With campus president fending off ADL criticism, Penn Hillel hit by vandal
The University of Pennsylvania Hillel. Courtesy of Penn Hillel
By Louis Keene September 21, 2023
A day before the University of Pennsylvania was set to host a conference criticized as a forum for anti-Zionism and antisemitism, a person reported to be a student entered the campus Hillel and shouted antisemitic epithets as he ransacked the building’s lobby.
A suspect was apprehended at the scene, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian, the campus newspaper. Campus police called the suspect a “person experiencing a crisis.”
“When I heard, my stomach just immediately dropped,” Maya Harpaz, a junior and executive board member of Hillel, told The Daily Pennsylvanian, the university’s student newspaper. “It’s definitely a scary feeling that this could happen to somewhere that you consider very safe on campus.”
The incident increased already heightened tensions for Jewish students on the Philadelphia campus due to the Palestine Writes literature festival, which begins Friday and ends Sunday afternoon, hours before Yom Kippur begins. The conference has drawn criticism from the ADL and a petition from Penn alumni, and features, among other speakers, Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters, who has long been accused of trafficking in antisemitism.
The university’s president, M. Elizabeth Magill, has noted that the conference is organized not by the university as a whole, but by Penn departments and student groups, and distanced herself from conference speakers “who have a documented and troubling history of engaging in antisemitism.” But ADL chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt said the university should never have agreed to host the event.
An important distinction about the Palestinian Writes festival from a @Penn student: "The Jewish community embraces animated debate and discussion about Israel, but draws the line at the rhetoric espoused by speakers that goes far beyond critiquing Israel and into antisemitism."…
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) September 19, 2023
An early morning attack
A statement from Penn Hillel linked the incident to the upcoming conference.
“This person did not accidentally choose to enter our building,” the Hillel wrote. “He did not accidentally choose to shout antisemitic slogans. He chose our building. He chose to do so just three days before Yom Kippur. He chose to do so one day before a number of speakers are coming to campus who have histories of making antisemitic and hate-filled statements against Jews,” Hillel wrote.
According to Penn Hillel, the incident transpired in under a minute.
At around 6:55 a.m. — about five minutes before prayers at Penn Hillel were set to begin but before any students had arrived to take part — the suspect entered through the building’s front door.
“As the door was opened, an unknown student ran into the building,” according to the statement. “While he was in the building he knocked over several pieces of furniture, while shouting antisemitic obscenities about Jewish people.” A later statement posted on Hillel’s Instagram account no longer referred to the suspect as a student, but as “an unknown member of the campus community.”
The suspect, chased out of the building by staff, was apprehended shortly afterward, according to the Hillel statement. The person in question had been behaving erratically before entering the building and was subsequently transported for “further evaluation,” Penn’s Division of Public Safety wrote in a statement to campus police, the university newspaper reported.
A Penn student quoted by the Pennsylvanian said a witness to the incident told her that the person had been shouting “Jesus is king,” “F**k the Jews,” and “They killed JC.”
The Hillel said no one was hurt in the incident and no major damage was incurred.
Penn’s Hillel has for decades served what is believed to be the largest Jewish student body in the Ivy League — roughly 15% of the school’s undergraduate enrollment, according to Rachel Saifer Goldman, its director of operations.
A controversial conference
The Palestine Writes speaker list incited an uproar from Jewish organizations like the ADL, but also among alumni. A petition calling on Magill to stop the conference received 2,000 signatures from alumni and university supporters in its first 24 hours.
Greenblatt met with Magill on Monday to discuss the conference, but said he was dissatisfied with the school’s failure to disassociate from it entirely. “If this were a conference to explore and celebrate Palestinian literature, none of us would object,” Greenblatt said in a statement to Jewish Insider. “However, it is not. It is a gathering of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist activists, some of whom have a long history of antisemitic statements and comments.”
Among the writers scheduled to speak at the event are Randa Abdel-Fattah, a writer who called Israel “a demonic, sick project” in a tweet earlier this year, and Marc Lamont Hill, an academic who was fired by CNN for calling for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea,” a phrase seen by many as calling for the destruction of Israel. (Hill denied that was his intended meaning.)
In a letter obtained by Jewish Insider, Magill wrote to Greenblatt that the university added security to Penn Hillel on Rosh Hashanah and would continue to “in advance of and through Yom Kippur.”
Penn Hillel’s statement Thursday noted that security was not present when the vandal rushed the building and said it had requested the school to provide security coverage around the clock.
According to the Pennsylvanian, campus police said the suspect had been “overturning trash cans” and “acting erratically.”
Saifer Goldman said in an interview that more than 200 people attend Friday night dinners at Penn Hillel on an average week. This week, she said, she expects double that.
“I think people are wanting to be together and show support for the Jewish community,” she said.
The Thursday morning antisemitic incident was at least the third on U.S. university campuses in recent weeks.
Syracuse’s newspaper, The Daily Orange, reported this week that a swastika had been drawn on a whiteboard hanging outside a Jewish student’s dorm room. A swastika was also graffitied on a sidewalk outside a Chabad serving the University of Kansas.
At Penn’s Hillel, Sydney Freedman, a senior and an active member of the Orthodox community, found the lobby in a chaotic state when she arrived late to services, she told the student newspaper.
“This morning when I went to pray with my community like I do every day, I found that the building was vandalized, and someone had come in and started yelling really violent and aggressive statements against my people,” Freedman told The Daily Pennsylvanian. “I felt so guilty about feeling scared and then something like this happens and it’s just really telling.”
JTA contributed to this report.
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