About
The AMCHA Initiative is a nonprofit organization dedicated to documenting and combating antisemitism on U.S. college campuses. Since 2015, AMCHA has maintained a publicly accessible, campus-specific, comprehensive database of antisemitic incidents in the United States. This resource is widely used by students, researchers, policymakers, journalists, and advocacy organizations to understand the scope and nature of antisemitism in higher education.
Challenge
AMCHA observed a dramatic surge in antisemitic activity on campuses and needed to automate and scale their data collection to keep pace with the volume of incidents. Their collection was previously being done through manual investigation of campus newspapers, social media accounts, and public statements by student and faculty groups. In collaboration with the Bright Initiative, AMCHA was able to streamline their data collection, logging thousands of incidents annually – a significant increase from their typical 800 incidents per year.
Using Bright Data’s Web Scraper API tools, they automated the collection of social media posts, which feeds into their existing internal databases for further analysis. Their enhanced system also allows for advanced text and image analysis, making it possible to quickly search for keywords and identify explicit content that might otherwise be lost, bringing efficiency and scale to the process of finding and publicizing antisemitic incidents.
Impact
The public database, which currently holds over 11,000 entries, provides crucial insights into faculty behavior and has become an even more vital resource for the community. This partnership has significantly enhanced AMCHA’s capacity to document antisemitism and support the broader community’s efforts to ensure accountability and safety on college campuses.
To read more about how AMCHA Initiative is making an impact, check out: amchainitiative.org
