students
• interfaith
• quantitative

On August 25, 2020, the Chabad house at the University of Delaware — a center for Jewish life and community on this campus and one of many such houses on campuses nationwide — was burned down by an anti-Semitic arsonist. The event was covered in Inside HigherEd as part of ongoing press attention concerning how college campuses and leaders are struggling to respond to a rise in campus anti-Semitism (see Anderson, 2020; Herbst, 2021). The article quoted a Jewish leader at the university: “[Anti-Semitism] is not specific to our campus … you’re seeing it on the news, in tweets and social media posts, and it’s hard not to continuously think about that. College campuses are just sort of a breeding ground for it” (Anderson, 2020, para 8). Of course, flagrant anti-Semitism does not just affect Jews — such actions can elicit fear amongst campus community members and communicate to many that they, and those like them, are not welcome.

This incident is yet another example of a dramatic increase in anti-Semitism — expressions and actions of hatred toward Jews — in the United States and globally (Anti-Defamation League, 2019). Heading into the 2021 academic year, 77% of Jews in the United States are concerned about anti-Semitism in the U.S. and 41% are concerned for their personal safety (Anti-Defamation League, 2021). While some acts have been explicit (e.g., burning down a Chabad house), also troubling has been the coordinated rise of anti-Jewish expressions as features of right-wing political expressions (see Foer, 2019; Wong, 2020). Though some may see such trends as unrelated incidents, others both inside and outside the Jewish community view them as increasingly worrisome reminders of tragedies that befall individuals—and by extension societies—when anti-Semitism is not only sanctioned, but normalized and empowered.

Set against this context, postsecondary institutions as part of their social missions have strived to promote forms of productive interworldview engagement that will prepare students to enter a religiously diverse world and cultivate a shared understanding that the free exercise of religion is an essential component of democratic society (Patel & Meyer, 2011). College, in this view, can be an opportunity to foster productive exchanges across forms of difference and graduate future social leaders who both espouse and enact deep appreciation for diverse worldviews, especially those outside their own worldview narratives (Patel, 2016). Yet, as Herbst (2021) describes, colleges are currently unprepared to confront “the very real vulnerabilities of Jewish students” and should work to ensure that campuses understand this threat “even if it means working to change attitudes and processes within campus offices” (para. 11). This assessment is confirmed through the daily expressions of institutional policy-level (e.g., starting classes on Rosh Hashanah) and interpersonal (e.g., derogatory remarks made by peers and faculty) aggressions against Jews represented daily on the popular @jewishoncampus Instagram account.

In an effort to move from broader intentions toward localized educational practices, this research addresses the question: What features of the collegiate climate and experience influence undergraduate students’ development of appreciative attitudes toward Jews? To answer this question, we first introduce theoretical perspectives that inform our approach to understanding how students develop their appreciative attitudes toward specific religious groups. Next, we review literature covering two areas: Jewish undergraduate student experiences in the United States and college students’ interworldview experiences — those structured and unstructured activities that engage students holding multiple guiding philosophies in shared exchange. We then provide a brief overview of the conceptual framework used for the study. After presenting our sample, measures, and analysis, results are offered. We close with discussion and implications for research and practice.

Theoretical approaches

Two theoretical perspectives guided this effort. To position our outcome of appreciative attitudes toward Jews, we draw on Eck’s (2021) nuanced presentation of appreciation as a deeper, more profoundly internalized respect for another’s beliefs and customs than is associated with mere tolerance. Epistemically, tolerance involves existing in the reality of religious difference; appreciation, however, embraces the inherent value of being in this reality. Moving students from tolerance to appreciation involves intricate and complicated processes. On college campuses, developing appreciative attitudes toward others has been considered important to creating, as well as flowing from, a supportive campus climate for worldview difference — one in which all feel welcome to freely exercise their viewpoints (Ahmadi & Cole, 2015).

We further frame the relationship between collegiate experiences and our outcome by drawing on Allport (1954) and successive articulations and reinterpretations offered by Dovidio et al. (2004) and Shapses-Wertheim (2014). These scholars have expressed the importance of sustained, productive contact with those holding different beliefs and emerging from different social histories than oneself in promoting development. Threaded throughout these theoretical articulations is a pronounced emphasis on support; students have a greater chance of developing appreciative attitudes toward other worldviews, including Jews, when guided by knowledgeable individuals and operating within informed pluralistic cultures (Edwards, 2017).

To be clear, this study fully recognizes the complex and long-considered conversations regarding the presumed linkages between attitudes and actions; between having lower-levels of appreciation for members of a group and taking explicit actions against this group. Relevant to our study, and drawing on similar theoretic paradigms (e.g., Dovidio et al., 2009), Bilewicz et al. (2013) quantitatively demonstrated potential linkages with respect to anti-Jewish attitudes. The authors specifically found “that 'mere’ anti-Semitic beliefs are strongly related to anti-Jewish behavioral intentions and behavior toward Jews” (p. 835) — a position accentuated by the appearance, spread, and societal normalization of conspiracy theories. While we cannot claim that lower appreciative attitudes toward Jews cause hostile behaviors, we can make a close theoretical and developmental connection between increasing appreciation and accompanying increases in valuing Jews as full members of an inclusive society.

These theoretical considerations provide the foundation for examining appreciative attitudes and the institutional conditions and educational practices that spur their development. We now turn specifically toward the empirical basis for understanding appreciative attitudes toward Jews.

Literature review

The past decade has witnessed a substantial increase in the number of studies examining worldview experiences and expressions on college campuses. While a comprehensive literature review is beyond the scope of this study, given the research question it is important to introduce studies covering two interdependent areas: the experiences of Jewish students specifically and the experiences of college students generally with respect to worldview. Through this presentation, we hope to illustrate how interworldview climates and interactions affect students as well as examine the specific experiences of students who self-identify as Jews.

Jewish student experiences

Efforts led by Leonard Saxe at the Brandeis University Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies have expanded the narrative and knowledge base concerning Jews and their collegiate experiences. In a recent chapter on campus Jewish life (Koren et al., 2016) the authors provide a detailed overview of formal spaces for religious engagement (e.g., Hillel, Chabad), formal and informal social engagement (e.g., Jewish Greek life, women’s groups, LGBT groups), and pressing topics confronted by Jewish students (e.g., Israel). Additionally, Katz and Feigelson (2019) provide insight into the demographic makeup of Jewish students on campus, noting that 10–20% of American Jews identify as persons of color and that “although many people in America may have an image of Jews as White, Jews have many racial and ethnic identities” (p. 249).

