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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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The post Connecticut College students are in revolt after president’s planned talk at Florida club with antisemitic and racist past appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘Marty Supreme’ is an outstanding celebration — and indictment — of chutzpah
Marty Mouser will have the beef Wellington and caviar, as they are the most expensive items on the menu.
The 23-year-old table tennis phenom, heralded as “the chosen one,” is dining at the Ritz in London. Seated opposite him, his recent opponent, Bela Kletzki. The two are friends, but this didn’t stop Mouser from telling a gaggle of reporters before their match of his plans to “do to Kletzski what Auschwitz couldn’t.” He can say that, he assured them — he’s a Jew.
This, like Mouser’s remark that he is the “ultimate product of Hitler’s defeat,” is all bluster. (He’s really a lowly Lower East Side shoe clerk who stole money from his shop to fly to the tournament.) But we soon see what Auschwitz meant for his survivor companion: defusing bombs on the camp outskirts and once managing to sneak honey from a beehive onto his person, which his fellow prisoners licked off him for nourishment.
We get a flashback of Kletzki. It’s lensed like a Renaissance painting, with honey glistening off of the hairy chest of actor Géza Röhrig, (Hungarian star of the Sonderkommando drama Son of Saul).
You may wonder what exactly this moment is doing in Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, a walloping period piece that follows Mouser’s picaresque ploys to become a global icon by hustling, stealing and lying his way into a tournament in Japan. But there’s rarely a moment in the frenetic picture, set over eight months in 1952, where only one thing is happening. While Kletzki tells his haunting honey story, to pen magnate and potential patron Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary, Mr. Wonderful, indeed), Marty makes eyes at Rockwell’s wife from across the room, another sort of honeypot in mind. The contrast is the point.
Unlike Kletzki, Marty — very loosely based on ping-pong champ Marty Reisman — is an American, New York-born, and believes in the Augie March doctrine of first knocked, first admitted. To get his foot in the door so he can stare down from his rightful place on a Wheaties box, he will shove anyone and everyone out of the way. He refuses to demean himself by playing Harlem Globetrotter halftime shows with Kletzki, or throwing a match for Rockwell — but his principles are malleable when the straits are dire.
Mouser feels entitled to everything: the money in his uncle’s safe at the shoe shop; a suite at the Ritz; other men’s wives; a chunk of the pyramids, which he presents to his manipulative mother (Fran Drescher) with the words, “We built that.”
We know from how he speaks about this hunk of Egyptian rock — and about Kletzki, the Holocaust and Hitler — his entitlement comes in part from a legacy of immiseration and violence he never suffered personally. But Mouser, this New Jew coming of age after the Shoah, claims redemption as his birthright while also striving to float above his people’s history of oppression and retail drudgery, concocting a mythology of self-invention and radical individualism. (Meanwhile, Kletzki, a world champ before the war, is all too happy to be treated kindly and paid decently for hitting balls with skillets for the Globetrotters.)
The tension between the horror of the recent past, and the just-dawning promise of an America where antisemitism is unfashionable, plays through Marty’s vision of what’s to come. He dreams up orange-colored ping-pong balls, a hue only approved for use by the International Table Tennis Federation in 2019. The 1980s synth-pop needle drops remixed by composer Daniel Lopatin, lean into futurism. Our hero is ahead of his time, chafing at the present to which he’s tethered. He wants an unready world to acknowledge his greatness now. He has no patience for a rocky transition.
If the opening credits of Uncut Gems bespeak a past-one’s-prime ritual — a colonoscopy — Marty Supreme‘s titles are set to a burst of youthful virility. (Inventive, hilarious, if something I’ve seen before.)
Timothée Chalamet, outfitted with prosthetic acne scars and eye-shrinking contact lenses, is incandescent and somehow stays to the right side of insufferable as he wrecks the lives of all around him with his singular focus. Unlike Gems’ Howard Ratner, a sleaze with a gambling addiction and little else to offer, Mouser’s talent is undeniable, but like any Safdie protagonist, he takes his licks.
