by Jessica Russak-Hoffman
A professor, who has worked at the Philadelphia-area school for 19 years, told JNS he can’t believe it “has turned against the Jewish community in such a horrendous way.”
Organizers of an Israeli journalist’s lecture at Haverford College, a private liberal arts school in the Philadelphia-area suburbs, talked to the campus safety department before the Feb. 1 event.
“We tried to coordinate security, but we did not expect that what transpired was actually going to happen,” Barak Mendelsohn, a political science professor at the school and an organizer of the event, told JNS.
A masked protester clad in a keffiyeh disrupted Haviv Rettig Gur’s talk on “roots, return and reality: Jews, Israel and the myth of settler colonialism,” which drew students, professors and local community members.
Video footage that circulated on social media appeared to show the anti-Israel, female protester shouting over the speaker using a bullhorn and yelling about the “Israel occupation forces” killing children.
“When Gaza is burned, you will all burn, too,” the protester said.
In footage that Haverford alumnus Kevin Foley, an organizer of the event, shared with JNS, the protester shouts into a man’s face through a horn. After the latter pushes the bullhorn aside, the protester appears to throw it at him.
Mendelsohn told JNS that the school has been “tainted with antisemitism” for more than two years.
“I just can’t believe that the college in which I’ve worked now for 19 years has turned against the Jewish community in such a horrendous way,” he said.
Of the interruption, Rettig Gur told the audience that the “howling cry of a lonely, uneducated human” crossed “our field of experience and evaporated.”
But organizers told JNS that people were afraid of masked protesters, whose friends let them in via a side entrance and whose disruption, organizers said, campus security didn’t address.
When Mendelsohn first saw the group, he thought that there was “a bunch of terrorists trying to get in and kill us,” he told JNS.
‘I was on edge’
Jerry Fayette, campus safety director, wrote in a Feb. 4 letter that JNS viewed that the college launched an investigation after witnesses observed “clear violations of Haverford’s policy on expressive freedom and responsibility.”
The probe identified “both the individual who used the bullhorn and an audience member who initiated physical contact” with that person, and neither was part of the Haverford community, Fayette wrote.
“As we conclude our investigation, the persons in question will be considered persona non grata, which bans them from our campus indefinitely,” he wrote. “If they are found to be on Haverford’s campus, their presence will be considered trespassing, and the college will contact local police.”
Foley shared an anonymous eyewitness statement submitted to the college with JNS.
“I got to the auditorium, went through a sign-in process where they check your name,” the witness stated. “Didn’t see any security whatsoever, nor protesters for that matter, and sat in the back.”
“Suddenly a person, fully covered in a keffiyeh tied around their head and covering their face, walked behind me and opened the emergency exit, and snuck in a group of people, maybe five, all wearing the same full face coverings,” the witness wrote.
The group stood in front of the emergency exit, and when the event was about to begin, “the main door opened and a bigger group of people, mostly all wearing the exact same coverings so that you couldn’t see their faces, barged in,” per the witness. “Maybe about 10 people.”
“From that point on, I was on edge,” the witness wrote. “I was worried for my physical safety.”
“No one knew who they were or whether they were armed,” the witness added. “Imagine fully masked people entering through emergency exits, hiding objects under their coats, blocking basic points of egress. It is reasonable to fear for your physical safety.”
The eyewitness was disappointed that the college’s campus safety letter claimed that the audience member who pushed away the bullhorn was part of the problem.
A Haverford spokesman told JNS that the college is reviewing the incident.
“There have also been reports about individuals possibly bypassing check-in via an alternate door, among other behaviors, that might have violated our policies and core values,” the school said. “The investigation remains ongoing.
“As our investigations into this matter continue, we will not hesitate to take further action to hold individuals accountable,” it said. It added that it will be “strengthening its event and space use policies.”
The college received a “failing grade” from the Anti-Defamation League for campus antisemitism in 2025, and its president, Wendy Raymond, grilled by a House panel at a hearing on Jew-hatred, intends to step down next year.
Haverford was sued in U.S. district court in 2024 for alleged inaction when it came to protecting Jews on campus, and in 2025, the U.S. Education Department opened a probe of the school for allegedly violating federal civil rights law for failing to address harassment against Jewish and Israeli students on campus.
Jessica Russak-Hoffman
Source: https://www.jns.org/bunch-of-terrorists-trying-to-get-in-kill-us-organizers-of-haverford-event-say/
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