Commenting on campus environments, Koren et al. (2016) found that while 73% of Jews in a multi-campus study reported being exposed to anti-Semitic statements “at least occasionally” in the past year, some perceive this hostility coming more from fellow students while others experience this as emanating more from faculty (Koren et al., 2016, p. 54). Indeed, several reports (e.g., Saxe et al., 2016; Wright et al., 2017) have demonstrated that campus climates for Jews — including direct confrontation with forms of anti-Semitic expression — can vary greatly from campus to campus (Katz & Feigelson, 2019). At some institutions, Jewish students perceive a negligible appearance while on others, anti-Semitic expressions are reported at much higher rates (Saxe et al., 2016, p. 1).

Findings from popular media, however, tell a more consistently problematic story. In 2017, for example, 204 anti-Semitic incidents were reported on college campuses, representing an 89% increase from 2016 (Jaschik, 2018). Additionally, as Bauer-Wolf (2018) documented, colleges and universities experienced a dramatic increase in anti-Semitic incidents during the fall 2018 semester, which have continued unabated. Such actions included defacing property with swastikas, physical and verbal attacks on Jews, and vandalization of Jewish religious objects (e.g., a Menorah at Dartmouth College in December 2020). In short, recent reports indicate that Jews — and those who value Jews as equal members of democratic society — are facing increasingly hostile climates for religious expression both on- and off-campus (e.g., Russo, 2019). In this context, then, studying those campus attributes and activities that promote the development of appreciative attitudes among undergraduate students is timely, important, and necessary for ensuring not only expressed notions of interfaith pluralism, but the physical and psychological safety of Jewish collegians and their allies (Herbst, 2021).

Campus climates and outcomes

U.S. institutions of higher learning and forms of religious expression have always been closely coupled. As Rine and Reed (2019) present, this relationship has evolved from a colonial era of elite Christian-affiliated institutions to a current landscape featuring increasing worldview diversity, globalization, and the embrace of a secular ethos at many public and private institutions. Such dramatic shifts, the authors describe, have provided challenges and opportunities for postsecondary institutions, individual student development, and professionals (e.g., student affairs practitioners); challenges which, while not always easily resolved, can open avenues for ensuring that graduates and their historically rooted institutions are empowered to meaningfully and beneficially navigate the complex social realities confronting the 21^st century.

Drawing on those conceptual paradigms locating multifaceted student development within the context of complex campus climates (see Hurtado et al., 1999), empirical research has sought to demonstrate the relationship between distinctive collegiate settings and a set of empirically validated outcomes. Concerning practices, studies incorporating a climate framework have emphasized perceived support not only for worldview expression, but also for productively encountering and making meaning of those experiences that provoke, challenge, and open opportunities for positive psychosocial development (e.g., Ahmadi & Cole, 2015; Rockenbach & Mayhew, 2014).

Studies have also sought to examine the nature, frequency, and appearance of student exchanges. For example, two studies using data from the National Student Survey of Engagement (NSSE: Fosnacht & Broderick, 2020a, 2020b) have identified that students’ religious and/or spiritual background influenced their perception of support in the overall campus climate, even as roughly one in four students overall and 41% of first-year students identifying as non-Christian reported experiencing acts of religiously based intolerance. Such findings led the authors to conclude: “Typically overlooked in higher education research, our results suggest that religious/spiritual factors are an important component of the overall campus environment” (Fosnacht & Broderick, 2020a, p. 198).

With respect to student outcomes, research led by Mayhew and Rockenbach (e.g., 2017 2018, 2020) has focused primarily on three interconnected domains in which student development can occur: self-authored worldview commitment, pluralism orientation, and appreciative attitudes toward those holding worldview perspectives that differ from one’s own. The weight of the evidence on appreciative attitudes indicates that while certain religious groups are more or less appreciative of others, psychological and behavioral features of the campus climate can be influential in terms of promoting appreciative attitudes (e.g., Rockenbach et al., 2017).

We call attention to a previous cross-sectional study on appreciative attitudes toward Jews, which found several positive effects associated with college experiences (e.g., engagement), negative effects associated with climate perceptions (e.g., insensitivity), and a range of effects associated with student-level characteristics (e.g., worldview; Mayhew et al., 2018). This study was instrumental in shaping our current thinking and research with respect to uncovering a more nuanced understanding of appreciative attitudes toward Jews; however, it also held several important limitations. Certainly, the most notable point of differentiation is the longitudinal nature of the present effort, which permitted us to understand collegiate and institutional effects over-and-above students’ scores on the outcome measure at college entry. We also call attention to the more-than-doubling of our institutional sample between the two studies, which provides a more robust picture of institutions and their students in the United States. Finally, building on decades of previous evidence (e.g., Mayhew et al., 2016), our study was restricted to the first-term of college, a time when students often demonstrate significant growth and change on many affective dimensions. We hope this clarification establishes study distinctiveness while also framing the current study in the longer arc of a research agenda aimed at better understanding what features of the college experience can promote appreciative attitudes toward Jews.

Building on these theoretical and empirical presentations, we drew on an original conceptual framework (Mayhew & Rockenbach, 2021) designed to guide us in answering questions using our multi-institutional, longitudinal dataset. The next section presents this framework and several additional conceptual precursors which inform our broader inquiry into interfaith diversity experiences and attitudes among college students.

Conceptual framework

Figure 1 provides the complete conceptual framework, which motivates variable placement and operation. Incorporating robust conceptual and empirical perspectives (e.g., Astin, 1993; Rockenbach & Mayhew, 2014) this framework (Mayhew & Rockenbach, 2018, 2021) accounts for students’ entering characteristics, which includes varied exposure to interfaith experience as well as inputs, which have empirically demonstrated influence on our outcome measure (e.g., Mayhew et al., 2018, 2020). In addition, we include students’ appreciative attitudes toward Jews at the beginning of the first year of college, which functions as a pretest measure.

Figure 1. Conceptual framework.

The middle portion of the model identifies aspects of the college learning environment theorized to be influential on the outcome measure — appreciative attitudes toward Jews at the end of the first year of college. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives of theorists over the past several decades, this model integrates an ecological perspective (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Renn & Arnold, 2003) by locating individual student development within nested, recursive and dynamic environmental contexts. It further builds on the groundbreaking work of Hurtado et al. (1999) by situating appreciative attitudes toward a given worldview within structural, historical, behavioral, and psychological aspects of campuses that collectively express as campus climate and profoundly affect student experiences and institutional logics.

Operationalizing these perspectives, our integrated ecology — the interfaith learning environment — is comprised of five theoretically derived and interdependently operating systems. These are: formal and informal social and academic behaviors (see Berger & Milem, 2000; Patel & Meyer, 2011); disciplinary context (Mayhew et al., 2016); relational context as experienced by students (e.g., Gurin et al., 2002; Shapses-Wertheim, 2014); institutional context (Hurtado et al., 1999); and national context in which campus microcosms exist (e.g., Strayhorn, 2016). Taken collectively for the purposes of quantitative data collection and analysis, this framework supports the inclusion of both student-level (i.e., level 1) and institution-level (i.e., level 2) multilevel model covariates and results and subsequent interpretations robust to the multifaceted, interdependent, and dynamic nature of the relationships among students, organizations, and societies. Correspondingly, arrows in the framework represent ecological reciprocity and concentric circles depict the five dimensions of the interfaith learning environment as perceived by, and organizationally communicated to, students (see also Mayhew & Rockenbach, 2021).

