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How Arnold Horween, an unsung Jewish Harvard hero, changed American sports
(JTA) — Decades before Sandy Koufax sat out the first game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur, and 18 years before Greenberg chased Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record in the late 1930s, a college athlete made some overlooked Jewish sports history.
Arnold Horween, a burly Chicagoan, became the first Jewish captain of the Harvard University football team in 1920 — an achievement that sent ripples through American culture.
Horween, who would later play and coach in the early years of what would become the NFL, was born to Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. He became a star player at Harvard, helping the Crimson go undefeated in both 1919 and 1920 after returning from serving in World War I. (His brother Ralph also played at Harvard and in the NFL, and they were the first and only Jewish brothers to play in the NFL until Geoff and Mitchell Schwartz.)
But it was Horween’s unanimous selection as the team’s captain, and more importantly, his appointment in 1926 as the team’s coach, that would prove unprecedented.
“In American Jewish culture, the only thing greater than being the captain of the Harvard Crimson, the only higher station in American culture might have been the president, or the coach of Harvard, which he eventually becomes,” said Zev Eleff, the president of Gratz College and a scholar of American Jewish history.
Eleff explores Horween’s story and its impact in his recent book, “Dyed in Crimson: Football, Faith, and Remaking Harvard’s America,” released earlier this year. He traces the history of Harvard athletics in the early 1900s, exploring how Horween, along with Harvard’s first athletic director, Bill Bingham, altered the landscape of America’s most prestigious college.
Horween’s ascendance came at a time when Harvard instituted quotas to limit the number of Jewish and other minority students it accepted — a practice the school would employ throughout the 1920s and 30s. His story also took place amid a political landscape that featured the rise of Father Charles Coughlin, the antisemitic “radio priest,” and the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan.
As Eleff underscores in the book, Horween did not fit the model of a “Boston Brahmin,” the class of elite, Christian, aspirationally manly men whose supremacy was unquestioned at Harvard Yard. Horween broke that mold, instead instilling a team culture where a love of the sport was almost as important as winning — the Ted Lasso effect, if you will.
“Dyed in Crimson” also uses early 20th century Harvard as an allegory for the broader theme of how sports can change society.
“The theme of the book, something that’s uniquely American, is how the periphery can influence the mainstream,” said Eleff. “How people on the sidelines can really make an influence.”
Eleff spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about how Horween’s story fits into the pantheon of Jewish American sports legends and what it says about Jews’ ability to succeed in America.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Let’s dig into Horween’s story. I liked the idea of him as like an earlier version of Koufax or a Greenberg, but to be honest, I had never heard of him. Why do you think his story isn’t as well known as other Jewish athletes?
I think it has everything to do with the emergence of Major League Baseball. College football was America’s sport in the 1910s and 1920s. It was a big money sport, when there was very little money outside of the New York Yankees. And I think that Horween’s star started to sort of decline with Harvard football, but also the emergence of other sports.
The other reason is because the idea of the Jewish ballplayer loomed large. The New York Giants, for decades, tried to identify a Jewish superstar. They actually passed on Greenberg. There was a thought after Greenberg that there was Jewish DNA for baseball, and the signing of Koufax was directly linked to this notion. It was this eugenics-like link that you need a Jewish ballplayer. For the Giants, it was ticket sales. So the commotion about Greenberg and Koufax is more about Jewish identity. And baseball is, as a professional sport in New York, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, different than college football, particularly in New England at this time. Frankly, Jews lived near the Polo Grounds, they didn’t live near Harvard Yard.
Arnold Horween shown in The Baltimore Sun on November 16, 1927. (Wikimedia Commons)
For Horween, obviously he’s not at the level of a Greenberg or Koufax talent-wise, but he also didn’t seem to care as much personally about his Jewish identity. You write in the book that there were some Jews who took issue with the fact that Horween was not practicing, but there were also many Jews who were simply proud he was Jewish. What do you think about that dynamic?
