Antisemitism Is on the Rise in New York’s High Schools. Let’s Teach the Lesson that Works.

This April, members of Scarsdale’s Israeli Culture Club had pasted fliers on the wall advertising Israelfest and had received permission from the school district to host it. Only days later, these same flyers were found, removed, and placed in the urinals of a boys’ restroom at Scarsdale High School. On Instagram, a photo of one circulation and one student respite is captioned with the comment “Keep up the good work.” She is the daughter of the school board president. 

Scarsdale High is considered one of the top public high schools in New York, a village in Westchester with a Jewish community that made up about one-third of the total population by 1960. Therefore, the students who had torn down the fliers were raised adjacent to Jewish families. Many of them attended classes with Jewish classmates. Previously, in 2019, swastikas had appeared in the very same restrooms, and Governor Andrew Cuomo dispatched the State Police Hate Crimes Task Force to investigate.

I attend high school several miles away from Scarsdale High School. I am also Jewish. And every time there is a school vandalism incident, school superintendents issue press releases calling it “horrible.” The graffiti keeps appearing nonetheless.

Good news arrives through the data. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), in 2025, 6,274 antisemitic incidents were reported throughout the United States, 33% fewer than in 2024. This is a decrease of 19% in reports of antisemitic incidents within New York State (the leading state for such incidents) compared to 2024. In Westchester County alone, antisemitic incidents declined approximately 30%. Reports of antisemitic incidents at New York colleges decreased by 64%. 

Throughout all this data, there is one location where a disturbing trend arises. A 19% increase in reports of antisemitic incidents at non-Jewish K-12 schools in New York State, from 118 to 141 incidents. Nationwide, the number of reported incidents at K-12 schools barely changed. Only seven of the 141 were related to either Israel or Zionism. And of those same 141 incidents, 81% involved a swastika.

This statistic is one I continuously reference. A two-year-long debate currently exists about when criticism of Israel crosses over into hatred toward Jews. Drawing swastikas within bathroom stalls is clearly overlooking this debate and going directly to the symbols themselves. When a teenager displays a swastika on a desk proudly, they are not expressing their feelings regarding Gaza; they are only testing what they can express and testing what is acceptable based upon input from two sources: adults and social media.

Last October, Tucker Carlson had invited Holocaust denier and daily livestreamer Nick Fuentes to a lengthy interview (over two hours). His livestreams appear designed specifically for young male audiences. This interview garnered over 20 million views. Following this interview, the president of the Heritage Foundation publicly defended Carlson’s actions.

During this past spring semester, the Yale Youth Poll asked Americans if they agreed with a paraphrased version of a statement Fuentes had made regarding the “slavish surrender” of America to Israel. 55% of respondents aged 18-22 agreed with this statement. Additionally, the poll showed that agreement with antisemetic statements was higher for individuals who receive their news (primarily) via social media.

Antisemitism has historically required geographic distance to survive. Caricatures depicting stereotypes are often most successful in areas where there is no nearby presence of actual Jews to dispute them. This proximity (about 2% of the U.S., mostly concentrated in four states) is what American Jews have relied upon for years to maintain their security, knowing that their neighbor who participated in their son’s bar mitzvah would not become someone who believes those false claims.

Social media doesn’t recognize geography, however. A teenage boy living in Scarsdale may have a Jewish classmate in Chemistry class, and they both consume the same videos. He is fed ideas that tell him Jews run everything, and the classmate never sees the videos, because one is an individual and one explains to him. Social media creates prejudice by filling an explanation-shaped hole before life has a chance to form.

In August, the ADL’s Center for Antisemitism Research released results from the first randomized trial of its kind. One teacher led a 45-minute lesson delivered to students at nine different middle/high schools, taught by teachers who hadn’t previously taught the topic. The receiving students had demonstrated a statistically significant (a 14-percentage-point difference) greater likelihood compared to peers to go against the claim that Jews have too much control in America. Treating antisemitism as a recurring conspiracy theory was what worked. Explaining that it was used for centuries with merely different names inserted into it was what allowed students who later encountered “Jews control the media” to identify it not as insight but as a repeat performance.

Holocaust education is already required within New York. But a lesson that ends in 1945 is telling a teenager that antisemitism is a problem of the past, and a swastika on a bathroom in 2026 isn’t within the picture in that story. They need to be shown the shape of the thing itself, so that when the feed hands it to them, they can see the scams. And it costs only one period to do so.

Adults have a job as well. Kids calibrate what is said to them by watching what adults let slide. If a famous figure gives a 2-hour interview to a Holocaust denier, and the head of a major think tank calls the outcry an attempt to cancel him, the lesson lands. And when a school board president’s daughter cheers desecration on Instagram, there must have been something upstream that has already gone wrong.

Students have a job as well. A student in that Scarsdale bathroom told a reporter that he saw who had drawn the swastika and, as an ally of the Jewish community, was extremely disappointed. Three days later, the club held Israelfest anyway. Contact still matters; it just has to be the kind that talks back.

Swastikas keep appearing in the schools of the state with more Jews than any other, which should tell us that living near Jews is no longer enough to keep a kid from hating them. A swastika is the cheapest thing in the world to draw: four strokes, no knowledge required. What protects the kid who draws is knowing what those four strokes mean, who is teaching them to him, and why. Give him that, and the wall stops repeating the feed. Until then, we should be careful not to call any of this a decline.

Daniel Wellisch is a senior at Harrison High School in Westchester County, New York.