Coupling the literature on Jewish student and collegiate experiences with our theoretical and conceptual framework, our model finally introduces its outcome: appreciative attitudes toward Jews at the end of the first year. We again ask: What features of the collegiate climate and experience influence undergraduate students’ development of appreciative attitudes toward Jews? We now introduce our methods, inclusive of data collection and analytical procedures.

Methods

Data source and sample

The data for this study were drawn from the Interfaith Diversity Experiences & Attitudes Longitudinal Survey (IDEALS), which was administered to undergraduate students attending one of 122 diverse institutions. To achieve this sample, institutions were recruited during the 2014–2015 academic year through a convenience process that attempted to stratify by geographic region, Carnegie Classification, and religious affiliation. Institutions range in religious affiliation (32 are public, 31 private nonsectarian, 30 Protestant-affiliated, 15 Evangelical Christian, and 14 Catholic) as well as geographic location (31 located in the South, 26 in the Great Lakes, 25 in the Mid-East, 13 in the Plains, nine in the Far West, six in New England, six in the Southwest, five in the Rocky Mountains, and one in a U.S. outlying area) and selectivity (14 most competitive, 12 highly competitive, 44 very competitive, 40 competitive, seven less competitive, and five noncompetitive).

As a longitudinal effort, the same students were surveyed at two time points: the beginning of their first term at their institution (Time 1; Fall 2015) and a year later (Time 2; Spring or Fall 2016). One of three methods was selected to administer the survey at Time 1, based on institutional preference. Institutions could distribute paper surveys, share a generic link to an online survey with eligible students, and/or send personal e-mail invitations containing unique survey links to each individual in the sample. Institutions also decided which students were included in the sample as long as they were in their first term on that campus (i.e., transfer students were included at a few of the institutions). At the end of Time 1, 20,426 students provided usable responses.

For the second administration, an invitation to participate was sent via e-mail to the students with usable responses at Time 1; students who did not respond to the Time 2 e-mail invitation were then contacted with a paper survey at their listed address. Across these two survey types, 8,782 total responses were received, yielding a longitudinal response rate of 43%. A total of 7,194 students provided usable data, yielding a completion rate of 82%. See IDEALS (2017) for full characteristics of the Time 2 sample. The final sample for this analysis consisted of 6,407 respondents who remained after listwise deletion. We selected this approach over imputation strategies to ensure that all estimates — especially with respect to student identity patterns — were based on endorsed items.

Sampling weights were created using the Generalized Raking Method (Deville et al., 1993) to make national claims and to reduce the effects of response bias by specific demographic groups. Due to the longitudinal nature of the data, weights were constructed in two rounds — one for each panel of respondents. Round 1 of the study was weighted to known percentages from the available IPEDS data from the Fall of 2015 to match six targets: gender; race; institutional type; Carnegie Classification; geographic area and school in an urban or city setting. Round 2 weighting adjusted the baseline Round 1 weight values for sample attrition. A normalized weight was calculated by taking the Time 2 sampling weight and scaling it by the ratio of the sample size to the population size. All analyses were conducted after applying the normalized Time 2 sampling weight created for this study.

Variables

The validity of the IDEALS instrument to measure the structural, psychological, and behavioral dimensions of campus climate for religious, spiritual, and worldview diversity has been empirically tested several times (see Mayhew & Bryant, 2013). We used multilevel modeling to examine the relationship between higher education institutional conditions and educational practices and the development of appreciative attitudes toward Jews. In an effort to clarify how our conceptual model guided variable placement and operation, measures are introduced in discrete subsections moving from the right of the model to its left. We further note that our presentation of predictors estimating the interfaith learning environments moves from the institutional-level to the student-experiential level in order to better reflect our analytical strategy. Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics for the variables in this study. Mayhew et al. (2020) provide more information about these factors, items, and their use in the framework.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics

Variable	Min.	Max.	M	SD
Positive Campus Climate	−3.32	1.95	0.00	1.00
Negative Campus Climate	−2.12	7.51	0.00	1.00
Provocative Campus Climate	−2.38	3.45	−0.01	0.99
General Appreciative Attitudes Campus Culture	−2.88	3.54	0.00	1.00
Pluralism Campus Culture	−2.90	5.45	0.00	1.00
Self-authored Worldview Commitment Campus Culture	−3.11	4.45	0.01	1.00
Appreciative Attitudes toward Jews Campus Culture	−2.84	3.72	0.00	1.00
Undergraduate Enrollment	−0.72	3.75	0.00	1.00
Selectivity	−2.30	1.87	−0.01	1.00
Control: Public Institution	0.00	1.00	0.74	0.44
Control: Private Institution	0.00	1.00	0.26	0.44
Full-time religious life staff employed by the institution	0.00	1.00	0.60	0.49
Part-time religious life staff employed by the institution	0.00	1.00	0.31	0.46
Religious life staff employed by their respective organizations	0.00	1.00	0.45	0.50
Institutional policies related to accommodations for religious holidays	0.00	1.00	0.56	0.50
Significant incident related to worldview diversity in the 2015–16 academic year	0.00	1.00	0.12	0.32
Precollege interfaith activities	−2.50	2.13	−0.13	1.07
Man	0.00	1.00	0.46	0.50
Woman	0.00	1.00	0.53	0.50
Another gender identity	0.00	1.00	0.01	0.10
Bisexual	0.00	1.00	0.07	0.25
Gay	0.00	1.00	0.02	0.14
Lesbian	0.00	1.00	0.02	0.12
Heterosexual	0.00	1.00	0.85	0.35
Queer	0.00	1.00	0.01	0.11
Another sexual identity	0.00	1.00	0.03	0.18
African American/Black	0.00	1.00	0.10	0.30
Asian American/Asian	0.00	1.00	0.17	0.38
Latino/a/x	0.00	1.00	0.13	0.34
Native American	0.00	1.00	0.01	0.11
White	0.00	1.00	0.48	0.50
Another race or ethnicity	0.00	1.00	0.02	0.13
Multiracial	0.00	1.00	0.10	0.29
Atheism	0.00	1.00	0.09	0.28
Buddhism	0.00	1.00	0.02	0.13
Catholicism	0.00	1.00	0.18	0.39
Evangelical Christianity	0.00	1.00	0.16	0.36
Hinduism	0.00	1.00	0.02	0.14
Judaism	0.00	1.00	0.02	0.13
LDS/Mormonism	0.00	1.00	0.04	0.21
Islam	0.00	1.00	0.02	0.15
Mainline Protestantism	0.00	1.00	0.10	0.29
Another worldview majority	0.00	1.00	0.04	0.20
Another worldview minority	0.00	1.00	0.06	0.23
Another non-religious	0.00	1.00	0.20	0.40
Another worldview	0.00	1.00	0.05	0.23
Continuing-generation student	0.00	1.00	0.70	0.46
First-generation student	0.00	1.00	0.29	0.45
Missing generation status	0.00	1.00	0.01	0.08
Arts & Humanities	0.00	1.00	0.10	0.31
Social Sciences or Education	0.00	1.00	0.17	0.37
Health Professions	0.00	1.00	0.11	0.31
Business Administration	0.00	1.00	0.07	0.26
Science, Engineering, or Math	0.00	1.00	0.35	0.48
Undecided	0.00	1.00	0.20	0.40
Less than 2.00	0.00	1.00	0.01	0.09
2.00–2.49	0.00	1.00	0.00	0.06
2.50–2.99	0.00	1.00	0.05	0.22
3.00–3.49	0.00	1.00	0.17	0.38
3.50–3.99	0.00	1.00	0.42	0.49
4.0 or Above	0.00	1.00	0.35	0.48
Political Leaning	1.00	5.00	3.26	1.00
Time 1 Appreciative Knowledge Score	−2.15	1.81	0.08	0.95
Time 1 Appreciative Attitudes toward Jews	−3.81	1.42	0.04	0.96
Space for Support and Spiritual Expression	−4.21	1.19	−0.05	0.98
Insensitivity on Campus	−0.95	5.61	0.22	1.29
Coercion on Campus	−1.12	2.93	0.05	1.06
Negative Interworldview Engagement	−1.00	3.78	0.10	1.12
Provocative Encounters with Worldview Diversity	−2.07	2.64	−0.07	1.06
Student Formal Academic Interfaith Behaviors
No activities	0.00	1.00	0.23	0.42
At least one activity	0.00	1.00	0.15	0.35
Two or more activities	0.00	1.00	0.62	0.48
Student Informal Academic Interfaith Behaviors
No activities	0.00	1.00	0.50	0.50
At least one activity	0.00	1.00	0.28	0.45
Two or more activities	0.00	1.00	0.22	0.41
Student Formal Social Interfaith Behaviors
No activities	0.00	1.00	0.20	0.40
At least one activity	0.00	1.00	0.22	0.42
Two or more activities	0.00	1.00	0.58	0.49
Student Informal Social Interfaith Behaviors
No activities	0.00	1.00	0.08	0.27
At least one activity	0.00	1.00	0.08	0.27
Two or more activities	0.00	1.00	0.84	0.37
Appreciative Attitudes toward Jews	−4.51	1.10	−0.11	1.03
Weighted N (rounded)	N = 2,986,456
Weighted N, Normalized (rounded)	N = 6,407

Dependent measure

The dependent variable was developed and refined through pilot testing (see Mayhew et al., 2018) and confirmatory factor analysis at both Time 1 and Time 2 of the survey administration. The resultant Time 2 scale included four items with a 5-point scale (1 = disagree strongly; 5 = agree strongly) and had a high degree of internal consistency (α = 0.84). Items included the following statements regarding Jews: In general, people in this group make positive contributions to society; In general, individuals in this group are ethical people; I have things in common with people in this group; and in general, I have a positive attitude toward people in this group. Subsequently, the appreciative attitudes toward Jews factor score was created by summing the responses for the four items. Through this instrument, we effectively and succinctly capture variability in responses along four important attributes of appreciation; in doing so, we are able to scale appreciation as a latent trait in a nuanced and theoretically informed manner.

Institutional context

The campus climate and culture variables were created using responses to items asked at the student level and averaging those scores to create an institution score. All indices used to create these institution-level scores are psychometrically robust based on confirmatory factor analyses involving the multi-institution sample, as well as at the level of the individual campus.

Campus climate

The positive campus climate index considers student perceptions of their institution’s structural worldview diversity (e.g., This campus is very religiously diverse; 4 items; α = 0.84) and welcomingness for students of various religious and nonreligious worldviews (e.g., This campus is a welcoming place for atheists; 14 items; α = 0.93) as measured at Time 2. The negative campus climate variable is based on an index of divisiveness (e.g., There is a great deal of conflict among people of different religious and nonreligious perspectives on this campus; 4 items; α = 0.80), also assessed at Time 2.

Campus culture

Four campus culture variables were created for each institution based on average student change in appreciative attitudes toward various worldviews, pluralism orientation, and self-authored worldview commitment over the first year. Two institutional-level appreciative attitudes scores were calculated: one for change in appreciative attitudes toward Jews and another for change in appreciative attitudes toward other religious groups combined (i.e., atheists, Buddhists, Evangelical Christians, Hindus, Mormons, and Muslims). Pluralism orientation reflects the degree to which students are accepting of and committed to engaging with people of other religions and worldviews (e.g., Cultivating interreligious understanding will make the world a more peaceful place; 19 items; α = 0.91). Self-authored worldview commitment represents students’ ability to make meaning of their own worldview identity in light of others’ worldviews (e.g., I have thoughtfully considered other religious and nonreligious perspectives before committing to my current worldview; 4 items; α = 0.84).

Campus conditions

Campus conditions include institutional control (i.e., public versus private), undergraduate population, and selectivity as determined by Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges (2015).

Campus behaviors

Campus behaviors include the types of religious, spiritual, or interfaith programs, spaces, curricular opportunities, and diversity policies provided on campus. Incorporating the visibility of Jewish organizations on campuses and the unique contours of the Jewish student experience (e.g., holidays, bias incidents; see Koren et al., 2016), the presence of full-time religious life staff employed by the institution, part-time religious life staff employed by the institution, and religious life staff employed by their respective organizations constituted the relevant types of religious, spiritual, or interfaith programs; the presence of institutional policies related to accommodations for religious holidays was also included, along with the number of significant incidents related to worldview diversity in the 2015–16 academic year. These data was collected using a questionnaire sent to institutional partners who served as the primary contact for the IDEALS administration.

Relational context

Shifting to those experiences within each institution, we focus first on the relational context. The relational context reflects students’ perception of space for support and spiritual expression (supportive context; e.g., This campus is a safe place for me to express my worldview; 4 items; α = 0.81), insensitivity on campus (discriminatory context; e.g., While you have been enrolled at your college or university, how often have you been mistreated on campus because of your worldview; 7 items; α = 0.85), coercion on campus (coercive context; e.g., While you have been enrolled at your college or university, how often have you felt pressured by others on campus to change your worldview; 4 items; α = 0.86), negative interworldview engagement (unproductive context; e.g., Regarding your interactions with people whose worldviews differ from yours, how often have you felt silenced from sharing your own experiences with prejudice and discrimination; 4 items; α = 0.86), and provocative experiences with worldview diversity (provocative context; e.g., While you have been enrolled at your college or university, how often have you had class discussions that challenged you to rethink your assumptions about another worldview; 6 items; α = 0.86).