There becomes a sort of disconnect between lived religion and the perception and what they come to represent — the mantle that they wear almost towers above the practice. Horween eschewed the opportunity to claim the mantle of Jewish leadership, Jewish celebrity. But we do see in its moment that he is the topic of rabbinic sermons, that The American Hebrew and other Jewish press are reporting on him. They are elated. In American Jewish culture, the only thing greater than being the captain of the Harvard Crimson — it’s hard for people to realize, but in the moment when they were part of the big three [alongside Princeton and Yale] — the only higher station in American culture might have been the president, or the coach of Harvard, which he eventually becomes.
One of the parts of this book that I enjoyed learning about is the extent to which college football in the early 20th century was all about honor, masculinity, gentlemanliness. And at the time, that kind of stands in contrast to how Jews were viewed — that Jews were not masculine, Jews couldn’t fit into that mold of the “Harvard man.”
Being on the sports team, that was probably far beyond Jewish expectations. Not to say that Jews could not be athletic, but very often the varsity players weren’t picked for their talent but rather their surnames. What the sea change at Harvard is, [within] gentlemanly culture — in which “gentlemanly” is a Protestant, Christian masculinity — Horween is not Protestant. What allows him a pathway into that elite group is that drive to win. And as a player, he’s good luck. He never loses. He becomes a signature player for victory who even wins the Rose Bowl.
But as a coach, he subverts that. What he and Bill Bingham do is their campaign isn’t necessarily for winning, it’s for having fun, it’s for enjoying the game.
In the 1910s and 20s, college football was the peak of American sports, but that’s certainly not the case anymore. What do you think would be the modern comparison for someone like Horween?
Is Becky Hammon with the Spurs, the first woman [to act as] head coach in basketball, something like that? Or the very important discussions about people of color as coaches in the NFL? Sports and education are, for some reason or another, where change is made in American life. Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 ends, at least officially, segregation. Title IV, what is basically American law for anti-discrimination based on sex, is based on women’s college sports. You have the breaking down of color barriers and Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and Vietnam. You have the first [openly] gay athletes, you have questions of breaking the glass ceiling for women and Serena Williams.
It’s absolutely 100% true that sports doesn’t matter. Who wins the World Series is of no great consequence to most people’s lives. Although it’s interesting, if you drive up I-95 on a Sunday, you will see that the bumper stickers and the flags change. There is some sort of passion, obviously, about sport. But it’s absolutely true that for some reason or another in the 20th century and 21st century in American sport, really important social and cultural decisions, and political decisions, are made in American sport.
Zev Eleff, president of Gratz College and author of “Dyed in Crimson.” (Courtesy)
Another main topic in the book is that the goal for immigrants, especially Jews, was Americanization, assimilation — that to become part of the mainstream was the marker of success. But that seems to be the case for Jews in a very different sense than it is for Catholics and for Blacks.
The major contribution of this book to American Jewish history beyond telling this story is to complicate notions of Americanization. Jews and Catholics in particular view Americanization very, very differently. The Catholic experience is to create parallel systems. If you’re a good Catholic boy with immense football talent, play for Notre Dame, play for Boston College. Don’t play for the Protestant mainstream. Cream them on the football field. Create parallel systems.
The Jewish experience is not so. Outside of Orthodox day schools in the early 20th century, it was anathema, it was considered almost heretical, for American Jews to [go] to private schools. To the contrary, the so-called golden citadels of the public schools — that is the agent of Americanization. Jews don’t establish their own educational systems. They somehow Americanize and acculturate into the mainstream. We don’t compete with Harvard, we get into Harvard.
Thinking about the antisemitism of that time — the quotas, Father Coughlin, all of that — how do you think that compares to what we’re seeing today?
Historians disagree about the 1920s. Was it a time of great prominence of American Jews? There was affluence in the roaring ’20s. There were institutions that were created, there was creativity, from the Orthodox and Mordecai Kaplan certainly, across the board, the Jewish Theological Seminary. American Judaism was at a certain high point in the 1920s. At the same time, there were quotas, and there was rising antisemitism. I think today we also have to deal with the tension of, on the one hand, there are great opportunities for Jews in the United States; at the same time, there is antisemitism. And so from the 1920s to the 2020s, 100 years later, you see a model for how to grapple with those tensions.
