Haverford president heartbroken, furious by alleged Jew-hatred, as professor arrested for online harassment
Wendy Raymond, president of Haverford College, said that she is “heartbroken and furious” that a member of the private, Pennsylvania liberal arts college community could be so hateful, after Guangtian Ha, a religion professor, was arrested and charged with online harassment and intimidation.“I am deeply distressed by these allegations and want to state in the plainest of terms that any form of harassment or discrimination based on identity is unacceptable, antithetical to our values and has no place at Haverford,” Raymond stated on Tuesday.The professor, “who was on sabbatical leave and not teaching this academic year, has been placed on administrative leave and barred from campus while the criminal process moves forward,” Raymond stated.“A representative of the college has been in contact with the individuals targeted by these heinous online attacks, which were antisemitic in nature.”“I am heartbroken and furious at the possibility that an individual within our community would seek to inflict such pain on another,” she added.
“This disturbing news is made even more harmful for many given its proximity to both the Jewish High Holidays and the third anniversary of the Oct.7 attacks.”Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director of the Deborah Project, told JNS that “the charging by the FBI of Haverford College associate professor Guangtian Ha for harassment and intimidation of a Jewish Israeli professor closes the dotted line between verbal acts of harassment and actionable violence which, when Jews are the recipients, is far too often ignored or falsely clothed as ‘academic freedom’ by academic and other institutions.”Ha “threatened ‘Zionists’ on his social media for several years, as the Deborah Project explained in our civil rights complaint,” she told JNS.
“Those threats and its speaker were coddled and condoned, and so it escalated.This morning’s action by the FBI was taken because moral clarity had been erased and replaced...