Poll analysis: Trump’s approach to universities, Israel-Palestine, and antisemitism

The Trump administration’s attacks on universities in the name of fighting antisemitism have caused a crisis in American higher education institutions. This assault began during the Biden administration, when the Republican-led House of Representatives initiated high-profile hearings that led to resignations of university leaders and tension on campuses. But the direct interventions of the executive branch—in threatening to withhold federal grants, demanding institutional changes, revoking student visas, and acting to deport faculty and students—have been unprecedented. What does the American public see as driving these actions by the Trump administration?

To find out, the University of Maryland’s Critical Issues Poll, which I direct, fielded some questions with SSRS on its Opinion Panel Omnibus platform. The survey was conducted from April 3 to April 7, 2025, among a sample of 1,007 respondents. The margin of error for total respondents is +/-3.7 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

Here are some key findings and analysis that places them in a broader context:

First, Americans see confronting Trump administration critics and critics of Israel as even stronger driving forces than confronting antisemitism. Specifically, we asked: “You may have heard of the Trump administration’s actions toward a number of American universities, students, and faculty, particularly regarding protests of the war in Gaza. How would you evaluate the degree to which the following reasons were behind the administration’s actions?” We provided respondents with three basic choices: “confronting antisemitism,” “confronting critics of Israel,” and “confronting critics of the Trump administration.” Keep in mind that these possible responses are by no means comprehensive, only common interpretations; the aim is to probe how much of a role respondents think each played.

A majority, 57% and 53% respectively, said confronting critics of the Trump administration and confronting critics of Israel mattered “a lot” or “somewhat,” while 44% said the same about confronting antisemitism. At the same time, 32% said confronting antisemitism was “not much” of a factor or “not at all,” compared to 24% each who said the same about confronting administration critics and critics of Israel.

As usual, there were partisan differences with 60% of Republicans saying antisemitism is a factor in Trump’s actions toward universities, compared to 30% of Democrats. But it is also notable that nearly the same percentage of Republicans, 57%, saw confronting critics of Israel as a factor, and 50% saw confronting critics of the Trump administration as a factor.

Although we have not asked specifically about universities in the past, we have asked questions about labeling people antisemitic in the political discourse, both before the Hamas October 2023 attack on Israel and after. The results indicated that Americans view labeling people antisemitic as more often used to delegitimize political opponents and critics of Israel than to describe people who are genuinely antisemitic.

In particular, in June 2023, we found that when asked their impressions about how labeling people antisemitic is used in the American political discourse, 51% said the labeling is used to delegitimize political opponents “frequently” (21%) or “sometimes” (30%). Those numbers went up to 67% in July 2024 (34% “frequently” and 33% “sometimes”).

At the same time, those who said the labeling was used to delegitimize critics of Israel went from 49% in 2023 (22% “frequently” and 27% “sometimes”) to 64% in 2024 (34% “frequently” and 30% “sometimes”).

In comparison, those who said the labeling described people who are genuinely antisemitic went from 48% in 2023 (19% “frequently” and 29% “sometimes”) to 61% in 2024 (25% “frequently” and 36% “sometimes”).

One notable change is that the number of those who said they didn’t know declined from 35% or more in 2023 to 23% or less in 2024, as public attention was more focused on these issues after October 7, 2023. Otherwise, the changes in the responses were somewhat proportional to each other, suggesting robustness months before the October 7, 2023 attack and months after.

The largest increases from 2023 to 2024 among those answering “frequently” came from describing de-legitimation of political opponents (13 points), followed by de-legitimation of critics of Israel (12 points) and genuine antisemitism (6 points). Keep in mind that attitudes may have also shifted since last summer on this issue, and our poll will be further probing possible change later this spring.

Second, while 37% of Americans say they don’t know when asked to describe the Trump administration policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue, 30%—including about half of Democrats (48%) and a plurality of independents (38%)—say Trump’s policy “leans toward Israel more than I do,” compared to 5% who say it leans toward the Palestinians more than they do. At the same time, 28%—including a majority of Republicans (55%)—say the policy coincides with their position.

It is notable that the latest Pew poll on this issue included a question very similar to the one we fielded, though with slightly different wording, and found nearly identical results. It asked, “Do you think Donald Trump is…” with the response options: “Favoring the Israelis too much,” “Favoring the Palestinians too much,” “Striking about the right balance,” or “Not sure.” The poll found that 31% said Trump is favoring the Israelis too much, 29% said he is striking the right balance, 3% said he is favoring the Palestinians too much, and 37% said they were not sure.

The poll also found that 36% of Jewish Americans said that Trump was favoring Israelis too much, compared to only 2% who said he was favoring the Palestinians too much, while 43% said he was striking the right balance.

Implications of recent polls

Congressional hearings, Trump administration policies, and much of our public discourse have highlighted the issue of antisemitism as a driving force, especially on American college campuses. Public opinion polls show that the public sees antisemitism as one of the driving issues for Trump campus policies and, in the public discourse, as a factor in labeling people antisemitic. But the public sees targeting political opponents and critics of Israel as even greater factors in driving policies toward universities and the labeling of people as antisemitic—even more so after the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza.

Part of the discrepancy between the position of the political establishment and that of the public stems from differing perceptions of the protests against Israeli actions in Gaza and how those protests are portrayed by politicians, especially on the right. To be sure, the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, generated immediate and measurable sympathy for Israel across the political spectrum, as our poll showed just two weeks after the attack. But much of that support quickly dissipated following the subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza, as we also found as early as November 2023, and sympathy for Israel continued to decline. Our poll last month found that 36% of all Americans—including a majority of Democrats—view Israeli actions in Gaza as constituting at least major war crimes, with many seeing them as acts of genocide or “akin to genocide.”

These findings are supported by new major polling from Pew and Gallup. The Pew poll found that a majority of respondents—53%—have an unfavorable view of Israel, an increase of 11 percentage points from 42% in 2022. As the Pew report noted, “The share of U.S. adults who voice very unfavorable views of Israel has roughly doubled over this period.” Notably, since 2022, all segments of the public examined have shown increasingly unfavorable views of Israel—including Democrats, who rose from 53% unfavorable in 2022 to 69% in 2025; Republicans, who rose from 27% to 37%; and Democrats age 50 and older, whose unfavorable views increased the most, from 43% to 66%, increasingly aligning with younger Democrats.

The trend among Democrats was also reflected in the latest Gallup poll, which found that attitudes have shifted nearly 180 degrees since 2001. Democratic sympathy for the Palestinians has risen from 16% in 2001 to 59% in 2025, while sympathy for the Israelis has dropped from 51% to 21% over the same period. The Gallup poll also found that, for the first time since 2001, less than half of all Americans are now sympathetic toward Israel.

One is hard-pressed to find these pervasive American public attitudes proportionately reflected in the statements of American elected officials. In fact, these striking shifts in public attitudes, especially in the last two years, have taken root despite differing official and media discourse.