[A truck with a billboard displayed their names and photos, and
critics put out do-not-hire lists. The students say it’s a campaign
to shut them up. ]
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AFTER WRITING AN ANTI-ISRAEL LETTER, HARVARD STUDENTS ARE DOXXED  
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Anemona Hartocollis
October 18, 2023
New York Times
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_ A truck with a billboard displayed their names and photos, and
critics put out do-not-hire lists. The students say it’s a campaign
to shut them up. _

A billboard truck displayed the names and faces of Harvard students
who were linked to an anti-Israel letter., Sophie Park for The New
York Times

 

On a campus already bitterly divided, the statement poured acid all
over Harvard Yard.

A coalition of more than 30 student groups posted an open letter on
the night of the Hamas attack
[[link removed]],
saying that Israel was “entirely responsible” for the violence
that ended up killing more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians.

The letter, posted on social media before the extent of the killings
was known, did not include the names of individual students.

But within days, students affiliated with those groups were being
doxxed, their personal information posted online. Siblings back home
were threatened. Wall Street executives demanded a list of student
names to ban their hiring. And a truck with a digital billboard —
paid for by a conservative group — circled Harvard Square, flashing
student photos and names, under the headline, “Harvard’s Leading
Antisemites.”

Campuses have long wrestled with free speech. What is acceptable to
say and what crosses into hate speech? But the war between Israel and
Hamas has heightened emotions, threatening to tear apart already
fragile campus cultures.

Complicating it all: outside groups, influential alumni and big-money
donors, who are putting maximum pressure on students and
administrators.

At the University of Pennsylvania, donors are pushing for the
resignation of the president and the board chairman, after a
Palestinian writers’ conference on campus invited speakers accused
of antisemitism.

At Harvard, a billionaire couple quit an executive board
[[link removed]].
Another donor pulled
[[link removed]] money
for fellowships. And Lawrence Summers, a former Harvard president and
Treasury secretary, criticized
[[link removed]] the
leadership for a “delayed
[[link removed]]” response
to the Hamas attack and the student letter.

This is not the first time that Harvard students have taken up an
unpopular view. But those involved with the letter had not anticipated
that their statement would go viral and unleash such repercussions.

The students had to contend with “people’s lives being ruined,
people’s careers being ruined, people’s fellowships being
ruined,” said one student whose organization signed the letter, in
an interview.

Many critics have little forbearance for these complaints, saying that
the letter itself showed a lack of empathy. But other students and
free-speech activists say that the outside pressure has created its
own kind of heckler’s veto, dictating what can be said on campus and
how institutions must respond.

“You kind of feel like you’re responsible” for the harassment,
said one of the Harvard students, whose family’s personal
information was released. “That’s how silencing works, right?”

 

[Four students, with their backs to the camera, stand in front of a
window.]

Student leaders in the pro-Palestinian movement at Harvard described
themselves as activists for marginalized people. Credit...Sophie Park
for The New York Times

THE LETTER AND ITS AFTERMATH

Last week, in a bland conference room on the campus, four student
leaders in the pro-Palestinian movement — three women and a man, all
undergraduates — sat nervously around a table. A kaffiyeh, a
checkered scarf that has become a symbol of Palestinian solidarity,
was tossed on a chair.

They were not Palestinian, they said, but activists for marginalized
people.

The groups that signed the letter often worked together in a kind of
informal support network, the students said. When one championed an
issue, the others might sign on in a show of collegiality.

They had agreed to be interviewed but insisted on anonymity, saying
that they feared for their safety. They asked that even the smallest
details of their personal lives — freshman? senior? — not be
published.

They have been avoiding publicity since posting their letter on
Facebook and Instagram on the night of Oct. 7, hours after the attack.

As the world increasingly focused on Hamas’s trail of terror in
Israel, their letter opened with the line: “We, the undersigned
student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible
for all unfolding violence.”

After the letter went viral, and anger against it erupted, some of the
groups distanced themselves from the message.

