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Connecticut College students are in revolt after president’s planned talk at Florida club with antisemitic and racist past
(JTA) – When students at Connecticut College learned that their president had been planning to attend a fundraiser at a historically racist and antisemitic golf club, they began to organize.
But their school’s building for race and ethnicity programming, the Unity House, didn’t have enough space to hold them all. So a pivotal meeting that kicked off a weeks-long campaign against the university took place at a space with a larger capacity: its Hillel house.
“Having a Jewish space on campus that felt like a safe space to gather as a community is something that really struck me as important,” Ilan Listgarten, a Jewish sophomore at the college, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Three weeks later, Connecticut College students have moved to an even bigger location: They have occupied a central administrative building on the New London campus for five days and counting, and are receiving support from faculty and staff.
The students want the president to resign, and they are calling for increased funding and support for various ethnic studies and student group programs. Their demands include enhancements to the Jewish studies program (the school currently offers a minor) and bias training to address antisemitism.
Tensions have remained so high that Hillel leaders canceled a planned Shabbat dinner with the embattled president, Katherine Bergeron, an annual event that this year had been scheduled for Friday.
As Jewish students and faculty on other campuses have complained that they feel excluded from progressive activism, the crisis at Connecticut College has gone in a different direction. Jewish students are playing a leadership role in the protests, working closely with a coalition of activists from other backgrounds who specifically invited Hillel to join in its efforts. That’s notable because, at other schools across the country, recruiting support from coalitions of minority groups has been a hallmark of pro-Palestinian activists — who often boycott (or are themselves barred from) Hillel due to its pro-Israel stance.
“I’ve felt even more proud to be Jewish on campus right now,” sophomore Davi Schulman, a student journalist and member of Connecticut College Hillel’s leadership team, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “And I’m just proud to be a Connecticut College student. We’re really coming together like we never have before.”
Connecticut College students are protesting against their school’s president, Katherine Bergeron, who had been scheduled to speak at a venue with an antisemitic and racist history. (Courtesy of Sam Maidenberg/The College Voice)
Key to Hillel’s participation, observers said, was the fact that the kindling for the student uprising involved antisemitism. Bergeron had been planning to attend a fundraiser for the college to be held at the Everglades Club, an exclusive golf club in Palm Beach, Florida, that has a history of denying entry and membership to Jews and Black people (reportedly including Black Jewish entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. and Jewish cosmetics mogul Estée Lauder).
Today the club is secretive about its current membership policies, though recent testimony from officials has claimed that the club no longer discriminates against Jews. Its antisemitic past was enough to turn off former President Donald Trump from selling his Mar-a-Lago club to them in the 1990s.
The larger campus community became aware of the fundraiser only after the school’s dean of institutional equity and inclusion, or DIEI, resigned from his position Feb. 7 after only a year on the job, citing the president’s unwillingness to take his advice to cancel the fundraiser. Bergeron announced the next day that the event had been canceled and apologized “to all who saw our plans as contrary to Conn’s values or to the inclusive institution we aspire to be.”
The dean had leaked his resignation letter to a group of student activists, sparking the initial efforts to organize what became Student Voices for Equity — and that meeting in the 6,700-square-foot Zachs Hillel House. Jewish students suggested the venue, opened in 2014 to serve the school’s roughly 200 Jewish students, when it became apparent that the crowd of hundreds wouldn’t fit in Unity House.
The controversy over the fundraiser was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” according to Rabbi Susan Schein, the director of Connecticut College Hillel (and an employee of the university’s diversity and equity office). She and students said there had been long-standing dissatisfaction among many on campus with Bergeron’s leadership; several students said they wanted to see more funding and support for ethnic studies and diversity-focused programs.
When the student activists approached Hillel’s student leadership about having a Jewish representative join their efforts, the students quickly agreed, electing to have Listgarten play the role; today he is helping to support the around 30 students who are occupying the campus building where the president’s office is located. The Hillel also issued a statement standing in solidarity with the movement’s goals.
Connecticut College sits along the Thames River in New London, Connecticut. It enrolls about 2,000 students. (Connecticut College)
A Connecticut College spokesperson told JTA that Bergeron and the school’s administration “take the issues that have been raised seriously,” and that it would conduct an independent review into “the workplace-related concerns.” The college also pledged “significant additional resources” into its diversity-focused efforts. It did not address how the planned fundraiser at the country club had come together. Bergeron has sent six letters to the campus community about the controversy since the diversity dean’s initial resignation.
The ease with which the campus’s Jewish community has fit into this movement is a testament to deliberate programming efforts at the Hillel to reach out to forge relationships between Jews and non-Jews on campus, Listgarten and Schein said. Hillel hosts events like “Unity Shabbat” designed to bring together other marginalized groups, and its center — which includes a game room — was envisioned by funder Henry Zachs as a common space for Jews and non-Jews alike, Schein said.