Disciplinary context

Student disciplinary context was accounted for including their planned academic major in the model. Students were provided 14 disciplinary category options, which were collapsed into the following variables: arts & humanities; social sciences or education; health professions; business administration; science, engineering, or math; undecided or another major (including double majors).

Student behaviors

Finally, student interfaith behaviors consist of four indices, which were of primary interest to this study as they directly measure students’ formal and informal engagement with religious and spiritual diversity: student formal academic behaviors (e.g., Enrolled in a course on campus specifically designed to discuss interfaith engagement; 13 items), student informal academic behaviors (e.g., Discussed religious or spiritual topics with faculty; 5 items), student formal social behaviors (e.g., Attended religious services for a religious tradition that is not your own; 15 items), and student informal social behaviors (e.g., Had conversations with people of diverse religious or nonreligious perspectives about the values you have in common; 4 items). Students responded to these items by reporting whether they had engaged in the behavior, and model variables were created to indicate if a student did not participate in any behavior, at least one behavior, or two or more behaviors.

Entering characteristics

To account for students’ characteristics at college entry, we included gender identity, sexual orientation, race or ethnicity, education generation status, and high-school GPA in the analytic models. Religion/worldview was introduced, with Jewish students included in the analysis. A variable specifying the number of interfaith activities in which the student participated prior to starting college was also included along with an indicator of political leaning. Generation status was examined. We also included indices of student knowledge of other worldviews through asking multiple-choice questions and scored based on whether they provided the correct response. Appreciative attitudes toward Jews at Time 1 was also included as a control variable.

Variable coding

Notably, nearly all student-level variables were entered as effect codes instead of indicator variables (e.g., gender identity, race or ethnicity, religious/worldview identification). Effect codes compare a value for one group to the overall group mean of all students (specifically, the unweighted mean of the group means) rather than to an arbitrary reference group. Using effect codes additionally enables researchers to retain more information in their analytic models since parameter estimates for each categorical covariate can be offered in the predictive models (Mayhew & Simonoff, 2015). The exceptions to using this approach include education generation status, which was examined using indicator variables with continuing-generation students as the reference group for first-generation students and those who are missing their generation status, and student interfaith behaviors, which compares at least one activity and two or more activities to no activities.

The continuous student-level independent variables and the dependent variable were standardized at the student level with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. The continuous institution-level variables were also standardized, but across the 122 institutions, yielding a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one at the institution-level. As a result, unstandardized regression coefficients for these predictors are analogous to standardized coefficients, and coefficients for any categorical (effect-coded) variables can be interpreted as adjusted Cohen’s ds (Cohen et al., 2003). Converting the continuous variables to z-scores (i.e., standardizing) in this way is equivalent to grand-mean centering, a standard practice in multilevel modeling (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002).

Analyses

This hierarchical nature of the data necessitated using a multilevel modeling approach, which enables us to partition the within-institution (level 1) and between-institution (level 2) variances and estimate the standard errors appropriately (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was 0.037, which indicates that 3.7% of the variance in Time 2 appreciative attitudes toward Jews can be attributed to institution-level differences. Although this result represents a small proportion of the variance, multilevel modeling is still appropriate to account for the nested structure of the data.

The complete multilevel fixed-effects model is specified as:

$App.Att.to.Jews{ }^{\mathrm{\prime }}=\alpha +I{ }^{\mathrm{\prime }}\beta +P{ }^{\mathrm{\prime }}\gamma +R{ }^{\mathrm{\prime }}\delta +B{ }^{\mathrm{\prime }}\zeta +\epsilon$

Under this specification, appreciative attitudes toward Jews ($App.Att.to.Jews$) is a function of institutional and student characteristics and behaviors, where $I{ }^{\mathrm{\prime }}$ represents the matrix of institutional climate, culture, conditions, and behaviors; $P{ }^{\mathrm{\prime }}$ represents the matrix of student entry characteristics and disciplinary context; $R{ }^{\mathrm{\prime }}$ represents the matrix of student relational context; and $B{ }^{\mathrm{\prime }}$represents the matrix of student academic and social behaviors.

Analysis was conducted using four different multilevel models with fixed effects to measure the net effects of each aspect of the complete model. Model 1 included all institution-level variables (i.e., campus climate, culture, control, and behaviors). Model 2 consisted of the same institutional characteristics from Model 1 as well as student-level entering variables as well as academic major (i.e., disciplinary context), Time 1 knowledge scores, and Time 1 appreciative attitudes toward Jews (i.e., pretest). Model 3 included all Model 2 variables, plus the variables of the relational context. The final model, Model 4, added students’ college behaviors to the variables of Model 3. This modeling strategy was adopted to isolate and draw inferences from the effects of collegiate contexts and behaviors over and above all other model covariates.

Limitations

Three primary limitations confront this study. First, it is possible that attrition between Time 1 and 2 might not have occurred completely at random. Instead, students who completed the survey at Time 2 might have more in common with each other (e.g., predisposed to taking surveys, more attracted by the incentives, more interested the topic at hand, or some combination thereof) than the general population of first-term students, both at their own institutions and in the population. We recognize that the weighting procedures used may not fully address the threats to validity due to selective non-response by participants in the second wave. Second, we acknowledge that this sample of first-term undergraduate students is heavily skewed toward individuals aged 20 and under. Although we believe studying such a population is crucial to our understanding of the developmental benefits of postsecondary education, we recognize the increasing age diversity of first-term undergraduate students and acknowledge this limitation.

Finally, we understand and value the fact that questions concerning the use of regression-based strategies to estimate student change over time have (e.g., Pascarella & Wolniak, 2004) and indeed continue to be (e.g., Wolniak et al., 2020) debated. For our purposes, we draw on the strength of our inclusion of the pretest of students’ appreciative attitudes toward Jews largely uninfluenced by college to concur with Pascarella and Wolniak that “regression approach(es) that attempt to distinguish the part of pretest-to-posttest growth that is uniquely associated with college experiences from the part that is artifactually attributable to pretest scores is a legitimate, if imperfect, way of estimating the impact of college on true growth or change” (p. 355). We now offer the results of our study with these limitations in mind and encourage future efforts at leveraging our findings into additional studies of this phenomenon.

