Designated: CAIR’s 2025 Hostile Campus Ratings Report

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Introduction 

Note on Language 

Islamophobia is a fear, hatred, or prejudice toward Islam and Muslims that results in a pattern of discrimination and oppression. Islamophobia creates a distorted understanding of Islam and Muslims by transforming the global and historical faith tradition of Islam, along with the rich history of cultural and ethnic diversity of its adherents, into a set of stereotyped characteristics most often reducible to themes of violence, civilizational subversion, and fundamental otherness. Islamophobia must also be understood as a system of both religious and/or racial animosity that is perpetuated by private citizens as well as cultural and political structures. Islamophobia can manifest as anti-Muslim bigotry, anti-Muslim racism, or both.¹

Anti-Palestinian racism has been defined as “a form of anti-Arab racism that silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives.”[i]

Anti-Muslim rhetoric is used to justify anti-Palestinian racism, and anti-Palestinian racism is also weaponized against those who are presumed to be Palestinian, including Muslims. In instances of this report, we therefore analyze how the use of anti-Muslim, as well as anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab rhetoric, deeply impacts the lives of American Muslims.[ii] 

An ‘Unhostile Campus’ is a learning environment where institutional policies, practices, and campus culture actively protect students’ rights, ensure safety and dignity for all communities, and prevent discrimination, harassment, or targeting based on identity or political expression.

An ‘Under Watch Campus’ shows early warning signs of discrimination or harmful policies that require monitoring before they develop into a hostile environment.

A ‘Hostile Campus’ is one where institutional actions or campus climate make students feel unsafe, targeted, or discriminated against.

Executive Summary

CAIR presents the “2025-26 Hostile Campus Ratings Report” as part of its Unhostile Campus Campaign. From 2024 to 2025, 51 colleges and universities were investigated and rated. The investigations were conducted via online search for publicly available reported information and accounts, documenting the alarming methods colleges and universities used to target anti-genocide voices on campus. These methods were linked to their reported sources and assigned point values according to CAIR’s Hostile Campus Ratings Framework. The full methodology for the Hostile Campus Ratings Framework is included in the next section. The 2025-26 Hostile Campus Ratings are available online at CAIR’s website, www.islamophobia.org.

Key Findings:

1. Columbia University and the City University of New York were rated the most ‘Hostile Campuses,’ each with an extremely low percentage score of just 2%. The University of Michigan was the other school with a one-digit percentage score at 7%. The University of Chicago and Case Western Reserve University round out the bottom five hostile campuses.
2. For this report, 51 campuses were investigated in response to civil rights concerns. No campus amongst the 51 that were investigated earned a ‘Unhostile Campus’ rating.
3. Six campuses earned an ‘Under Watch’ rating, with the University of Alabama leading at 87%, just 3 percentage points from an ‘Unhostile’ rating. The next five were the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Montclair State University, Colorado State University, the University of Central Florida, and California State University, Northridge.
4. The average score was 37.92%, well below the passing grade for a college course. Almost 75% of the campuses investigated scored below 50%.
5. More than half of the colleges and universities investigated in the report did not specify Islamophobia and/or anti-Muslim bias in their discrimination policy.
6. Twelve university administrations adopted the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a definition that wrongly stigmatizes legitimate criticism of Israeli policies.[iii] These include Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, City University of New York, Northwestern University, New York University, George Mason University, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio State University, Colorado State University, Pomona College, and Wayne State University.
7. Title VI complaints were reportedly filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights for alleged discrimination against students and/or faculty at half of the colleges and universities.
8. Over 75% of the campus administrations investigated reportedly called on police to arrest students, staff, and/or faculty members for protesting the genocide in Gaza after October 2023.
9. 90% of campus administrations made significant policy changes without involving input from student and/or faculty leadership.

[i]Majid, Dania “Anti-Palestinian Racism: Naming, Framing and Manifestations,” Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, April 25, 2022, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/61db30d12e169a5c45950345/t/627dcf83fa17ad41ff217964/1652412292220/Anti-Palestinian+Racism-+Naming%2C+Framing+and+Manifestations.pdf 

[ii] Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). “Unconstitutional Crackdowns: 2025 Civil Rights Report.” October 2025. https://www.cair.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Unconstitutional-Crackdowns-PDF-compressed.pdf

[iii] Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). “Fact Sheet: The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) ‘Working Definition of Antisemitism.’” September 2025. https://www.cair.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/IHRAFactsheet.pdf