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Facing Congress, Harvard, MIT, Penn presidents defend efforts to fight antisemitism on their campuses
(JTA) – In a high-profile congressional hearing, the presidents of three of the nation’s top universities acknowledged that Jewish and Israeli students have felt unsafe on campus since Oct. 7 and said their schools were taking action to fight antisemitism.
But at times the three leaders — from Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania — did not define what kinds of antisemitic and anti-Israel speech could be formally disciplined on campus.
When New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik asked directly if “calling for the genocide of Jews” is against the universities’ respective codes of conduct, all three presidents said the answer depended on the context.
“It is a context-dependent decision,” Penn President Liz Magill responded, leading Stefanik to reply, “Calling for the genocide of Jews is dependent on the context? That is not bullying or harassment? This is the easiest question to answer ‘yes,’ Ms. Magill.”
Responding to the same question, Harvard President Claudine Gay said, “When speech crosses into conduct, we take action.” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said that such language would only be “investigated as harassment if pervasive and severe.”
Yet the presidents roundly agreed that antisemitism was a serious problem on their campuses and had grown more severe since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the start of Israel’s war against the terror group in the Gaza Strip.
“I know some Israeli and Jewish students feel unsafe on campus,” Kornbluth said. “As they bear the horror of the Hamas attacks and the history of antisemitism, these students have been pained by chants in recent demonstrations.”
The presidents’ testimony came amid increased tensions on college campuses nationwide since Pro-Palestinian students or faculty — including at the three universities represented at the hearing — have made headlines for speech and actions on campus that a range of critics have called antisemitic or inappropriate.
Tuesday’s hearing — which lasted more than five hours and was called by the House education and workforce committee — was at least the fourth the Republican-led House has held on the subject of campus antisemitism since Oct. 7. But it was the first to summon university presidents to testify.
It came on the same day that the House endorsed a resolution initiated by the two Republicans in Congress that equates antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
Some Republicans sought to paint campus antisemitism as a product of universities embracing “the race-based ideology of the radical left,” as North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, chair of the committee, said in her introductory remarks. Foxx said the presidents were there “to answer to and atone for the many specific instances of vitriolic, hate-filled antisemitism on your respective campuses,” and charged, “You have faculty and students that hate Jews, hate Israel.”
The university leaders all personally criticized anti-Israel activism. Magill condemned a recent pro-Palestinian-led attack on a Jewish-owned restaurant in Philadelphia that had begun with protests bordering her campus. “These protesters directly targeted a center city business that is Jewish- and Israeli-owned, a troubling and shameful act of antisemitism,” she said in her opening remarks.
But Magill would not say whether chants the protesters repeated — including one she referenced calling for “intifada” — rose to the level of incitement to violence that is punishable by the university’s code of conduct. During the Second Intifada two decades ago, Palestinian terror attacks killed an estimated 1,000 Israelis.
“The chanting, I think, calling for intifada, global revolution, [is] very disturbing,” Magill said during questioning. “I believe at minimum that is hateful speech that has been and should be condemned. Whether it rises to the level of incitement to violence under the policies that Penn and the city of Philadelphia follow, which are guided by the United States Constitution, I think is a much more difficult question. Incitement to violence is a very narrow category.”
A statue of a young Benjamin Franklin at the University of Pennsylvania. (Wikimedia)
She also demurred on how much advance action her administration was able to take against a controversial Palestinian literature festival held on campus earlier this fall, before Oct. 7, which has led the university to change its policies on guest speakers. Critics complained that speakers at the event, including former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters, had used language endorsing Israel’s destruction.
“I think canceling that conference would have been very inconsistent with academic freedom and free expression, despite the fact that the views of some of the people who came to that conference I find very, very objectionable because of their antisemitism,” she said.
Gay also did not say directly whether students chanting “intifada” on Harvard’s campus violated the university’s code of conduct.
“That type of hateful, reckless, offensive speech is personally abhorrent to me,” she said. But when asked whether Harvard would discipline it, she responded more generally, “When speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies, including policies against bullying, harassment or intimidation, we take action and we have robust disciplinary processes that allow us to hold individuals accountable.”
Schools have faced legal action and have lost out on donations from Jewish and pro-Israel advocates for their response to anti-Israel activism on campus, leading some to suspend pro-Palestinian student groups. None of the three universities represented on the panel have suspended such groups.
Jewish faculty at schools who have called for the deaths of Palestinians have also been disciplined, as have faculty members who celebrated Hamas’ attack.
Harvard in particular has come under scrutiny because Gay took days to issue a condemnation of Hamas after the Oct. 7 attacks, while a coalition of Harvard student groups immediately blamed Israel for them. She has since issued several condemnations, and said at the hearing that she would have responded sooner to the statement if she had realized it would be “wrongfully attributed to the university.”
