Not what it seems

 A day or two ago, a column by Bret Stephens said a Harvard/Harris poll  "finds that 44 percent of Americans ages 25 to 34, and a whopping 67 percent of those ages 18 to 24, agree with the proposition that 'Jews as a class are oppressors.' . . . . The same generation that received the most instruction in the virtues of tolerance is now the most antisemitic in recent memory."  I've seen several other references to that poll since then.  The full question is "Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?"  Some people have observed that other recent surveys suggest much lower levels of anti-Semitism.  But then how do you explain the Harvard/Harris results?  I think that the key is in a question that comes just before "There is an ideology that white people are oppressors and nonwhite people and people of certain groups have been oppressed and as a result should be favored today at universities and for employment. Do you support or oppose this ideology?"    That's followed by a question on "Do you think this ideology is helpful or hurtful to our society?" and then the question about whether Jews are oppressors.  Comparing the percent agreeing that white people and Jews are oppressors by age:

              Whites           Jews

18-24      79%              67%
25-34      49%              44%
35-44      39%              36%
45-54      33%              24%
55-64      26%              15%
65+         19%                9%

Support for the statement that Jews are oppressors is consistently a little lower than support for the statement that white people are oppressors.  So the most plausible interpretation of the results for that question is that most people who agreed that white people are oppressors regard Jews as white people rather than "nonwhite people and people of certain groups."  In any case, if you accept the results for the question on Jews as evidence of widespread anti-Semitism among young people, you have to accept the results for the previous question as evidence of even more widespread "anti-whitism."  My interpretation of the results on the first question is that people treated it as about general recognition of racial injustice and/or support for affirmative action, although it's so badly worded that it's hard to be sure.  

A couple of other points on the Harvard/Harris survey:
1.  The general direction of the age differences is reasonable, but they seem implausibly large for many questions.  I suspect there's something wrong with either their sample (an online panel) or their weighting.
2.  Many of the questions could serve as examples of things to avoid when writing survey questions.  

And on anti-Semitism:
1.  I think that, like other kinds of ethnic and religious prejudice, it is declining, and there's less of it in younger generations.
2.  However, more than other kinds of prejudice, anti-Semitism tends to be elaborated into a comprehensive world-view.  That makes it more harmful than the numbers alone would suggest.
3.  There is an anti-Semitism of the left.  People on the left used to be aware of this--"anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools" was a well-known expression in the early days of the German Social Democratic Party--but I think that recognition has faded, and leftists now often assume that anti-Semitism just involves people like Richard Spencer and isn't something they need to look out for on their side.