Seventy-four percent of American undergraduates say Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people, according to a new study released by the Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University in August 2026.
The study, titled "American Undergraduates and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," draws on an online survey of 3,989 undergraduate students across 303 US colleges and universities, conducted by polling firm Generation Lab between October 2025 and January 2026.
The survey finds that 82 percent of students support Palestinians' right to self-determination and statehood, while only 25 percent disagree that Israel's actions constitute genocide.
Students' views also diverge sharply depending on which actors they are asked about.
Seventy-seven percent hold favourable views of the Palestinian people, compared with 52 percent who view the Israeli people favourably. The gap widens further at the government level: 41 percent view the Palestinian Authority favourably, while just 15 percent view the Israeli government favourably.
Forty-six percent describe the Israeli government as "very unfavourable" and a further 39 percent as "unfavourable."
98% of students strongly pro-Palestinian
Researchers caution that agreement with the genocide statement does not reflect a single, unified position on the conflict. While 98 percent of students who are strongly pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel endorse the statement, so do 84 percent of students who describe themselves as poorly informed about the conflict and say it holds little personal importance to them.
The study finds that political affiliation, rather than a student's broader orientation toward the conflict, best explains agreement with the genocide claim: 94 percent of students who identify as extremely liberal agree, compared with just 45 percent of conservatives.
Fewer than a quarter of students hold deep-rooted hostility toward Israel, both government and people, the study finds, and about half of that group expresses sympathy for Hamas.
More than half of all students, by contrast, hold poorly defined views on the conflict, with most admitting limited knowledge of it and ranking it as a lower personal priority than domestic US issues such as racism and immigration.
The findings come as the occupied West Bank continues to see repeated Israeli raids and arrests, alongside a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians and their property, while Gaza continues to see Israeli violations of the ceasefire in place since October 10, 2025.
Since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October of 2023, more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 174,000 injured, according to Palestinian figures.