Students walk by the Harvard Yard gate in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sep. 16, 2021. (David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Republican Rep. Julia Letlow, of Louisiana, pushed Gay to expel the students who had signed the letter, saying it helped encourage sexual violence toward women.
The school has since become a target of donor ire, with billionaire investor and Jewish Harvard alum Bill Ackman leading a charge to punish the university by withholding donations over its responses to the Israel crisis. (Through a spokesperson, Ackman has declined to comment to JTA about his strategy, but he has frequently gone after the school on X, formerly Twitter.)
Hundreds of Jewish Harvard alums are protesting the school by only giving $1, or by directing their giving to Harvard Hillel instead.
All three presidents have been in their current positions for less than two years. They all condemned the Hamas attacks, and all affirmed Israel’s right to exist; Magill and Gay, asked directly about the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement targeting Israel, also said their schools are institutionally opposed to it.
Kornbluth, the only Jewish university president to testify, was also the only one to affirm during questioning that antisemitism training is a part of her university’s diversity, equity and inclusion office. Magill said that Penn was “in the midst” of including antisemitism training in all its anti-bigotry efforts. DEI departments have come under increased scrutiny from the right, who have increasingly claimed that they fuel campus antisemitism.
Later in the hearing, Kornbluth also advocated for increased Holocaust education as an antidote to antisemitism.
In addition to questioning from members of Congress, Penn is today under federal investigation from the U.S. Department of Education, partially connected to its holding of the Palestinian literature festival. Harvard is also facing an investigation, in its case related to an Israeli student who was reportedly attacked at a campus pro-Palestinian protest following Oct. 7.
The Rogers Building at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., is shown on Aug. 12, 2017. (Beyond My Ken via Creative Commons)
At MIT, critics from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian debate went after Kornbluth for partially suspending students who participated in a disruptive pro-Palestinian protest on campus. Supporters of the students alleged it was inappropriate for the school to take action against students for legally protected speech, while some conservative and pro-Israel groups said that Kornbluth hadn’t gone far enough.
Kornbluth’s disciplinary actions were not addressed at the hearing, though they were referenced at a Republican-led press conference held prior to the hearing. At that event, a handful of Jewish and Israeli students at MIT, Penn, Harvard and other campuses painted pictures of a university climate that was unable or unwilling to discipline antisemitism.
“The MIT administration, namely President Sally Kornbluth, has failed to address the crisis of rampant antisemitism on campus,” Jewish MIT graduate student Talia Khan, the daughter of a Jewish mother and Afghan Muslim father, said.
“What is the administration doing? We’ve brought them policy violations, proof that they happen, and the student handbook that were explicitly violated,” Jewish Harvard Law student Jonathan Frieden said. “When they respond, if at all, responses are empty and meaningless responses such as, ‘We are aware of the situation.’”
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson quoted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the press conference.
“I think Prime Minister Netanyahu probably said it the best: This truly is a battle between good versus evil, light versus darkness, civilization versus barbarism, and the idea that this is happening on college campuses, university campuses, across this land is unconscionable to us,” he said. “This antisemitism has become all too common. It’s turning to violence in some of these places. And the idea that university administrators would not speak out, would not take care of this problem, is just beyond comprehension.”
Some Democrats on the committee also criticized the presidents for what they said was an unacceptable approach to Israel-related issues on campus. Rep. Kathy Manning, a North Carolina Democrat and former chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, grilled Gay on Harvard’s Middle East Studies courses, which she claimed included “false accusations that Israel is a racist, settler colonialist, apartheid state.”
Manning pushed Gay to say she is “absolutely committed” to ensuring that Harvard’s Middle East Studies department features a variety of perspectives on Israel.
Also testifying was Pamela Nadell, a professor of American Jewish history at American University and the Democrats’ chosen witness for the hearing.
“It is fashionable among too many members of your campus communities to hate Jews,” Foxx said to the administrators in her closing remarks. “We’ll now be watching, and I genuinely hope, for the sake of our nation, you will rise to meet the challenge.”
Ron Kampeas contributed to this report.
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The post Facing Congress, Harvard, MIT, Penn presidents defend efforts to fight antisemitism on their campuses appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has informed the International Criminal Court that it will contest arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant over their conduct of the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.
The office also said that US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had updated Netanyahu “on a series of measures he is promoting in the US Congress against the International Criminal Court and against countries that would cooperate with it.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants last Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
“Israel today submitted a notice to the International Criminal Court of its intention to appeal to the court, along with a demand to delay the execution of the arrest warrants,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Court spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told journalists that if requests for an appeal were submitted it would be up to the judges to decide
The court’s rules allow for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would pause or defer an investigation or a prosecution for a year, with the possibility of renewing that annually.