What do you hope, more than anything else, someone takes away or learns from your book?
It’s a book that begins like a punch line: a working class Protestant, a Catholic and a Jew walk into a football field. But it ends with something I think a lot more pronounced, which is, it’s a story about change. As a historian, I study change, particularly in American Judaism, broadly in American religion and Jewish Studies. Change is the best asset that a historian has to study. I wasn’t interested in just finding another Sandy Koufax story, replicating that story. This is a story that isn’t just about a Jew who happened for his moment to become quite successful and quite famous, or a Catholic or a former mill hand turned first athletic director in college history. It’s really about how people on the periphery influence the mainstream.
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Two Argentine Jewish Tourists Assaulted in Milan as Antisemitic Incidents Surge Across Italy
A protester uses a pole to break a window at Milano Centrale railway station, during a demonstration that is part of a nationwide “Let’s Block Everything” protest in solidarity with Gaza, with activists also calling for a halt to arms shipments to Israel, in Milan, Italy, Sept. 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Two young Argentine Jewish tourists were violently assaulted in Milan by a group of North African migrants after being targeted for wearing kippahs, in one of the latest antisemitic attacks amid a relentlessly hostile climate toward Jewish communities across Europe.
According to Italian media reports, the two 19-year-old Argentine tourists were attacked late Sunday night outside a 24-hour supermarket in Milan, a city in the northern part of the country, at Piazzale Siena after leaving the store when a group of about 10 people approached them.
After spotting the kippahs worn by the two young men, the attackers began shouting antisemitic insults, including “f**king Jews,” before violently assaulting them, leaving one of the victims with a broken nose.
Authorities and emergency responders were quickly dispatched to the scene following the attack, with police and paramedics providing assistance before transporting the two victims to a local hospital.
Local law enforcement has now opened a criminal investigation into the assault, reviewing surveillance camera footage and analyzing cell phone data from areas surrounding Piazzale Siena.
The European Jewish Congress (EJC) strongly condemned the incident, describing it as a sign of rising antisemitic hostility and calling for renewed efforts to safeguard Jewish communities across Europe.
“This disturbing incident highlights the very real dangers Jews continue to face in public spaces across Europe simply for expressing their identity. Antisemitic violence must be confronted with the utmost seriousness,” EJC said in a statement.
“Authorities must ensure that those responsible are swiftly identified and brought to justice. No one in Europe should fear being attacked for being visibly Jewish,” it continued.
Two young Jewish tourists from Argentina were violently assaulted outside a supermarket in Milan after being identified as Jewish by their kippahs.
The attackers first hurled antisemitic insults before punching the victims, leaving one with a broken nose.
This disturbing… pic.twitter.com/Ch0IzlgWt4
— European Jewish Congress (@eurojewcong) March 4, 2026
Amid heightened tensions tied to the recent US-Israeli joint military campaign against Iran, Walker Meghnagi — president of the Jewish community of Milan — called on authorities to strengthen protection for Jewish schools and synagogues.
“We must remain vigilant. We have asked the prefect to increase surveillance around our schools and places of worship, as well as to safeguard our freedoms, but we cannot isolate ourselves,” he said.
“We are Italians and deserve to be respected as such. We are a free people, and we will not hide — we must stand firm in defense of our freedom,” Meghnagi continued.
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Italy has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to newly published figures, antisemitism in Italy surged to record levels in 2025, reflecting a broader climate in which Jews and Israelis across Europe have faced harassment, vandalism, and targeted violence.
In Italy, the Milan-based CDEC Foundation (Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation) confirmed that antisemitic incidents in the country almost reached four digits for the first time last year.
Of 1,492 reports submitted through official monitoring channels, the CDEC formally classified a record high 963 cases as antisemitic, according to the EJC and Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), the main representative body of Jews in Italy.
By comparison, there were 877 recorded incidents in 2024, preceded by 453 such outrages in 2023 and just 241 in 2022.
