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‘It Wasn’t Hazing, It Was Hatred’: Rhode Island Leaders Condemn ‘Deeply Disturbing’ High School Antisemitic Incident
Smithfield High School football coach Kyle Purvis. There have been calls to fire Purvis in light of the antisemitic hazing incident that involved football players from the high school. Photo: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Rhode Island state elected officials, religious leaders, and Jewish groups have condemned an antisemitic hazing incident that took place at a local high school as well as what they described as the school’s lack of leadership in its handling of the situation.
The Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island and the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center hosted a press conference on Thursday after criticizing the decision by Smithfield High School administrators to reinstate five senior football players who had been punished for abusing a Jewish freshman student.
The group of football players allegedly locked a Jewish student, a fellow football player, in a bathroom and sprayed Lysol at him through a grate in the door while yelling antisemitic slurs. The family of the victim filed a police report over the incident with the Smithfield Police Department.
On Oct. 11, Smithfield Schools Superintendent Dawn Bartz said that “several” student athletes on the football team had been barred from participating for the rest of the season after an investigation into an incident involving “hazing and antisemitic remarks” confirmed “inappropriate conduct.”
“The school district maintains a zero-tolerance policy for hazing, bullying, and harassment of any form,” Bartz added.
However, on Oct. 22, the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island and the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center discovered that the football players were back on the team and at practice. The high school gave no public explanation for why the football players were reinstated before the end of the season.
“For the last week, we’ve been left with only questions and no answers,” Adam Greenman, president of the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island, said at Thursday’s press conference. “That’s not how these situations should be handled. Our Jewish community here in Rhode Island has been left on edge and feeling isolated, trying to understand how and why a school district would confirm that this incident occurred, put in place approbate discipline, and then quietly backtrack on everything.”
State Rep. Mia Ackerman, a Rhode Island resident and the senior Jewish member in the General Assembly, also spoke at Thursday’s event and was accompanied by other state representatives and senators. She called the antisemitic hazing incident “deeply disturbing” and “a total shanda,” which is a Yiddish word that means shame, disgrace, and embarrassment.
“The actions of the students were shameful and disgraceful, and the reaction of a few of the adult leaders in the Smithfield school system was an embarrassment,” she added. “To me it wasn’t hazing – it was hatred. Their ugly racial and religious slurs will haunt this student for many years to come … This is not a harmless prank. This is deeply upsetting to me and all members of the Rhode Island Jewish community. Making it worse is the subsequent actions – or should I say, non-actions — of the school administration. They clearly did not understand the severity of this offense. School officials who are supposed to be leaders and role models instead sent a clear message to the students involved that this horrible attack was acceptable.”
Ackerman called on the Smithfield High School administration to “follow through with the commitments they initially made both to discipline the students involved” and to partner with the Jewish Alliance to provide antisemitic training and education to these students. Ackerman added that she plans to introduce legislation into the state House to help prevent similar antisemitic incidents from happening again in Rhode Island schools.
The press conference took place the same day that the office of Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha received a complaint from a parent of the victim, who accused the Smithfield school district of not responding appropriately to the antisemitic hazing incident, according to the Boston Globe. The parent alleged that several students “assaulted and harassed the student based on his Jewish ancestry/ethnicity and religion in the locker room before football team practice” on Sept. 30, according to a letter Neronha’s office wrote to school district attorney Sean Clough on Thursday. The parent claimed the district failed to “take steps reasonably calculated to eliminate any hostile environment and its effects and prevent harassment from recurring.” The attorney general’s office is requesting that the school district provide information about the incident no later than Nov. 13.
Others who condemned the incident at Thursday’s press conference, as well as the school’s handling of the situation, included US Rep. Gabe Amo (D-RI) and Jeremy Langill, executive minister of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches. “Real harm was caused but true accountability … has not happened,” said Langill, who was accompanied on stage by clergy and board members of the council. There was a statement read on behalf of Bishop Bruce Lewandowski, of the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island, who further denounced the incident.
“What would have happened if this had been a robbery?” asked Joe Reddish, chairman of the Rhode Island Commission on Prejudice and Bias. “Would we have just suspended them and then made it go away? Well, this was a robbery in a sense because it robbed somebody of the value of who they are and what they stand for. We cannot allow robberies of our beliefs, what we look like and who we are.”
Smithfield Town Council President John Tassoni, whose daughter went to Smithfield High School, said he received thousands of emails from people all over the country expressing concerns about the incident. He began by apologizing to the Jewish community for the attack taking place in his town. “This is not Smithfield,” he insisted. “We have a few individuals who did the wrong thing at the wrong time to this young boy.” He noted that the Smithfield Town Council has no jurisdiction to take action against public school committees but if he could, he would fire Bartz, as well as the high school’s football coach Kyle Purvis and athletic director Glenn Castiglia, “because they all knew what happened and it was all shoved under the Oriental rug.”
