Harvard Professor Gets Anti-Semitic Postcard in the Mail

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By Daniel J. Solomon November 23, 2016

Sanford Levinson, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, on Monday received a postcard full of anti-Semitic threats that referenced President-elect Donald Trump, according to reports in the Dallas Morning News and Boston Globe.

“Hey Sandy, you just got your kike ass kicked… We are gonna drain the swamp at Harvard Law School, Juden Raus,” the letter read, invoking the Trump slogan “drain the swamp” and the Nazi-era phrase “Jews out.”

Levinson, who holds a permanent appointment at the University of Texas in Austin, teaches constitutional law and has written articles about his field for the popular press.

He spoke out about the letter to the Boston Globe. “It certainly is as hostile as it could be. But I don’t know what to make of it,” he told the newspaper, noting that the letter appeared to have been mailed from the United Kingdom.

Levinson, who reported the incident to Harvard administration, linked the episode to Trump’s electoral victory, which has coincided with a spike in hate crimes.

“This is a level of anti-Semitic hostility that I have not seen before,” he said to the Globe. “I see it as a very regrettable data point about the extent to which Donald Trump — intentionally or not — has liberated a kind of discourse we haven’t seen in a long, long time.”

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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