After a warrant is issued the country involved or a person named in an arrest warrant can also issue a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court or the admissibility of the case.
The post Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage
Shomrim officers at the scene of a hate crime in London in which Jewish girls were struck with glass bottles. Photo: Shomrim Stamford Hill/Screenshot
A group of young Jewish girls were the victims of an “abhorrent hate crime” when a man hurled glass bottles at them from a balcony as they were walking through the Stamford Hill section of London on Monday evening.
One of the girls was struck in the head and rushed to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to local law enforcement.
A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the Woodberry Down Estate in the city’s borough of Hackney following reports of an assault on Monday evening at 7:44 pm local time.
“A group of schoolgirls had been walking through the estate when a bottle was thrown from the upper floor of a building,” the spokesperson said. “A 16-year-old girl was struck on the head and was taken to hospital. Her injuries have since been assessed as non-life changing.”
Police noted they were unable to locate the suspect and an investigation is ongoing before adding, “The incident is being treated as a potential antisemitic hate crime.”
Following the incident, Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and serves as a neighborhood watch group, reported that the girls were en route to a rehearsal for an upcoming event. The community, the group added, was “shocked” by the attack on “innocent young Jewish girls,” calling it an “abhorrent hate crime.”
14-year-old girl rushed to Hospital with head & facial injuries following an attack in #StamfordHill.
Young Jewish girls on their way to a rehearsal were pelted with glass bottles by a male on a balcony at Woodberry Down Estate N4.
This… pic.twitter.com/MzHPHusgyX
— Shomrim (London North & East) (@Shomrim) November 26, 2024
Since then, another Jewish girl, age 14, has reported being pelted with a hard object which caused her to be “knocked unconscious, and left feeling dizzy and with a bump on her head,” according to Shomrim.
Monday’s crime was one among many which have targeted London Jews in recent years, an issue The Algemeiner has reported on extensively.
Last December, an Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted by a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, two attackers brutally mauled a Jewish woman, and a group of Jewish children was berated by a woman who screamed “I’ll kill all of you Jews. You are murderers!” A similar incident occurred when a man confronted a Jewish shopper and shouted, “You f—king Jew, I will kill you!”
Months prior, a perpetrator stalked and assaulted an Orthodox Jewish woman. He followed her, shouting “dirty Jew” before snatching her shopping bag and “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing.” That incident followed a woman wielding a wooden stick approaching a Jewish woman near the Seven Sisters area and declaring “I am doing it because you are Jew,” while striking her over the head and pouring liquid on her. The next day, the same woman — described by an eyewitness as a “serial racist” — chased a mother and her baby with a wooden stick after spraying liquid on the baby. That same week, three people accosted a Jewish teenager and knocked his hat off his head while yelling “f—king Jew.”
According to an Algemeiner review of Metropolitan Police Service data, 2,383 antisemitic hate crimes occurred in London between October 2023 and October 2024, eclipsing the full-year totals of 550 in 2022 and 845 in 2021. The problem is so serious that city officials created a new bus route to help Jewish residents “feel safe” when they travel.
“Jewish Londoners have felt scared to leave their homes,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan told The Jewish Chronicle in a statement about the policy decision earlier this year. “So, this direct bus link between these two significant communities [Stamford Hill in Hackney and Golders Green in Barnet, areas with two of the biggest Jewish communities in London] means you can travel on the 310, not need to change, and be safe and feel safer. I hope that will lead to more Londoners from these communities using public transport safely.”
Khan added that the route “connects communities, connects congregations” and would reassure Jewish Londoners they would be “safe when they travel between these two communities.”
However, it doesn’t solve the problem at hand — an explosion of antisemitism unlike anything seen in the Western world since World War II. Just this week, according to a story by GB News, an unknown group scattered leaflets across the streets of London which threatened that “every Zionist needs to leave Britain or be slaughtered.”
Responding to this latest incident, the director of the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs UK Isaaz Zarfati told GB News that the comments should be taken “seriously.”
“We are witnessing a troubling trend of red lines being repeatedly crossed,” he said. “This is not just another wave that will pass if we remain passive. We must take those threats and statement seriously because they will one day turn into actions, and decisive steps are needed to combat this alarming phenomenon.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Biden Lauds ‘Permanent’ Ceasefire, but Northern Israelis Warn It Opens Door to Future Hezbollah Attacks
Israeli soldiers gesture from an Israeli military vehicle, after a ceasefire was agreed to by Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, near Israel’s border with Lebanon in northern Israel, Nov. 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
While US President Joe Biden hailed the new ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah on Tuesday as a “courageous” step toward peace, security experts and residents of northern Israel voiced starkly contrasting sentiments, criticizing the agreement as falling far short of addressing the ongoing threats posed by the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group.