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New York Judge Overturns Disciplinary Sanctions for Columbia University Students Who Occupied Hamilton Hall
Protesters gather at the gates of Columbia University, in support of student protesters who barricaded themselves in Hamilton Hall, in New York City, US, April 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
A New York state judge has overturn disciplinary sanctions imposed on a group of anti-Israel protesters who illegally occupied Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall and interned janitorial staff while destroying property to protest the Israel-Hamas war, raising concerns that colleges may be deprived of the power to punish severe misconduct perpetrated by students who claim to be advancing progressive causes.
Twenty-two current and former students, all of whom contested their punishments anonymously, may soon walk away without being held accountable following Judge Gerald Lebovits’s ruling last Friday that Columbia’s actions were “arbitrary and capricious.” Lebovits went further, citing the students’ concealment of their identities with masks and keffiyeh scarves as evidence that the university lacked evidence to determine that they were actually in Hamilton Hall despite that they had been arrested on the scene by the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
“In the disciplinary proceedings against the 22 Columbia students, the sole evidence that they were present in Hamilton Hall during its occupation was a report reflecting that petitioners had been arrested,” he wrote. “No evidence was offered in the disciplinary proceedings of actions taken inside Hamilton Hall by any particular student, as opposed to the conduct of the group of occupiers as a whole.”
Lebovits, after arguing that the group should not be disciplined even as he described their infractions, then argued that illegally occupying Hamilton Hall is “decades-long tradition.”
He continued, “Others might see the occupiers’ actions as manifestations of an ugly hatred against Jews, using rhetoric about Gaza mainly as a pretext. But the task for this court is not to decide between these perspectives, or to opine on the moral or political issues implicated by the actions of the parties to this proceeding.”
In a statement shared with The Algemeiner on Wednesday, Columbia University noted that Lebovits’s vacating the disciplinary sanctions does not take effect for 30 days, during which time university lawyers may pursue other legal avenues.
“The order does not take effect for at least 30 days, and no student who was disciplined for the occupation of Hamilton Hall can return to campus at this time,” a university spokesperson said. “Columbia is considering all of its options, including seeking a stay of the order and appealing the decision.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, in April 2024, anti-Israel agitators occupied Hamilton Hall, forcing then-university president Minouche Shafik to call on the NYPD for help, a decision she hesitated to make. During a search of the scene, the NYPD found a number of disturbing items, including “gas masks, ear plugs, helmets, goggles, tape, hammers, knives, ropes, and a book on TERRORISM [sic].” Police also found signs which said “death to America” and “death to Israel.”
During the same period, a group that calls itself “Columbia University Apartheid Divest” (CUAD) commandeered a section of campus and, after declaring it a “liberated zone,” lit flares and chanted pro-Hamas and anti-American slogans, according to numerous reports. When the NYPD arrived to disperse the unauthorized gathering, hundreds of students reportedly amassed around them to prevent the restoration of order.
“Yes, we’re all Hamas, pig!” one protester was filmed screaming during the fracas, which saw some verbal skirmishes between pro-Zionist and anti-Zionist partisans. “Long live Hamas!” said others who filmed themselves dancing and praising the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian terrorist organization.
Beyond the occupation of school property, Columbia has produced some of the most indelible examples of antisemitism, pro-jihadist sentiment, and extreme anti-Zionism in American higher education since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023. Such incidents include a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
In July, interim then-university president Claire Shipman said the institution would hire new coordinators to oversee antisemitism complaints alleging civil rights violations; facilitate “deeper education on antisemitism” by creating new training programs for students, faculty, and staff; and adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism — a tool that advocates say is necessary for identifying what constitutes antisemitic conduct and speech.
Shipman also announced new partnerships with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other Jewish groups while delivering a major blow to the anti-Zionist movement on campus by vowing never to “recognize or meet with” the infamous organization CUAD, which had serially disrupted academic life with a number of other unauthorized, surprise demonstrations attended by non-students.
However, Columbia University has retained a professor, Joseph Massad, who celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel — where the Palestinian terrorist group sexually assaulted women and men, kidnapped the elderly, and murdered children in their beds — allowing him to teach a course on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Speaking to The Algemeiner in January, Middle East expert and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East Asaf Romirowsky said that Massad’s remaining on Columbia’s payroll is indicative of the university’s hesitance to enact meaningful and lasting reforms.