Attention has now shifted to Israel’s ongoing retaliation and the
toll on civilians in Gaza, and these students are sticking with their
stance, though they said it has been wearing.

One of the women found out from a friend about the billboard truck. It
was parked just outside the university gates, plastered with a giant
image of her smiling face. Customers sitting at a pastry shop,
students looking out of their dormitory windows and commuters rushing
to and from the train station could see her, along with a carousel of
other students, being branded as antisemitic.

“I threw up in Harvard Yard,” she said.

 

[The cab of the truck, parked, with a Harvard shuttle bus behind it. ]

The truck is operated by Accuracy in Media, a conservative group that
has also deployed such tactics on other campuses, like Stanford and
the University of California, Berkeley.Credit...Sophie Park for The
New York Times

The truck is operated by Accuracy in Media, a conservative group that
has also deployed such trucks at other campuses, like Stanford
[[link removed]] and
the University of California, Berkeley.

“It’s ironic that students on the campus where Facebook was
invented are shocked that their names are publicly available,” Adam
Guillette, president of Accuracy in Media, said. “We’re merely
amplifying their message.”

The group is not done. It has purchased domain names for Harvard
students associated with the letter and is setting up individual
websites for them. Each site will call for the university to punish
the students.

Students’ names were also exposed last week through a website
featuring a “College Terror List, a Helpful Guide for Employers”
compiled by Maxwell Meyer, a 2022 Stanford graduate.

Mr. Meyer, 23, said in an interview that his information had come from
public sources and tips sent to an email address. He said he had no
affiliation with Accuracy in Media.

His website was removed by Google and Notion, the note-taking app
where it was displayed, Mr. Meyer said. (The students said alumni had
helped remove it.) But other sites have picked up the list and passed
it around.

 

[A student wearing a kaffiyah leans on another student.]

The doxxing has extended to family members. “Every single member of
my family has been contacted, including my younger siblings,” said
the student whose face was on the truck.Credit...Sophie Park for The
New York Times

Mr. Meyer said that as a former editor of the conservative Stanford
Review, he was a defender of free speech. “At one point, I defended
critics of Israel against what I called right-wing cancel culture,”
he said.

But “if you’re a member of an organization that advocates
terrorism in your name, you aren’t just a sitting duck, you’re a
person with agency,” he said. “You can say, ‘I disavow this.’
These are Harvard students we’re talking about. They need to be held
to a higher standard.”

Bill Ackman, the hedge fund billionaire and Harvard alumnus, wrote on
social media
[[link removed]] that the
names of students should be circulated, to avoid “inadvertently”
hiring them. His more than 800,000 followers boosted Mr. Meyer’s
website, and led dozens of chief executives to ask for the list, Mr.
Meyer said.

In another social media post
[[link removed]], Mr.
Ackman said he was “100% in support of free speech.” But, he
added, “one should be prepared to stand up and be personally
accountable for his or her views.”

The doxxing, however, has extended to family members.

“Every single member of my family has been contacted, including my
younger siblings,” said the student whose smiling face was on the
truck.

With Free Speech, What’s the Line?

Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional scholar and the dean of U.C.
Berkeley’s law school, said he objected to the doxxing and believed
that displaying a truck billboard of student photos was
“despicable.”

But he did not believe the actions had prevented either side from
expressing their views. Mr. Ackman and Mr. Meyer may have heightened
the tension, he said, but “you can’t express your views and then
say, ‘Those who criticize me are chilling my speech.’”

Universities have to strike a balance, he said. “The institution —
the law school or university — has to help all students get jobs
regardless of their views.” Employers have a right not to hire
people whose views they disagree with.

To other free-speech advocates, however, doxxing and shaming have
become a standard part of the cancel culture arsenal, and run the risk
of suppressing opinion.

Nadine Strossen, a former president of the American Civil Liberties
Union, called the students’ statement “deplorable” but said that
was beside the point.

Collecting names sounded like a throwback to McCarthy-era blacklists,
she said. The latest lists could muzzle not only these students, but
also those who might share “more thoughtful and less categorical
pronouncements.”

