Luxury Beliefs and Political Polarization

The academic year of 2023-2024 was an annus horribilis for Jewish students on American campuses. But, for all the attention paid to the likes of Columbia and UCLA, one can zoom out and ask whether the protest activity was evenly distributed across American colleges and universities, or whether it was concentrated at certain kinds of schools?

Marc Novicoff, the associate editor of the Washington Monthly and a freelance writer, asked that question in June, and found that the protests and encampments were correlated with the tuition price, the level of student-body wealth, and the prestige of the university. As the school year begins once again, Marc sits down with host Jonathan Silver to explain his findings, and describe how he tested the proposition that elite colleges are much more likely to be the home of pro-Hamas, anti-Israel demonstrations.