When it comes down to it, you have two groups of people in the US who dominate: those who follow a religion only culturally, and those who don’t follow a religion. The rest of the people who follow a religion and inculcate their life with it will feel out of place in many public arenas, and should think about whether they can be tolerant, or whether they can’t be tolerant.
Concern about being a victim of a hate crime should be a different concern than whether a student will feel uncomfortable and unsupported by the general population.
Two other items:
- the assistant professor’s views are not unique, and some aspects are proven: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123885&page=1 However, UIUC fired a professor for anti-Israel social media posts: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/15/university-of-illinois-censured-after-professor-loses-job-over-tweets-critical-of-israel/ but then got censured for it.
- use sites like this to find colleges that are appropriate: http://www.hillel.org/about/news-views/news-views---blog/news-and-views/2014/09/04/2014-top-60-schools-by-jewish-student-population
If you seriously are worried about pro-Palestinian groups on campus, find colleges who have turned down such groups. There are over a hundred chapters of SJP at colleges in the US and a few other countries. Many chapters have gotten in trouble with college officials.
I also have never heard the word “Zionist” to describe anything other than a terrorist, but that might be unique to me living in the NYC area where perhaps the Jewish population (about a third around here, with a third Catholic and a third Protestant and a smattering of others) is generally more liberal than other areas of the US.