As Americans celebrate the country’s 250th birthday, they are expressing a declining belief in liberal democracy, a faltering faith in the country, rising antisemitism and reduced support for the state of Israel. Chillingly, these challenges show up most acutely among young Americans. How do these problems relate to one another, and what can be done to repair society?

In a 2023 YouGov poll, 31% of youth ages 18-29 agreed that “Democracy is no longer a viable system, and Americans should explore alternative forms of government” (compared to only 5% of those over 65). And a recent Democracy Fund poll found that while only 1 in 10 Baby Boomers described the Founders as closer to “villains” than “heroes,” 4 in 10 Gen Z respondents did. 

On a parallel track, antisemitism is rising among the young. As far back as 1964, the Anti-Defamation League found that antisemitism was typically worse among older Americans than younger ones. In 2024, however, the ADL found for the first time that antisemitism was higher among younger adults. Another poll found that 11% of millennials and Gen Z Americans thought Jews caused the Holocaust; in New York State, the figure was 19%. 

Meanwhile, support for Israel has declined precipitously among young Americans: a 2026 Gallup poll found that those 55 and older say their sympathies lie more with the Israelis than the Palestinians by 18 points, but among those ages 18-34, sympathies lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis by 30 points.

There is good reason to believe that all of these phenomena are connected. The eroding belief of young Americans in liberal democracy and in the virtues of their country is bad for everyone, but it is particularly bad for Jews.

Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead has noted that the U.S. historically has been a “uniquely hospitable home for Jewish citizens” because of a belief in “the American Way,” which treats citizens as Americans, not members of racial, ethnic or religious groups. Today, however, illiberal racial identity politics on both the left and right are undermining a common American identity and feeding antisemitism.

On the right, we see a revival of the idea that white Christian Americans are more fully American than other citizens. The nation’s vice president, JD Vance, has articulated a disturbing vision of an America defined mostly by blood and soil rather than by its noble aspirations. When right-wing politicians identify small towns as “the real America,” they set up a hierarchy of Americanness that is dangerous to many groups, including Jews. 

On the left, Boston University scholar Ibram X. Kendi posits that all racial disparities are the result of racial discrimination; therefore, any deviation from proportional group representation is suspect. Given that Jews make up 0.2% of the world’s population yet have won 22% of Nobel Prizes, for instance, the logic of proportional representation suggests something nefarious is afoot. 

Relatedly, leftists on campus embrace a simplistic anti-colonial framing that neatly divides the world into powerful oppressors and powerless oppressed people. This approach, former Harvard dean Harry Lewis notes, gives “a veneer of academic respectability” to “the ugly old stereotype of Jews as evil but deviously successful people.”

Thus the overlapping obsession with identity among illiberal leftists on college campuses and white nationalists marching in Charlottesville eventually merge, Mead notes: “Both sides worship ethnicity, despise the American way, and hate Jews.”

The decline in young people’s support for liberal democracy as a system and belief in America as a force for good is not only bad for the country, but also for Israel. American support for Israel has always been bolstered by the fact that it stands for liberal democratic values in a part of the world where authoritarianism is the norm. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the Sept. 11 attacks, Islamist militants don’t hate the West because it supports Israel; they hate Israel because it is Western. New York Times columnist Bret Stephens notes, Israel is the only place in the Middle East “you’d want to be if you’re gay or a woman.” 

To be sure, the U.S. and Israel struggle to live up to their noble aspirations, especially under today’s leadership. It’s entirely appropriate to criticize President Donald Trump’s trampling of liberal democratic values and Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank. But this does not justify the left’s new blood libel that Israel has engaged in genocide rather than self-defense. And both the U.S. and Israel, despite their flaws, are freer than the countries inhabited by four-fifths of the world’s population, where people cannot criticize their government without fear of retribution.

The voices that fail to acknowledge these realities are often highly critical of both the United States and Israel. My colleague Lief Lin and I recently co-authored a report on the flagship journal of the American Studies Association. Eighty percent of articles in recent years were critical of America, 20 were neutral, and none were positive. You can read about American slavery and segregation and misogyny and homophobia, all of which is appropriate, but you’ll read nothing about why America is rated as the world’s most desirable destination for immigrants or America’s triumphs over the Nazis and the Soviets. Is it a coincidence that the American Studies Association was also one of the first academic organizations to call for an illiberal boycott of Israeli academic institutions?