It wasn’t always this way at Connecticut College. In 2015, the school attracted national attention when a student decried as racist a months-old Facebook post by a Jewish professor about the previous year’s conflict in the Gaza Strip. The professor had ambiguously used an analogy of “rabid pit bulls,” without specifying whether he was talking about Hamas or all Palestinians.
In the resulting furor, hundreds of students and alums signed an online petition demanding the college condemn “the racism and dehumanization” of his post. Pro-Israel activists came to the professor’s defense and accused the campus community of being hostile to Jewish and pro-Israel views.
Today, Listgarten said, Israel hasn’t come up in this current period of student activism, and dialogue between Jews and non-Jews remains civil. He confirmed Bergeron has also hosted annual Shabbat dinners with Hillel students. But this year, after the fundraiser controversy broke into view, Hillel leadership elected not to dine with her for their scheduled Shabbat dinner, which would have taken place Friday.
“The Hillel Board has very clear values of tzedek,” Listgarten said, using the Hebrew word for “justice.” “As soon as this event occurred and it was clear that our values were drastically opposed to that of the president, we canceled.”
Despite their warm reception, Schulman said she’s “conflicted” by the fact that the other campus activists “consistently mentioned the Jewish community on campus and included us in the group of marginalized students.” To her and the other Hillel leadership, the Jewish community has “privilege” that students from some backgrounds don’t, and they’ve made that a central part of their messaging. They cite the existence of the Zachs Hillel House itself, and the fact that it is in better condition than other university spaces devoted to race and ethnicity programming, as one example.
“We don’t want to appear to be pushing any kind of agenda or whatever,” Schulman said. “We’re kind of taking a step back and supporting everyone who is expressing their feelings.”
This dynamic has been crucial to Hillel’s success at ingratiating itself with larger campus culture, Schein said. She invoked Jewish teachings by way of explanation.
“The country club issue that came up involved antisemitism, and I think that caught the attention of the Jewish students. But here they recognized it is not just about themselves, and that they have a responsibility to support others,” Schein said.
Citing the famous quote by Rabbi Hillel, the campus group’s namesake, she added, “They stepped into it. They could’ve been outside, but they said, ‘Now is the moment to support our DIEI colleagues.’ And that’s what the campus is doing. They said, ‘If not now, when?’”
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Iran Hands Over New Proposal for Talks With US to End War
An Iranian flag lies amidst the rubble of a building of the Sharif University of Technology, which was damaged in a strike, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, April 7, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Tehran has submitted its latest proposal for negotiations with the United States, Iranian state media and a Pakistani official said on Friday, a move that could break a deadlock in efforts to end the Iran war.
The official, involved in Pakistani mediation over the war, said Pakistan had received the proposal late on Thursday and had forwarded it to the US.
Neither the official nor Iranian state news agency IRNA gave details, and the White House declined to comment, while saying negotiations continued. Global oil prices, which remain well above $100 a barrel, eased following news of the proposal.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has caused unprecedented disruption to energy markets, choking off 20% of the world’s oil and gas supplies and causing a record rally in oil prices.
The blockade of the vital sea channel has also increased concerns that there will be an economic downturn. The US Navy is blocking exports of Iranian crude oil, and on Friday the US Treasury warned shippers that they risked sanctions if they paid tolls to Iran to pass through the strait.
A ceasefire has been in place since April 8 but reports that US President Donald Trump was to be briefed on plans for new military strikes to compel Iran to negotiate had pushed global oil prices up to a four-year high at one point on Thursday.
Iran has activated air defenses and plans a wide response if attacked, having assessed that there will be a short, intensive US strike, possibly followed by an Israeli attack, two senior Iranian sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
‘TREACHEROUS AGGRESSION’
Washington has not said what its next steps are. Trump said on Tuesday he was unhappy with the previous proposal from Iran, and Pakistan has not set a date for new talks on ending a war that has killed thousands, mainly in Iran and Lebanon.
After US and Israeli airstrikes on Feb. 28, Iran fired at US bases, infrastructure, and US-linked companies in Gulf states, while the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah launched missiles at Israel, which responded with strikes on Lebanon.
Underlining the concerns of the Gulf states, UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash said the “collective international will and provisions of international law” were the primary guarantors of freedom of navigation through the strait.
“And, of course, no unilateral Iranian arrangements can be trusted or relied upon following its treacherous aggression against all its neighbors,” Gargash wrote.
Trump faces a formal US deadline on Friday to end the war or make the case to Congress for extending it under the 1973 War Powers Resolution.
The date looks set to pass without altering the course of the conflict after a senior administration official said that, for the purposes of the resolution, hostilities had terminated due to the April ceasefire between Tehran and Washington.
