Independent Jewish Voices Canada has submitted a policy brief to the Department of Canadian Heritage raising serious concerns about the methodology, terminology, and consultation process behind the recently released Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences (CASE) report.
While antisemitism must be confronted seriously, the report relies on an unweighted, non-probability sample, conflates Jewish identity with Israel and Zionism, and failed to meaningfully include progressive, non-Zionist, and anti-Zionist Jewish organizations such as IJV Canada in its consultation and recruitment process.
These shortcomings matter because the report is being presented as national evidence about Jewish student life in Canada. A study that does not adequately capture the political and institutional diversity of Jewish students risks turning the experiences of a limited sample into conclusions about an entire community.
Our recommendations include:
- Recommendation 1: Commission an independent methodological review.
Before the CASE report is relied upon for policy or funding decisions, the Department should commission an independent review of the survey design, sampling strategy, and weighting decisions by researchers without a prior role in the project. - Recommendation 2: Disaggregate Jewish identity, Judaism, Israel, Israelis, and Zionism in future instruments.
The IHRA definition should not be used. Future government-commissioned surveys on antisemitism should measure hostility toward Jews as Jews separately from hostility toward Zionism as a political position or Israel as a state, in both question wording and public reporting, rather than combining them into single items or single statistics. - Recommendation 3: Separate personal victimization from witnessed incidents.
Future reporting should distinguish clearly between what respondents personally experienced, what they directly witnessed, and what they encountered online or heard about second-hand, rather than combining these into single headline percentages. - Recommendation 4: Include progressive, anti-Zionist, and non-Zionist Jewish organizations in the design, advisory structure, and recruitment of national surveys.
The Department should ensure that any future national survey of Jewish Canadians’ experiences, including a future phase of the CASE project, involves consultation with, and recruitment support from, organizations such as IJV Canada that represent progressive, anti-Zionist, and non-Zionist segments of the Jewish community. This is essential to both the methodological validity of the sample and the legitimacy of a report that purports to speak on behalf of Jewish students as a whole. - Recommendation 5: Diversify future advisory bodies and disclose their mandate.
Advisory boards for government-commissioned research on antisemitism should reflect the genuine political, gender, and institutional diversity of Jewish life in Canada, and reports should disclose what authority such bodies held over the final product, including whether members reviewed and approved specific findings. - Recommendation 6: Disclose recruitment partners and consultation criteria.
Canadian Heritage should publish which organizations distributed the survey, how advisers were selected, and what steps were taken to reach Jewish students outside mainstream institutional networks. - Recommendation 7: Protect both student safety and lawful political expression.
CASE should not be used to justify surveillance, censorship, or discipline directed at Palestinian advocacy, anti-Zionist organizing, boycotts, or critical scholarship. Institutional responses should focus on conduct such as threats, harassment, and identity-based discrimination, not on political viewpoint. - Recommendation 8: Address antisemitism as part of a broader anti-racism framework.
Canadian Heritage should confront antisemitism alongside Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism, anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of oppression. These have distinct histories and manifestations, but they often reinforce one another and should not be placed in competition.
The brief also raises concerns about examples in the report that appear to classify anti-Zionist political expression, criticism of Israel, and contested classroom discussion as evidence of antisemitism. This kind of conflation risks weakening the fight against genuine anti-Jewish hatred while also threatening Palestinian advocacy and academic freedom.
The fight against antisemitism should be rigorous, inclusive, and grounded in the full diversity of Jewish life.