“Joseph Massad is a notorious tenured antisemite who has spent his career at Columbia bashing Israel and Zionism, a poster child for BDS and a scholar propagandist activist. Furthermore, he has shown his true colors time and time again defending Hamas and calling the 10/7 barbaric attack on Israel ‘awesome,’” Romirowsky said.
Noting that Columbia’s own antisemitism task force said in a December report that the institution employs few faculty who hold moderate views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he added, “By allowing Massad to continue teaching and spreading his venom, Columbia is only codifying the dearth of knowledge as it relates to the Middle East. It should take the finding of the report and act upon it by getting rid of the tenured radicals they allowed to hijack the institution.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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California Governor Gavin Newsom Likens Israel to ‘Apartheid State’
California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks at a press conference, accompanied by members of the Texas Democratic legislators, at the governor’s mansion in Sacramento, California, US, Aug. 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday ignited controversy after suggesting it is “appropriate” to describe Israel as an “apartheid state” and questioning the future of US military assistance to the Jewish state during an event to promote his new memoir.
Speaking during a book event in Los Angeles with “Pod Save America” host Tommy Vietor, Newsom said that recent policies pursued by Israel’s current government have made the term increasingly common in international discourse. While framing his comments as reluctant, the Democratic governor said it “breaks my heart,” but argued that the trajectory of Israeli leadership leaves the United States with “no choice” but to reconsider aspects of its longstanding support such as providing military aid.
“I mean, Friedman and others are talking about it appropriately – sort of an apartheid state,” Newsom said in reference to New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman.
“It breaks my heart because the current leadership in Israel is walking us down that path where I don’t think you have a choice but to have that consideration,” Newsom said.
The remarks place Newsom among the most high-profile American elected officials to publicly entertain the apartheid label — a characterization Israel has consistently rejected as false and inflammatory. Israeli officials across the political spectrum have long argued that such comparisons distort the complex security, legal, and historical realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while ignoring the equal rights afforded to Israel’s Arab citizens and the ongoing security threats facing the country.
Newsom reportedly directed much of his criticism at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, describing its policies in the West Bank and toward Palestinians as contributing to growing international unease. His comments come amid continued tensions in the region, including the future prospect of Israeli military operations against Hamas in Gaza and ongoing military conflict with Iran and its regional proxies.
Newsom also directed criticism toward the current war in Iran, accusing Jerusalem of pushing the White House to pursue military conflict with Tehran. The California governor suggested that Israel should not be trusted to lead a successful campaign against Iran, given Jerusalem’s failure to topple Hamas in Gaza. He also suggested that Netanyahu bamboozled US President Donald Trump into pursuing a war against Iran.
“They couldn’t even – I mean, we’re talking about regime change?” he said, “For two years, they haven’t even been able to solve the Hamas question in Israel. So, this is, I mean, you know, I wanna be careful here, but, you know, in so many ways, that influence in the context of the conversation of where Trump ultimately landed on this is pretty damn self-evident.”
Trump was asked at the White House if Israel dragged the US into conflict with Iran and rejected the notion.
“I might have forced their [Israel’s] hand,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office as he met with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. “We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. If we didn’t do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that.”
In Jerusalem, officials have frequently pushed back against the apartheid accusation, noting that Israel is a multiethnic democracy with an independent judiciary, free press, and Arab representation in the Knesset and on the Supreme Court. Critics of the apartheid claim also point to the repeated rejections by Palestinian leadership of past peace proposals that would have established a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Newsom’s statements arrive at a sensitive moment in US-Israel relations. As the 2028 Democratic primary begins to set in motion, progressive voices within the Democratic Party have increasingly called for conditioning or reducing military aid to Israel. Newsom, widely viewed as a potential contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, now appears to be navigating that internal party divide.
In a recent podcast appearance with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Newsom rejected the argument that Israel has committed a so-called “genocide” in Gaza and expressed support for the country’s right to defend itself from Hamas terrorism.
Netanyahu has said in several interviews over the past few months that he intends to “taper off” Israeli dependence on US military aid in the next decade.