“I applaud the courageous decision made by the leaders of Lebanon and Israel to end the violence. It reminds us that peace is possible,” Biden said one day before the ceasefire took effect on Wednesday.
He added that it was “designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities,” vowing that Hezbollah, which wields significant political and military influence across Lebanon, would “not be allowed to threaten the security of Israel again.”
But according to Lieutenant Colonel (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, a resident of northern Israel and the founder and director of Alma — a research center that focuses on security challenges relating to Israel’s northern border — the ceasefire deal, the details of which have not been made public, is nowhere close to establishing peace.
“Let’s not be mistaken. Ceasefire is not peace,” Zehavi told The Algemeiner. “There is a gap between the two and in order to bridge the gap, we need a thorough change in Lebanon and in the Iranian involvement in the region.”
According to Zehavi, the deal was problematic at the outset because it was based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War and has been criticized for its historical ineffectiveness. Zehavi highlighted the failures of the Lebanese army and UNIFIL [UN Interim Force in Lebanon] troops in enforcing the resolution in the past, warning that the same could happen again.
As part of the deal, Israel has insisted on retaining the ability to enforce the resolution independently, but this approach carries risks, Zehavi said. “If we enforce the resolution, it means that there won’t be a ceasefire. If there isn’t a ceasefire, it means that Hezbollah will retaliate, and we will continue the ongoing fighting.”
Hezbollah had already violated the terms of the deal within hours of its signing, with operatives disguised as civilians entering restricted zones in southern Lebanon, including the villages of Kila, Mais a-Jabal, and Markaba, despite warnings from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Another sticking point is the lack of safeguards preventing Hezbollah from rearming, leaving Israel reliant on Lebanese assurances. “After what happened on [last] Oct. 7, Israelis are not willing to enable Hezbollah to recover,” Zehavi asserted. “We cannot rely on just promises; we need to make sure that Hezbollah is not capable of threatening us and our families over here in the north.”
The international community, Zehavi argued, has a crucial role to play in pressuring Lebanon to sever its ties with Hezbollah. So long as Lebanon does not designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, she said, the Shi’ite Muslim group will continue to exert influence over the country and therefore pose a threat to neighboring Israel. Members of the group hold influential positions in the Lebanese government, including ministers who control border crossings and airports, facilitating the smuggling of weapons into Lebanon.
Zehavi also pointed to Iran’s declaration that it will help rebuild both Lebanon and Hezbollah, even while continuing to funnel weapons and financial aid into the terrorist group through smuggling routes.
“As long as the ayatollahs of Iran continue to nourish proxy militias in the Middle East against Israel, we are not going to see peace,” she said.
Other northern residents similarly argued that halting the fight against Hezbollah now would give the terrorist group an opportunity to rebuild its arsenal, strengthen its forces, and potentially replicate the scale of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel’s northern region.
“We never learn. Just like in 2006, and many other times, we stop at the brink of total victory, handing our enemies the opportunity to rebuild and return years later, stronger and deadlier than before,” said Moti Vanunu, a resident who was evacuated from the northern town of Kiryat Shmona.
Gabi Naaman, mayor of the battered northern city of Shlomi, expressed skepticism that the ceasefire would bring lasting security to Israel’s northern residents.
“Everything we’ve seen indicates that the next round is inevitable, whether it’s in a month, two months, or ten years,” he said.
Despite her reservations, Zehavi explained that Israel had no real alternative but to accept the ceasefire, citing the need to provide northern residents with a return to normalcy and to provide the opportunity to the IDF to resupply ammunition and allow soldiers time to recover. “We had to choose between two bad options,” she said.
Some 70,000 Israelis living in the north were forced to evacuate their homes amid unrelenting rocket, missile, and drone attacks from Hezbollah, which began firing on Oct. 8 of last year, one day after Hamas’s invasion of and massacre southern Israel from Gaza. Israel had been exchanging fire with Hezbollah across the Lebanon border until it ramped up its military efforts over the last two months, moving ground forces into southern Lebanon and destroying much of Hezbollah’s leadership and weapons stockpiles through airstrikes.
While Zehavi viewed the timing of the campaign’s start in September — ahead of the challenges of fighting during the winter months — and not in May as a strategic error, she applauded the army’s achievements of the past two months.
In a poll conducted by Israel’s Channel 12 News on Tuesday night, half of those surveyed felt there was no clear winner in the war against Hezbollah. Twenty percent of respondents believed the IDF emerged victorious in the war, while 19 percent thought Hezbollah prevailed. A further 11 percent were unsure who had the upper hand.
The post Biden Lauds ‘Permanent’ Ceasefire, but Northern Israelis Warn It Opens Door to Future Hezbollah Attacks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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