Touro offers tuition break for students seeking respite from campus antisemitism

NEW YORK (JNS) — Touro University (Touro College until an official name change in 2022), headquartered in New York City, has announced a new “Safe Campus Scholarship” encouraging students who want to transfer from their current schools due to the uptick in campus antisemitism.

The academic institution—founded to foster Jewish education at the higher institutional level and with branches throughout the United States—said it would cover 25% of tuition for these new enrollees.

Touro ran ads following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and the resulting boom in pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas rallies that followed, in addition to anti-Israel and anti-Jewish invective on campus. One ad said “Jewish students are under attack” and “At Touro, you’re home—a place where your values are celebrated.”

The university’s president, Alan Kadish, stated that said “we just want to make sure that students have a place [where] they feel comfortable.”

Catholic universities have also invited Jewish students to transfer to their schools. Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio and Walsh University in North Canton, Ohio, said their campuses offer a refuge.

Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities and a former president of DePaul University in Chicago, told JNS that many Catholic universities “were founded during waves of immigration that included both Catholics and Jews.”