The film, co-written and co-edited with Safdie’s constant collaborator Ronald Bronstein, is a rich Jewish text that alternates between wish fulfillment and nightmare. Mouser competes for the WASPy Rockwell’s patronage while shtupping his icy blonde wife (Gwyneth Paltrow). On the other side of the ledger, his lover, Rachel (a pitch-perfect Odessa A’zion), is attacked near a Forverts delivery truck. Marty’s uncle Murray (music journalist Larry “Ratso” Sloman) calls a cop goyische kopf for ordering the roast beef over pastrami at the Garden Cafe. It’s no mistake that, at his lowest, Mouser faces a treyf humiliation orchestrated by Rockwell: lose and kiss a pig.
But Marty Supreme is too dense with plot points and people to insist on a solely Jewish gloss, even as critics for the non-Jewish press have been tempted to apply one.
Exploring the warrens of postwar New York — the wings of a Broadway theater, the back alley of a Chinatown restaurant, stockrooms, airshafts and fire escapes — all outstandingly revived by legendary production designer Jack Fisk, Safdie proves he’s not only ready for a solo effort away from brother, Benny, but ready to leap over space and time. He may not be ready to say goodbye to all that (New York stuff), the backdrop for all his features up to now, but he easily could.
In this epic of chutzpah, we have a mature work via a singularly immature avatar. Mouser may have never reached the recognition he felt he was owed, but coming into awards season, there’s little doubt that Safdie’s film is a cross-category contender.
Should the gentleman order the caviar, there’s no doubt he’s earned it.
The post ‘Marty Supreme’ is an outstanding celebration — and indictment — of chutzpah appeared first on The Forward.
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The Future of War: Israel Takes Global Lead on Military Innovation With New AI Division, Iron Beam Laser System
A part of Iron Beam laser anti-missile interception system, developed by Israel, is seen in this handout image obtained by Reuters on Sept. 17, 2025. Photo: Israel Defense Ministry/Handout via REUTERS
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced this week a revolutionary reorganization of the technology and artificial intelligence capabilities of the Jewish state’s military, unveiling new plans to prepare for future warfare with cutting-edge advancements.
Israel’s major defense overhaul, unveiled on Tuesday, comes in preparation for the deployment of the long-anticipated “Iron Beam” laser interceptor system, which will be delivered to the military at the end of the month.
Under the name “Bina” — Hebrew word “intelligence” — the IDF has chosen to shut down its Lotem Unit from the C41 Corps, replacing it with the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Division and the Spectrum Division. The latter will focus on communications and electronic warfare with an emphasis on threats from Iran, China, and Russia.
The AI Division will grow through merging other sections within the IDF, including Mamram (the abbreviation for the Center of Computing and Information Systems) and software development units Shahar and Mitzpen. This consolidation of AI-development related divisions intends both to intensify security and avoid accidentally duplicating research efforts. The project will align with Israel’s Project Nimbus cloud computing program supplied by Amazon and Google.
The IDF also announced the ICT Division, which will focus on satellite warfare in outer space.
According to the military, about 50 percent of the new divisions are composed of women soldiers, with female officers comprising 40 percent of the senior command including two of the five top leadership positions.
Brig. Gen. Yael Grossman now heads ICT and the Cyber Defense Division, and Brig Gen. Racheli Dembinsky will head the Spectrum Division. Others in leadership positions include Chief Signals Officer Brig. Gen. Omer Cohen and Maj. Gen. Aviad Dagan.
“I have no doubt that the world is heading towards a space war, especially after the US and China defined space as a possible war arena,” Dr. Moshik Cohen, CEO for defense technology company AIPEX which focuses on missiles, told the Israeli publication Globes.