Financial and energy markets remained on edge because of concerns about the impasse over negotiations and worries that there could be a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
IRAN SAYS NOT TO EXPECT QUICK RESULTS FROM TALKS
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei cautioned on Thursday against expecting quick results from talks.
A senior official of Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards said any new US attack on Iran, even if limited, would usher in “long and painful strikes” on US regional positions, while Aerospace Force Commander Majid Mousavi was quoted by Iranian media as saying: “We’ve seen what happened to your regional bases; we will see the same thing happen to your warships.”
Trump repeated on Thursday that Iran would not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, and said the price of gasoline – an important concern for his Republican Party before midterm elections in November – would “drop like a rock” as soon as the war ended.
Iran says its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes.
The conflict has aggravated Iran‘s economic plight, which could head toward total collapse. However, the regime looks able to survive a standoff for now, despite the US blockade that has curtailed its energy exports.
Axios news site reported that one plan to be shared with Trump during a briefing by top US military leaders that was scheduled for Thursday involved using ground forces to take over part of the strait to reopen it to commercial shipping. Trump is also considering extending the US blockade or declaring a unilateral victory, officials have said.
Washington did not immediately announce any details of its plans.
In a sign that the US was also envisaging a scenario where hostilities cease, a State Department cable due to be delivered orally to partner nations by May 1 invited them to join a new coalition, called the Maritime Freedom Construct, to enable ships to navigate the strait.
France, Britain, and others have held talks on contributing to such a coalition but said they would help to open the strait only when the conflict ends.
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When Jews Are Attacked, the Media Won’t Say ‘Jew’
Orthodox Jews stand by a police cordon, after a man was arrested following a stabbing incident in the Golders Green area, which is home to a large Jewish population, in London, Britain, April 29, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
As soon as the words “attack in Golders Green” were uttered, everyone in Britain — Jewish or not — understood what that likely meant: another antisemitic attack.
Golders Green is one of the most recognizably Jewish areas in the UK, with around half its population identifying as Jewish. When violence erupts there, the context is not ambiguous.
Witness accounts quickly confirmed what seemed obvious. Two visibly Jewish men, in a well-known Jewish neighborhood, were stabbed. The suspect — a 45-year-old Somali national — was arrested at the scene.
Video footage showed police tasering the attacker and using force to disarm him as he refused to drop his weapon. Yet as news of the attack spread, something else became clear: major British media outlets were struggling to name who had been targeted.
The BBC reported that “two people” had been stabbed, attributing key details to a “Jewish security group,” as though the identity of the victims was uncertain or subjective. Sky News similarly opted for “two people,” stripping the attack of its clear antisemitic context in the headline. Later, Sky went further, running a headline emphasizing the attacker’s “history of mental health issues” — a framing that deflects from the antisemitic motive. The Independent, while calling it a terror attack in its headline, still avoided explicitly stating that Jews were targeted.
You mean two Jews, @SkyNews. https://t.co/OdU8YWw7CT
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) April 29, 2026
This is not a minor omission. It is a pattern that repeats with disturbing consistency. When Jews are the victims, the language shifts. Attacks are softened, anonymized, universalized. Victims become “people.” Targeted violence becomes generic crime. The specificity disappears.
But antisemitism is not generic. It is not abstract. And it is not universal.
Jews are being targeted as Jews.
The data makes that impossible to ignore. According to the Community Security Trust (CST), 3,700 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the UK in 2025 – the second-highest total on record and a 4 percent increase from 2024. That followed 4,298 incidents in 2023, itself a historic peak. The trajectory is clear: antisemitic violence is escalating.
And it is visible beyond statistics. In recent weeks alone, Hatzola ambulances were firebombed, synagogues in Finchley and Kenton were targeted in arson attacks, and a building that formerly hosted a Jewish charity in Hendon was targeted. Now, Jews have been stabbed in one of Britain’s most prominent Jewish communities.
Yet even as this reality intensifies, large parts of the media still struggle — or refuse — to name it plainly.
Why?
Part of the answer lies in a broader narrative environment. For months, British audiences have been exposed to coverage that portrays the Jewish state as uniquely malevolent, often with little context or balance. Mass protests openly invoking “intifada” have been downplayed or sanitized. Extremism, when directed at Jews, has too often been reframed as legitimate grievance.
Within that climate, the reluctance to say “Jew” is not accidental. It reflects a deeper discomfort with acknowledging Jews as a distinct and targeted group.
But language matters. When the media erases victims’ identities, it erases the nature of the crime. And when the nature of the crime is blurred, so too is the urgency to confront it.
This is how normalization happens – not through a single headline, but through repetition. Through omission. Through the quiet reshaping of reality.
If the trend continues, the consequences will not remain confined to headlines. Britain’s Jewish community is already questioning its future in a country where anti-Jewish violence is rising — and where even that violence is not always named for what it is.
