The numerous reports of the death of Judaism’s Conservative movement have been exaggerated, write Jack Wertheimer, Steven Bayme, and Steven M. Cohen. Conservative Jews indeed make up a smaller proportion of American Jewry than they did a few decades ago, but by other metrics the denomination is in no danger:

[Firstly], the Conservative proportion of the non-Orthodox Jewish population is holding steady. . . . What’s more, Conservative Jews have higher birthrates than Reform and non-denominationally identified Jews. Their intermarriage rate is [also] far lower than for other non-Orthodox Jews. For those marrying since 2000, 39 percent of Conservative-raised Jews married non-Jews, as compared to roughly 80 percent for those raised as Reform or nondenominational. Conservative Jews are far more likely to enroll their children in more intensive forms of Jewish schooling and summer camping than other non-Orthodox Jews.

Among members of Conservative and Reform synagogues, large gaps open between them when they are asked about their attachment to Israel, attendance at Shabbat services, involvement with Jewish organizations, and the importance of being Jewish in their lives. On all of these and other measures of Jewish involvement, Conservative congregants are far more engaged than their Reform counterparts.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.