University Hall tower, McMaster University. Photo by Matthew Ingram/Wikimedia Commons.

The recently released Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences (CASE) report and a follow-up published in University Affairs weaponize antisemitism while reaching deeply flawed, misleading conclusions.

As a group of social science researchers with training and experience in quantitative and qualitative approaches, it is simply not possible to accept the findings of this ‘study’ at face value because its methodology is fundamentally flawed. Independent Jewish Voices Canada, Jewish Faculty Network, and Joshua Sealy-Harrington have already pointed out a range of glaring issues. For one, the survey upon which the data is based relied on a self-selected, unweighted convenience sample recruited through established Zionist organizations. Progressive, anti-Zionist, and non-Zionist Jewish students were predominantly shut out of the data collection. As anyone who teaches methods for social science knows, you simply cannot make sweeping national claims about a diverse demographic when you intentionally survey a narrow faction. In essence, the report uses a qualitative survey methodology to make quantitative claims—a frankly irresponsible error in judgment for a professional social scientist.

To make definitively broad generalizations grounded in a small, biased selection sample is an unacceptable error, yet this is something the authors of this report repeatedly do, such as when they assert, “95.7% said they had experienced or witnessed at least one instance of antisemitism over the previous 12 months” without providing a caveat such as “of those surveyed” or a strong note on the limitations of the report’s methodology. This finding of 95 percent has, predictably, been repeated ad nauseam in the media. In fact, the authors of the report have admitted that among the very small number of respondents who indicated Zionism was not important at all to them, 92........

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