Results

Table 2 provides the full results for hierarchical linear modeling with fixed effects analyses predicting appreciative attitudes toward Jews after one year of college. As described earlier, the coefficients and significance tests for effect-coded variables indicate the difference between a particular group and the unweighted average value for that construct. Additionally, because the continuous variables are standardized, the HLM coefficients are analogous to standardized regression coefficients. Due to space constraints, we only discuss the results from the final model.

Table 2. Multilevel models predicting appreciative attitudes toward jews

	Model 1			Model 2			Model 3			Model 4
Variable	B	SE	Sig	B	SE	Sig	B	SE	Sig	B	SE	Sig
Institutional Context (Level 2)
Positive Campus Climate	0.052	0.050		0.046	0.027		−0.017	0.026		−0.017	0.027
Negative Campus Climate	0.013	0.027		0.018	0.015		0.025	0.013		0.025	0.015
Appreciative Attitudes toward Jews Campus Culture	0.119	0.050	*	0.135	0.024	***	0.134	0.024	***	0.129	0.026	***
General Appreciative Attitudes Campus Culture	−0.070	0.057		−0.051	0.041		−0.055	0.038		−0.052	0.039
Pluralism Campus Culture	−0.023	0.038		0.001	0.018		−0.007	0.019		−0.006	0.020
Self-authored Worldview Commitment Campus Culture	−0.027	0.035		−0.020	0.023		−0.035	0.024		−0.032	0.024
Undergraduate Enrollment	−0.023	0.036		−0.020	0.014		−0.029	0.013	*	−0.033	0.013	**
Selectivity	0.077	0.027	**	−0.015	0.022		−0.016	0.021		−0.017	0.020
Control	−0.071	0.085		−0.001	0.044		−0.074	0.049		−0.104	0.049	*
Full-time religious life staff employed by the institution	0.128	0.075		0.058	0.043		0.031	0.044		0.034	0.046
Part-time religious life staff employed by the institution	0.100	0.058		0.029	0.036		0.041	0.037		0.050	0.037
Religious life staff employed by their respective organizations	−0.066	0.054		−0.008	0.026		0.022	0.027		0.026	0.027
Institutional policies related to accommodations for religious holidays	0.032	0.061		0.023	0.030		0.016	0.031		0.015	0.030
Significant incident related to worldview diversity in the 2015–16 academic year	0.097	0.079		0.063	0.040		0.052	0.041		0.058	0.040
Entry Characteristics (Level 1)
Precollege interfaith activities				0.055	0.031		0.054	0.029		0.035	0.032
Man				0.131	0.063	*	0.105	0.059		0.107	0.059
Woman				0.113	0.050	*	0.096	0.047	*	0.095	0.048	*
Another gender identity				−0.244	0.106	*	−0.201	0.099	*	−0.202	0.100	*
Bisexual				−0.062	0.134		−0.093	0.139		−0.091	0.135
Gay				0.035	0.116		−0.011	0.125		−0.013	0.122
Lesbian				−0.177	0.079	*	−0.214	0.075	**	−0.210	0.075	**
Heterosexual				0.054	0.215		0.067	0.220		0.067	0.224
Queer				0.309	0.143	*	0.376	0.138	**	0.385	0.140	**
Another sexual identity				−0.159	0.107		−0.124	0.101		−0.138	0.101
African American/Black				0.130	0.122		0.147	0.109		0.139	0.107
Asian American/Asian				0.163	0.097		0.180	0.096		0.175	0.099
Latino/a/x				0.084	0.115		0.050	0.103		0.049	0.105
Native American				−0.427	0.165	**	−0.405	0.203	*	−0.400	0.220
White				0.202	0.054	***	0.166	0.051	***	0.165	0.051	***
Another race or ethnicity				−0.334	0.233		−0.308	0.203		−0.296	0.197
Multiracial				0.182	0.064	**	0.170	0.072	*	0.168	0.074	*
Atheism				−0.112	0.066		−0.081	0.084		−0.073	0.080
Buddhism				−0.074	0.120		0.025	0.151		0.013	0.149
Catholicism				0.119	0.063		0.072	0.054		0.073	0.056
Evangelical Christianity				−0.037	0.038		−0.023	0.042		−0.027	0.041
Hinduism				−0.187	0.211		−0.278	0.237		−0.300	0.235
Judaism				0.101	0.099		0.127	0.093		0.136	0.092
LDS/Mormonism				0.282	0.085	***	0.218	0.104	*	0.215	0.104	*
Islam				0.085	0.099		0.067	0.089		0.055	0.088
Mainline Protestantism				0.072	0.055		0.056	0.052		0.057	0.051
Another worldview majority				−0.283	0.265		−0.315	0.240		−0.314	0.242
Another worldview minority				0.159	0.080	*	0.196	0.083	*	0.209	0.088	*
Another non-religious				−0.132	0.049	**	−0.131	0.045	**	−0.127	0.048	**
Another worldview				0.007	0.149		0.067	0.135		0.082	0.134
First-generation student				−0.074	0.062		−0.080	0.057		−0.085	0.056
Missing generation status				0.272	0.154		0.151	0.199		0.113	0.193
Disciplinary Context (Level 1)
Arts and humanities				−0.080	0.037	*	−0.058	0.035		−0.060	0.036
Social sciences or education				−0.056	0.059		−0.057	0.050		−0.051	0.047
Health professions				0.107	0.053	*	0.095	0.046	*	0.094	0.046	*
Science, engineering, or math				0.032	0.056		0.025	0.049		0.024	0.049
Business administration				−0.058	0.055		−0.061	0.047		−0.058	0.045
Undecided or another				0.055	0.037		0.056	0.039		0.051	0.038
Less than 2.00				−0.154	0.134		−0.137	0.224		−0.090	0.242
2.00–2.49				−0.017	0.200		0.064	0.250		0.037	0.264
2.50–2.99				0.056	0.138		0.019	0.114		0.014	0.115
3.00–3.49				−0.045	0.080		−0.048	0.093		−0.047	0.096
3.50–3.99				0.093	0.086		0.063	0.103		0.057	0.107
4.0 or above				0.068	0.095		0.038	0.116		0.028	0.121
Political Leaning				0.066	0.036		0.040	0.033		0.038	0.032
Time 1 Appreciative Knowledge Score				0.016	0.018		0.034	0.020		0.028	0.019
Time 1 Appreciative Attitudes toward Jews				0.501	0.043	***	0.458	0.039	***	0.458	0.038	***
Relational Context (Level 1)
Space for Support and Spiritual Expression							0.219	0.033	***	0.210	0.033	***
Insensitivity on Campus							0.002	0.025		0.005	0.023
Coercion on Campus							−0.055	0.047		−0.061	0.048
Negative Interworldview Engagement							−0.012	0.039		−0.015	0.038
Provocative Encounters with Worldview Diversity							0.071	0.019	***	0.068	0.021	***
Student Behaviors (Level 1)
Student Formal Academic Interfaith Behaviors
At least one activity										−0.110	0.066
Two or more activities										−0.031	0.056
Student Informal Academic Interfaith Behaviors
At least one activity										−0.045	0.065
Two or more activities										0.034	0.061
Student Formal Social Interfaith Behaviors
At least one activity										0.075	0.051
Two or more activities										0.095	0.044	*
Student Informal Social Interfaith Behaviors
At least one activity										0.042	0.095
Two or more activities										0.125	0.077
Total variance explained		0.603^			0.312			0.367			0.370

* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001

^Variance explained at Level 2

In this model, an institutional campus culture of appreciation of Jews proved positively associated (d = .129) with appreciative attitudes toward Jews at Time 2. The size of the undergraduate student body (d = −.033) and institutional control (d = −.104) were also related to appreciative attitudes toward Jews, yet in the negative direction; institutions with larger student bodies and private institutions saw lower rates of appreciative attitudes.