A current example comes from the left-wing reaction to the Iran war. There are very legitimate critiques of how Trump has executed the war, but the reflexive reaction of people like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani betrays something more. Mamdani condemned the U.S. and Israeli action against Iran as “an illegal war of aggression,” omitting any critique of the murderous Iranian regime that tramples the rights of women and sponsors terrorism. His outburst prompted American Enterprise scholar Samuel Abrams to wonder about “a political culture more comfortable condemning democratic action than confronting authoritarian repression.”

If the problems of illiberalism and antisemitism are most acute among the young, better public education must be part of the solution. The fundamental purpose of public schools, as the late teacher union leader Albert Shanker argued, is to “teach children what it means to be an American,” by which he meant the shared values found in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. He had twin goals: because a belief in liberal democracy could not be taken for granted, it had to be taught to each generation anew; and because the U.S. was made up of people from every religion, race, and nationality, teaching the American Creed would help hold the country together. 

At the Progressive Policy Institute, we’ve launched the American Identity Project to provide policy recommendations on how to bring to life Shanker’s vision. The project — whose advisory group includes David Brooks, William Galston, Bill Bradley, Democratic Reps. Ritchie Torres and Don Beyer, Danielle Allen, Francis Fukuyama, Linda Chavez, Anne Applebaum, Darren Walker and others — is developing a number of ideas. 

American history education and our civic inheritance

In order to strengthen American democracy and bolster the common aspirational values that hold our society together, policymakers should provide more time, resources and accountability for students to learn their civic inheritance and shared American history. 

Schools and colleges should teach an honest and hopeful account of American history – one that frankly recounts how America has throughout its history failed to live up to its liberal democratic ideals but also shows how those very ideals make progress and redemption possible. They should also teach what is distinctive and exceptional about America, its culture and its literature. Students should ask: If a foreign country invaded America, what monuments and artifacts would be most important to try to preserve because they go to the essence of what it means to be an American? 

Most Americans support a middle path between faddish efforts that denigrate America at every turn and the jingoistic approaches employed in some states. Because almost one-third of young Americans say America “should explore alternatives forms of government” to democracy, schools should also spend more time teaching what it is like to live in nondemocratic countries, where there is no right to free speech or to criticize the government. Doing so could inspire the enhanced American patriotism found among immigrant groups, who know from firsthand experience the comparative blessings of American liberty.

A robust civics education, in the American and Jewish traditions, would emphasize more than knowledge of institutions but also the ethical responsibility citizens have toward one another. In a nation whose federal government spends 1,000 times more money on STEM education than civics, it’s important to place greater emphasis on sustaining American democracy. 

Because community service programs in elementary and secondary schools and national service programs after high school can instill in young people a sense of purpose and patriotism, and can bridge divides between Americans of different races and economic groups, voluntary service programs should be scaled to become a civic rite of passage. In Jewish tradition, tzedakah reflects the idea that contributing to the welfare of others is not optional charity but a moral obligation. Encouraging service as part of civic life can cultivate the same sense of responsibility in American democracy.

Finally, schools and colleges should continue to recognize diversity as a strength, but also affirm universal human values, uphold the ideal of merit and dismantle the worst elements of diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracies and programs that neatly divide the world into oppressed and oppressors and employ divisive and insulting race-essentialist thinking. 

A call to strengthen a common American identity may strike some Jews as a troubling call to assimilate and forfeit a proud Jewish identity. In fact, a central driver of American identity is the value of liberty; it would be antithetical to that ideal to try to compel people to give up the racial, ethnic or religious identities that give meaning to their lives in addition to their shared identities as Americans. Unlike in France, for example, Americans do not compel Muslim women to forgo wearing a hijab in public spaces. A strong Jewish identity sits naturally alongside a strong American identity, as the values of liberty and equality in the Declaration of Independence resonate strongly with Jewish teachings. 

Strengthening American values, notes David Bernstein, the founder and CEO of the North American Values Institute, is also a practical way to fight antisemitism. As he and his colleagues wrote in these pages, “Jews represent only 2% of the American population; we cannot win this battle on our own.” It’s imperative that Americans of all backgrounds come together to fight the deeply worrying rise in anti-democratic, anti-American, antisemitic and anti-Israel attitudes found among young people. We need to find new ways to educate the next generation about the enduring American values that historically have permitted people from across the globe, including Jews, to flourish.

Richard D. Kahlenberg is the director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute. He is the author or editor of 20 books, including Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles over Schools, Unions, Race and Democracy.