Two men were not simply stabbed in Golders Green. Jews were attacked for being Jews. And the media should be able to say so.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Say ‘Palestine Was Stolen’ and Win Cash From the Palestinian Authority
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas holds a leadership meeting in Ramallah, in the West Bank, April 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Torokman
In a separate episode of official Palestinian Authority TV’s quiz program for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, participants received cash prizes from PA Chairman Abbas for denying Israel’s existence. Lebanese “refugees from Palestine” were also given money for lengthier answers to questions such as “how significant is Palestine for you?” and “why do we not consider any other homeland outside of Palestine as our homeland?”
This episode and the cash rewards were also sponsored by PA Chairman Abbas, the PLO Department of Refugee Affairs, and official PA TV. The following are excerpts of the questions put to residents of the Al-Badawi and Nahr Al-Bared refugee camps in Lebanon and their answers that all presented Israel as “Palestine.” The envelopes with the cash given to the participants bore the PA’s logo:
Woman 1: “[I’m] from Al-Tira [near] Haifa, in Palestine (sic., Israel).”
Official PA TV host: “How significant is Palestine for you?”
Woman 1: “Palestine is in our hearts, and we educate our children and future generations that we have the right of return to Palestine.”
Host: “Why do our people in the diaspora keep the names of their villages and cities?
Woman 2: “We have not forgotten Palestine nor any of its regions… Allah willing we will return soon, each to his area. The right of return is legitimate…”
Host: “Why is it important that we pass on this message, the names of the cities, the names of the villages, and the story that happened in 1948… to the younger generation?” …
Woman 2: “We educate our children on the principle that we have a land that was stolen and is occupied by the Zionist enemy.” …
Host: “Your answer was correct. You receive from us a [cash] prize, a presidential grant given to you on behalf of President Abbas…”
Host: “Why do we not consider any other homeland outside of Palestine as our homeland?” …
Woman 3: “No! This is our land. Palestine is our land and our homeland! Allah willing, Palestine will be liberated, and we will return to our lands. We are sitting here [in Lebanon] as guests… Generation after generation, we teach [our children] that we have a land and a homeland, which must be liberated.”
Host: “Your answer fills the heart with pride and joy, because as a Palestinian people, we have the right to return to our homeland. You have won a presidential grant…”
Host: “How important is the right of return for our people?”
Man 1: “Important. We hope to return already today! The right of return is a right! And there is no substitute for our homeland!” …
Host: “You have won a presidential grant…”
Host: “How important is it that we teach our children about the holy sites of Islam and Christianity that belong to us, about our Palestinian villages and cities from which our people were expelled?”
Man 2: “It is very important… We must teach the younger generation so that the memory will be preserved in their hearts, and of course so that we will return to Palestine, Allah willing!” …
Host: “You have won a presidential grant…”
Host: “Why have our Palestinian people insisted on keeping the names of their villages and towns from which they were expelled?”
Woman 4: “To preserve our homeland, Palestine… Because Palestine is our land, our homeland, our soil, and our right!” …
Host: “Allah willing, we will return to the homeland’s soil!”
Host: “You have won a presidential grant…”
Man 3: “[I’m from] the subdistrict of Safed in Palestine (sic., Israel).”
Host: “Why do our people not consider any country they live in as their homeland, instead of Palestine?”
Man 3: “We cannot leave our land, our cause, our soil, and our land! … We are the children of Palestine, and we do not want any other land to be a substitute for Palestine! … In Lebanon we are guests…”
Host: “You have won a presidential grant…”
Man 4: “[I’m from] the subdistrict of Safed in Palestine (sic., Israel).”
Host: “Why do our Palestinian people insist on keeping the names of their villages from which they were expelled in 1948?”
Man 4: “We want to return because everyone [wants to return] to his village, to his area, and to his land – Palestine… We cannot give up Palestine, it has no substitute.”
“How important is it that you pass on the name of the village… to your children… so that they too know… that they have a right?”
Man 4: “We always continue to tell [our children] there is nothing like our land and borders! … Allah willing, all the refugee camps in Lebanon will return to the land of Palestine, to their land…”
Host: “You have won a presidential grant…”
Host: “What does Palestine mean to you?”
Woman 5: “This is my land.”
Host: “You receive from us a prize, which is a presidential [cash] grant given on behalf of the honorable President Abbas, the Department of Refugee Affairs [in the PLO], and Palestinian Television. Here you go!”
[Official PA TV, Discourse of Memory, March 17, 2026]
Palestinian Media Watch has exposed how the PA along the same lines instruct Palestinian “refugees” that the countries they live in are only “waiting stations.”
This is yet another example of how the PA does everything it can to cement the ideology among Palestinians that there is no Israel and that “Palestine” will be liberated.
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.