Considering the relational context, perception of space for support and spiritual expression proved positively associated with appreciative attitudes toward Jews at the end of the first year of college (d = .210). Provocative encounters with worldview diversity also had a positive, albeit notably smaller, effect (d = .068). Additionally, engaging in interfaith behaviors mattered to the development of appreciative attitudes toward Jews. Specifically, participation in two or more formal activities demonstrated a positive effect (d = .095) and, though not statistically significant, participation in two or more informal activities registered a notable effect size (d = .125). Disciplinary context was also associated with appreciative attitudes toward Jews after the first year of college; students in the health professions (d = .094) had higher than average attitudes. Predictably, initial appreciative attitudes toward Jews were strongly associated (d = .458) with these attitudes at the end of the first year of college.

Finally turning to additional student characteristics, relative to the average level, students identifying as women (d = .095) had higher appreciative attitudes toward Jews, whereas those who identify with another gender identity (d = −.202) exhibited lower appreciative attitudes than the average. Students identifying as Lesbian (d = −.210) also indicated lower appreciative attitudes toward Jews, relative to the average, while queer-identifying students (d = .385) indicated higher appreciative attitudes. In terms of race or ethnicity, white (d = .165) and multiracial (d = .168) students had higher than average appreciative attitudes. When considering worldview, students who identified as members of the Church of Jesus Chris of Latter-day Saints (d = .215) had higher appreciative attitudes toward Jews when compared to the average. A similar positive finding surfaced for students who hold another minoritized worldview (d = .209), whereas students with another non-religious worldview (d = −.127) had lower than average appreciative attitudes.

Discussion and implications

Provided the longitudinal (i.e., pretest-to-posttest) nature of these data and presence of findings associated with on-campus experiences even after controlling for environmental features of individual campuses, these results suggest that certain collegiate experiences can prove influential in developing undergraduates’ appreciative attitudes toward Jews. We focus our discussion on three specific experiences that were positively associated with this outcome in the final model: space for support and spiritual expression, participation in multiple (e.g., more than two) interfaith activities, and frequent and productive provocative experiences with worldview diversity. We also briefly comment on effects related to institution- and student-level characteristics. Throughout our presentation, we encourage readers to review both the finding as well as its magnitude of effect when considering our interpretations.

Safety in worldview expression

Perceiving the campus as a safe space for expressing one’s worldview inside and outside the classroom, as well as having religious holidays and observances accommodated by faculty and staff, contributed to developing appreciative attitudes toward Jews. Extending the work of previous scholars (e.g., Dovidio et al., 2004), we speculate that such feelings of personal and psychological safety may at once be ecological pre-conditions for development of appreciative attitudes as well as contributors to sustained development over the first year of college. When individuals feel safe and honored in expressing their own tradition, they may begin to internalize the inherent value in other faith and non-faith traditions and those who espouse them.

Engagement in multiple interfaith activities

This finding connected to space is also important to understand in the context of interpreting the finding that students, on average and after all student-level and institutional-level controls are introduced, develop appreciative attitudes toward Jews in association with engagement in multiple interfaith activities. Such activities may include participating in an interfaith action that has a positive community benefit or attending services for a religious tradition that is not one’s own. The coming together of people and ideas through activities (e.g., interfaith dinners, dialogs) may increase feelings of safety, demonstrate authentic institutional logics supportive of interfaith narratives, and connect students, faculty, and/or staff in pursuit of shared productive exchange. We position this result as further evidence of the close link between interfaith involvement and the emergence of appreciative attitudes during the developmentally critical first undergraduate term.

Additionally, our results draw a distinction between engaging in only one activity and engaging in more than one activity and demonstrate notable effect sizes across both formal and informal areas. We wonder whether the significant increase from one to two or more could reflect a degree of movement from interfaith tolerance to gaining deep and lasting levels of appreciation for Jews. Such a finding certainly speaks to the established benefits of sustained forms of engagement (Astin, 1993)—engagement that moves beyond mere worldview tourism toward making an authentic commitment to gaining greater appreciation. With specific reference to attitudes toward Jews, we might consider such sustained engagement along these lines; for example, from a non-Jewish student attending one Shabbat dinner with a friend out of curiosity to the same student attending multiple Jewish-life activities in recognition of their campus Jewish community and a desire to actively participate in interfaith experiences.

This finding may be of particular interest to campus Jewish organizations. These organizations often attempt to engage all students in celebrations such as Shabbat dinners, Menorah lighting, and Purim (Katz & Feigelson, 2019). While our data cannot be disaggregated to the programmatic level, we see this as perhaps indicating that the engagement goals of formal Jewish educators (e.g., Chabad shluchim, Hillel Rabbis) are being met to some degree. Such a finding, then, suggests continued investment in these on-campus Jewish activities is necessary as their presence (e.g., having a Rabbi and Rebbetzin in an area with a low Jewish population) and programming can positively affect both Jews and the wider campus community.

Provocative encounters with worldview differences

Greater provocative experiences with worldview diversity (e.g., feeling challenged to rethink assumptions about another worldview, having discussions with someone of another worldview that had a positive influence on one’s perceptions of that worldview) was associated with developing higher levels of appreciative attitudes toward Jews. Considering this finding, as well as its potential relationship to significant control variables, we believe that such experiences may be related to having one’s assumptions and beliefs about Jews challenged. Given the proportionally small numbers of Jews and their relative geographical homogeneity in the United States (U. S. Religion Census, 2019), it is possible that many students have had limited interaction with Jewish people and limited exposure to Jewish practices. Encountering Jewish life during college, in line with the relational component of the conceptual framework, may therefore promote supported and productive moments of contact, which have the power to challenge pre-conceived ideas of a worldview identity group and overwrite misinformed narratives with informed experiences.