“We need answers. We need accountability. Enough is enough,” he concluded.
Bartz said in a statement emailed to NBC 10 News on Thursday that the school district “has taken this matter seriously and acted in accordance with our policies.” The school committee is scheduled to meet on Monday at the high school and will discuss the issue.
The Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island and the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center denounced the handling of the incident in a joint statement last week. Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee and Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green issued a joint statement earlier this week also condemning the incident. Responding to the criticism, Bartz said that “the disciplinary process has concluded, and we will not be discussing details involving students.”
Smithfield’s Town Manager Robert Seltzer noted in a statement that although the incident occurred within the Smithfield public school system, which operates independently under the supervision of the superintendent and the school committee, “we want to make it clear that the town of Smithfield does not condone such behavior in any form.”
Greenman said 30 antisemitic incidents in Rhode Island have been reported to the Jewish Alliance so far this year.
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German Antisemitism Commissioner Targeted With Death Threat Letter After Arson Attack on Home
Andreas Büttner (Die Linke), photographed during the state parliament session. The politician was nominated for the position of Brandenburg’s anti-Semitism commissioner. Photo: Soeren Stache/dpa via Reuters Connect
Andreas Büttner, the commissioner for antisemitism in the state of Brandenburg in northeastern Germany, has been targeted the second attack in under a week after receiving a death threat, sparking outrage and prompting local authorities to launch a full investigation.
According to the German newspaper Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten (PNN), the Brandenburg state parliament received a letter on Monday threatening Büttner’s life, with the words “We will kill you” and an inverted red triangle, the symbol of support for the Islamist terrorist group Hamas.
State security police have examined the anonymous letter under strict safety measures, determining that a gray substance inside was harmless. Authorities are now probing the incident as part of an ongoing investigation into threats against the German official.
Ulrike Liedtke, president of the Brandenburg state parliament, condemned the latest attack on Büttner, describing the death threats and harassment as “completely unacceptable.”
“Threats and violence are not a form of political discourse, but crimes against humanity,” Liedtke said. “Andreas Büttner has our complete support and solidarity.”
A former police officer and member of the Left Party, Büttner took office as commissioner for antisemitism in 2024 and has faced repeated attacks since.
On Sunday night, Büttner’s private property in Templin — a town located approximately 43 miles north of Berlin — was targeted in an arson attack, and a red Hamas triangle was spray-painted on his house.
The home of Germany’s antisemitism commissioner, Andreas Büttner, was set on fire overnight in a targeted attack.
His family was inside the house at the time.
This is the second attack against Büttner in the past 16 months. His car was previously vandalized with swastikas. This… pic.twitter.com/cAbFnMIwQ7
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) January 5, 2026
According to Büttner, his family was inside the house at the time of the attack, marking the latest assault against him in the past 16 months.
“The symbol sends a clear message. The red Hamas triangle is widely recognized as a sign of jihadist violence and antisemitic incitement,” Büttner said in a statement after the incident.
“Anyone who uses such a thing wants to intimidate and glorify terror. This is not a protest, it is a threat,” he continued.
Hamas uses inverted red triangles in its propaganda videos to indicate Israeli targets about to be attacked. The symbol, a common staple at pro-Hamas rallies, has come to represent the Palestinian terrorist group and glorify its use of violence.
In August 2024, swastikas and other symbols and threats were also spray-painted on Büttner’s personal car.
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Harvard President Blasts Scholar Activism, Calls for ‘Restoring Balance’ in Higher Ed
Harvard University President Alan Garber speaks during the 374th Commencement exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University president Alan Garber, fresh off a resounding endorsement in which the Harvard Corporation elected to keep him on the job “indefinitely,” criticized progressive faculty in a recent podcast interview for turning the university classroom into a pulpit for the airing of their personal views on contentious political issues.
Garber made the comments last week on the “Identity/Crisis Podcast,” a production of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish think tank which specializes in education research.
“I think that’s where we went wrong,” Garber said, speaking to Yehuda Kurtzer. “Because think about it, if a professor in a classroom says, ‘This is what I believe about this issue,’ how many students — some of you probably would be prepared to deal with this, but most people wouldn’t — how many students would actually be willing to go toe to toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?”
Garber continued, saying he believes higher education, facing a popular backlash against what critics have described as political indoctrination, is now seeing a “movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom.”
He added, “What we need to arm our students with is a set of facts and a set of analytic tools and cultivation of rigor in analyzing these issues.”