“Rival powers are already using it on the battlefield,” Cohen continued. “The Chinese have developed a way to detect stealth aircraft using satellites, and the Russians have jammed GPS signals from US satellites, which have dropped thousands of smart bombs on earth and blocked satellite communications for the Ukrainians. At the same time, the US is promoting Golden Dome, which will consist of a network of low-flying satellites able to perform military missions such as intercepting ballistic and hypersonic missiles and blocking enemy communications.”
Dagan said that the new divisions aspired to use technology to “turn one tank into 100 tanks, one soldier into 100 fighters.”
On Monday, meanwhile, Danny Gold, the head of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development, revealed that the military would soon receive the “Iron Beam” laser interception system, a project a decade in development.
“With development complete and a comprehensive testing program that has validated the system’s capabilities, we are prepared to deliver initial operational capability to the IDF on Dec. 30, 2025,” Gold said. “The Iron Beam laser system is expected to fundamentally change the rules of engagement on the battlefield. Simultaneously, we are already advancing the next-generation systems.”
Created by Rafael Advanced Systems Ltd., the Iron Beam is intended to supplement rather than replace Israel’s Iron Dome and other air defense systems, focusing especially on smaller targets. As long as the weapon maintains a power source then it cannot run out of ammunition. However, the system does not function optimally in situations with clouds or low visibility.
The IDF chose to rename the laser weapon from Magen Or (Light Shield) to Or Eitan (Eitan’s Light) in honor of Cpt. Eitan Oster, a member of the Egoz Commando Unit killed in October 2024 while fighting the Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon.
Brig. Gen. Benny Aminov also announced this week an Israeli breakthrough in countering enemy drone attacks.
“We are now working on interception solutions using drone-based systems that enable response to swarm scenarios while accelerating the development of new directed-energy weapons,” Aminov said. “The issue of low-altitude threats is an example of a challenge that requires our defense establishment to fundamentally change its operational approach, responding within compressed time frames, spiral development, accelerating testing during the development process, and bridging small defense-tech companies with major defense contractors.”
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‘Dancing With the Stars’ Airs Its First Dance Dedicated to Hanukkah During Holiday Special
Alan Bersten, Val Chmerkovskiy, Gleb Savchenko, Emma Slater, Onye Stevenson, and Hailey Bills dancing to “Miracle” by Matisyahu on “Dancing with the Stars” on Dec. 2, 2025, on ABC. Photo: Disney/Eric McCandless
“Dancing with the Stars” aired a holiday special on Wednesday night that included the show’s first celebration of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, which begins later this month.
The reality show and dancing competition aired its first full holiday special, titled “Dancing with the Holidays,” which highlighted the skills of its professional dancers without their celebrity partners. The dances mainly honored Christmas, but for the first time in the show’s 20-year history, there was a dance dedicated to Hanukkah.
Professional dancers Alan Bersten and Val Chmerkovskiy, who are both Jewish, along with four non-Jewish pros – Gleb Savchenko, Emma Slater, Onye Stevenson, and Hailey Bills – danced to “Miracle” by Matisyahu. Bersten choreographed the dance, which included the men linking their raised arms to form a menorah, a hora, a sit-spin as a nod to a spinning dreidel, and a take on some of the dances from the classic Jewish musical “Fiddler on the Roof.”
“We have a lot of work to do,” the Mirrorball champion told the dancers in rehearsal. “We need a miracle.”
In the intro package for the dance, Bersten, who is the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, talked about not seeing much Hanukkah representation around the holiday season when he was growing up. Bersten said he wanted to create something that Jewish kids today could identify with.
“Everyone celebrates holidays in a different way. Growing up Jewish, you don’t really see a lot of Hanukkah representation, so tonight we’re doing a special performance to celebrate Hanukkah,” he said. “Hopefully a Jewish kid’s watching this, and they feel seen, and they feel proud.”
Following the dance, DWTS co-host Alfonso Ribeiro reminded the audience and viewers at home “that the holiday season is for everyone.”
The “Dancing with the Stars” holiday special was released on Disney+ and Hulu.