Institutional-level variables

Reflecting on institutional variables, we unsurprisingly observed a positive association between appreciative attitudes toward Jews at the level of campus culture and student-level development of such appreciative attitudes. Consistent with previous evidence related to student exchanges across forms of diversity, campus culture matters greatly; the messages — explicit and implicit — that students receive during their first year regarding attitudes, values, and beliefs of the campus community in turn shape developmental experiences. Moving to enrollment, we note that having a larger student population was associated, on average, with lower appreciative attitudes toward Jews. We consider several possible explanations for this finding, including the possibility that a greater number of students inherently introduces greater variability of attitudes and that larger campuses may struggle to fully integrate first-term students in the complete range of interfaith efforts. Lastly with respect to institutional control, we note that private campuses tend to exhibit significantly lower average levels of appreciative attitudes toward Jews than public campuses. We see this finding as in part reflecting the historical movement of public institutions toward increasing secularization, as well as potentially an artifact of our sample which included a notable number of religiously affiliated private institutions (Rine & Reed, 2019).

Student-level characteristics

Before turning to our discussion of statistically significant student-level characteristics, we offer two points of methodological consideration in reading these findings. First, when interpreting effect-coded variables, there will always be positive (i.e., greater-than-average) and negative (i.e., lesser-than-average) values reported. We see our ability to incorporate and estimate a parameter for each identity group as a strength of our analysis, though understand that necessary negative coefficients may not be as easily interpretable when compared to the appearance of such coefficients in models using more traditional presentations (e.g., indicator variables). Second, and relatedly, statistically significant group-level parameters in the final model indicate only that students in such groups had posttest appreciative attitudes scores that were nonrandomly above or below the overall posttest mean score after accounting for all other variables, including the pretest. Such findings, in other words, do not indicate that members of groups developed more (or less) than members of other groups. We encourage such findings be interpreted, therefore, primarily as potential points of departure for further research and practice reflections connected to our outcome (see also Katz & Feigelson, 2019).

With respect to worldview, we found that only one explicit worldview identity — LDS/Mormonism — was associated with developing appreciative attitudes toward Jews, perhaps reflecting theological and/or cultural underpinnings of this religious tradition. We note that in contrast to earlier cross-sectional efforts that found a strong, negative association between students expressing Islam as their worldview, this finding does not appear in our current longitudinal sample (Mayhew et al., 2018).

Additionally, being a member of another worldview minority group in the aggregate (i.e., non-Christian) was positively associated with higher-than-average scores on the outcome measure while identifying as another non-religious was negatively associated. Considering these findings with full awareness of the challenging nature of interpreting collapsed categories (e.g., Wells & Stage, 2015), we speculate based on previous evidence (Bryant Rockenbach & Mayhew, 2013) that worldview minority students may have stronger orientations toward embracing ecumenical orientations than their worldview majority peers, which in turn may influence their positive appreciative attitudes toward a specific, other worldview minority (e.g., Jews). Non-religious students, meanwhile, may have their attitudes shaped in exchange with a potentially more hostile climate to their non-religious perspectives than their religiously-identifying peers (Mayhew, Bowman, & Rockenbach, 2014). Such a finding may again suggest the importance of engaging students in interfaith and interworldview activities across the full range of perspectives, especially for students who identify as “none” or “non-religious” (see Suomala, 2019). In light of this finding, and in support of future inquiry and practice, we ask: What would it mean and look like in practice to fully include non-religious students in interfaith engagement?

Implications

We now offer several explicit implications for research and practice. Regarding research, we believe this study holds potential to motivate future mixed-methodological avenues for further understanding and nuancing these findings. Future work could consider a deep and thorough study of the importance of space for worldview expression on campuses, perhaps using spaces as starting points for a grounded theory study of their personnel, usage, and symbolic importance. Additionally, such efforts can nuance the relationship between formal social practices and increased appreciative attitudes for Jews. These studies might go deeper than this quantitative approach was able to and explore how non-Jewish students are affected by their participation in Jewish activities.

Surfacing the challenges of fully discussing our inclusion of entering and identity-based characteristics, we also encourage future researchers to seek avenues for adopting an intersectional approach when building upon our findings. Future work might seek to explore the experiences of Jews holding multiple marginalized identities and uncover how their unique collegiate learning experiences might inform their intrapersonal and interpersonal development (e.g., Goodman, 2014; see also Herbst, 2021).

Given varied impressions in the literature, future work might additionally consider the extent to which faculty, staff, and/or administrators do (or do not) hold appreciative attitudes toward Jews and the ramifications for such attitudes on Jews, non-Jews, and the campus climate overall. As established through the work of Baxter Magolda (2004) and others (e.g., Barber, 2020) providing students an opportunity to fully bring their prior knowledge and identities into their learning is central and vital, not peripheral nor incidental.

We see considerations for practice covering both the curricular and co-curricular realm. As has been previously noted (e.g., Rockbenbach et al., 2015) the formal classroom environment can help or hinder students’ feelings of support and safety for worldview expression. We therefore encourage faculty to appreciate students’ faith traditions both in dialogue (i.e., classroom conversations, writing) and policy (e.g., excusing Jewish students for holidays such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur). Given the known relationship between student-faculty interactions and a multitude of student outcomes (Mayhew et al., 2016) the importance of faculty behavior — and education in the direction of such behavior through professional training and faculty development practices — cannot be understated nor underestimated.

In connection with the co-curriculum, we see encouragement for the great work already being performed by formal faith actors and student development personnel. The findings from this study indeed support interfaith programming and demonstrate its potential for influencing development in the direction of greater appreciative attitudes toward Jews. This said, we remind co-curricular educators that students may enter such spaces and conversations from very different developmental starting points. We therefore suggest, in line with the findings of this study, that it is “incumbent upon student affairs educators to play leadership roles in moving religion away from being a difficult issue toward being an issue that can unite individuals across lines of difference” (Selznick, 2019, p. 257). We further note the possibilities that new strategies will need to be adopted to sustain such engagement as higher education moves through socially distanced pandemic realities (see Selznick et al., 2020).

Conclusion

In closing, we see this study as significant in two important ways. First, rigorous analysis of our comprehensive dataset demonstrated, through controlling for a host of covariates including dispositions entering college, that students’ appreciative attitudes toward Jews can be developed through postsecondary learning experiences and features of the campus itself. While such development has long been surmised, and serves as a motivating feature of prominent on-campus Jewish organizations (e.g., Chabad, Hillel), little empirical evidence has been provided prior to this study. Second, we hope through this work to emphasize why such development is important. As Jews in the United States and globally increasingly confront a surge in anti-Semitism (Herbst, 2021), and such viewpoints become once-again normalized within global political structures, it is vital that appreciative attitudes toward those holding this historically marginalized worldview are not only developed to the benefit of Jews themselves, but also to protect against the manipulation of anti-Semitism to corrupt democratic traditions and commit atrocities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.