Coming during winter recess and the Jewish and Christian holidays, Garber’s interview fell under the radar after it was first aired but has been noticed this week, with some observers pointing to it as evidence that Harvard is leading an effort to restore trust in the university even as it resists conceding to the Trump administration everything it has demanded regarding DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), viewpoint diversity, and expressive activity such as protests.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Garber has spent the past two years fighting factions from within and without the university that have demanded to steer its policies and culture — from organizers of an illegal anti-Israel encampment to US President Donald Trump, who earlier this year canceled $2.26 billion in public money for Harvard after it refused to grant his wishlist of reforms for which the conservative movement has clamored for decades.
Even as Harvard tells Trump “no,” it has enacted several policies as a direct response to criticisms that the institution is too permissive of antisemitism for having allowed anti-Zionist extremism to reach the point of antisemitic harassment and discrimination. In 2025, the school agreed to incorporate into its policies a definition of antisemitism supported by most of the Jewish community, established new rules governing campus protests, and announced new partnerships with Israeli academic institutions. Harvard even shuttered a DEI office and transferred its staff to what will become, according to a previous report by The Harvard Crimson, a “new Office of Culture and Community.” The paper added that Harvard has even “worked to strip all references to DEI from its website.”
Appointed in January 2024 as interim president, Garber — who previously served in roles as Harvard’s provost and chief academic officer — rose to the top position at America’s oldest and, arguably, most prestigious institution at a time when the job was least desirable. At the time, Harvard was being pilloried over some of its students cheering Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and even forming gangs which mobbed Jewish students wending their way through campus; the university had suffered the embarrassment of its first Black president being outed as a serial plagiarist, a stunning disclosure which called into question its vetting procedures as well as its embrace of affirmative action; and anti-Israel activists on campus were disrupting classes and calling for others to “globalize the intifada.”
Garber has since won over the Harvard Corporation, which has refused to replace him during a moment that has been described as the most challenging in its history.
“Alan’s humble, resilient, and effective leadership has shown itself to be not just a vital source of calm in turbulent times, but also a generative force for sustaining Harvard’s commitment to academic excellence and to free inquiry and expression,” Harvard Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker said in a statement issued on behalf of the body, which is the equivalent of a board of trustees. “From restoring a sense of community during a period of intense scrutiny and division to launching vital new programs on viewpoint diversity and civil discourses and instituting new actions to fight antisemitism and anti-Arab bias, Alan has not only stabilized the university but brought us together in support of our shared mission.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Holocaust Survivors Sent Care Packages to Oct. 7 Hostages for Hanukkah
The Menorah for Hanukkah on the Square 2025 in Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom, Dec. 14, 2025. Photo: Matthew Chattle/Cover Images via Reuters Connect
Survivors of the Holocaust spread holiday cheer this Hanukkah by delivering care packages to a group of 20 hostages whom the terrorist group Hamas recently released from captivity to fulfill the requirements of a ceasefire which suspended hostilities with Israel.
The gifts, dropped off at the Israeli consulate office in New York City, was made possible by The Blue Card, the only US-based charity organization which provides financial assistance and other services to survivors of the Holocaust. Originally founded in 1934 to assist Jews who had fled Germany to escape Hitler’s persecution of the country’s Jews, it has operated ceaselessly for nearly a century.
Over the past two years, the world has seen a revival of antisemitism unlike any since the period in which The Blue Card was founded, sparked by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre that claimed the lives over of 1,200 Israelis and stole years and even more lives from 251 more who were kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza.
Some of the hostages who survived captivity have been released in stages since Israel and Hamas agreed on a ceasefire in October, and on Monday, Blue Card executive director Masha Pearl said the organization felt it necessary to reach out to them due to their having experienced a plight that is painfully familiar to what its clients endured in Europe during the Holocaust. Pearl also discussed the Bondi Beach mass shooting, in which a father and son inspired by Islamism opened fire on Jews celebrating the start of Hanukkah, murdering 15 people and injuring 40 others.
“Holocaust survivors and former hostages share a uniquely painful bond shaped by survival and resilience,” Pearl said. “After witnessing a mass shooting at a Chanukah event in Sydney, it felt even more urgent for our survivors to deliver these care packages now, spreading light at a moment that feels dark for the entire Jewish world. The resilience of the Holocaust survivors we assist, the former hostages, and now the survivors of the attack in Australia remind us that even in the face of hatred and violence, the Jewish people remain united.”
In a press release Blue Card said the care packages “carried profound meaning,” being filled to the brim with goods of all sorts, from blankets and water bottles to chap stick and even handwritten notes from the Holocaust survivors who sent them.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.