And threatening people’s career prospects seemed like an
overreaction, she said, especially when they were young and just
starting out.

“The concept of proportionality, elusive as it is, is very woven
into the fabric of not only American law, but international human
rights law,” said Ms. Strossen, now a senior fellow at the
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Students behind the letter said that Harvard had not done enough to
push back against their adversaries.

University officials have sent out general messages saying Harvard
does not “condone or ignore” threats and intimidation. And
officials said they have taken steps to ensure safety and calm
anxieties over the last 10 days or so.

The university has urged students to report threats to the Harvard
police. It has expanded shuttle service and closed the gates of
Harvard Yard at night to people without university identification.

There is little the university can do, however, about the truck, which
has been careful to stay on public streets. And the lists of names
were compiled from publicly available sources.

Harvard has also begun dealing with the fractured mood on campus. On
Tuesday, the Dean of Students Office announced open office hours for
students who wanted to talk about “recent events.” Another office
announced a session on “Navigating Interpersonal Conflict and
Leadership.”

Students associated with the Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity
Committee have distributed a guide for doxxed students, which they
compiled after a meeting with “upper-level administrators,”
according to student emails.

The guide said that Harvard’s career center would reach out to
employers to vouch for students. And it provided contact information
for a lawyer willing to help undocumented students. It also
recommended avoiding the news media: “Demand anonymity — use
language about ‘extreme threat to security.’”

 

[Jacob Miller, Elianne Sacher and Spencer Glassman.sit in front of a
wall of windows. ]

From left, Jacob Miller, Elianne Sacher and Spencer Glassman, three
Harvard students.Credit...Sophie Park for The New York Times

[Over the past week, students spent more time than usual at Harvard
Hillel house, looking for solace and understanding.]

Over the past week, students spent more time than usual at Harvard
Hillel house, looking for solace and understanding.Credit...Sophie
Park for The New York Times

At Hillel House, a Different Threat

At the Harvard Hillel building, Jewish students passed through locked
doors guarded by a patrol car. Over the past week, they had spent more
time than usual there, looking for solace and understanding. Some
students knew people who had been killed in the attack.

To them, the anti-Israel statement sounded divorced from reality.

“I feel insane walking around this campus,” said Elianne Sacher, a
student from Israel. Since when, she asked, are murder and kidnapping
excused?

After the Hamas attack, more pro-Palestinian students have attended
class wearing the kaffiyeh, said Spencer Glassman, another student
taking refuge in Hillel.

He felt uncomfortable with the display. “When terrorists wear the
symbol, they appropriate the meaning,” he said. “It’s not this
neutral liberation symbol to me.”

The students said that in the past week, antisemitic comments had been
uttered in dining halls and posted on social media. The app Sidechat
allows students to post anonymous messages, after logging in with
their Harvard email addresses.

Harvard Hillel’s president, Jacob Miller, pushed a sheaf of examples
across a table during an interview.

“LET EM COOK,” next to a Palestinian flag emoji, read one.

“I proudly accept the label of terrorist,” read another.

A third replied to emojis of the Israeli flag with an emoji of a
baby’s head separated from its torso.

Screenshots of the posts have been shared with Harvard officials, the
students at Hillel said.

Much as he condemned the truck and the doxxing, Mr. Miller said, the
screeds on social media directed at Jewish students also had a
chilling effect on speech.

“I do think it cuts both ways,” he said. “A number of my friends
tell me they feel intimidated and uncomfortable speaking on campus due
to the hostile environment.”

“It’s tragic that students on both sides feel afraid to voice
their opinions,” Mr. Miller said. “Especially at a college that
prides itself on the pursuit of truth.”

_Stephanie Saul and Vimal Patel contributed reporting. Susan
Beachy contributed research._

_Anemona Hartocollis
[[link removed]] is a national
correspondent, covering higher education. She is also the author of
the book “Seven Days of Possibilities: One Teacher, 24 Kids, and the
Music That Changed Their Lives Forever.” _

* Israel-Gaza War
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* Student protests
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* Harvard University
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* punishment
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