Author: Susan Snyder

During a talk by an Israeli journalist at Haverford College earlier this month, a group of about a dozen masked people sat and stood in the audience.

At one point, one of them began shouting through a bullhorn, “Death to IOF,” or Israeli Occupying Forces, a name critics use to refer to Israel Defense Forces, and “Shame,” according to a video of the incident and people who attended the event. The protesters’ faces were covered by masks or keffiyehs, a symbol of Palestinian identity.

“When Gaza has burned, you will all burn, too,” the protester shouted at the audience of about 180 people, many of them members of the local Jewish community, according to another video viewed by The Inquirer.

An audience member grabbed at the bullhorn and appeared to make contact with the protester as the protester yelled in his face, according to a video. The college’s campus safety personnel ejected both the bullhorn user and the audience member and has since banned both from campus, college officials said, noting that neither is an employee, student, or alumnus of Haverford.

The event sparked renewed charges of antisemitism on the highly selective liberal arts campus, which already is under scrutiny by a Republican-led congressional committee for its handling of antisemitism complaints and is the subject of an open investigation by the U.S. Department of Education.

It will also lead to changes in Haverford’s policies. In a message to the campus after the event, president Wendy Raymond — who faced intense questioning from the congressional committee about the school’s response to antisemitism last year — said “shouting down a speaker whom one does not agree with is never acceptable and stands outside of our shared community values.”

College officials acknowledged that Haverford needs to upgrade its event policies and said changes would be rolled out no later than after spring break.

Some people who attended the event to hear journalist Haviv Rettig Gur said they were afraid because they did not know who the masked attendees were or what they had in their belongings, and in light of recent mass violence at Jewish events around the world.

“I was scared to walk back to my car by myself, which is the only time I ever felt that way in Lower Merion, where I live,” said Susan Taichman, a resident of Bala Cynwyd, who was in the audience.

Several students in attendance that night said most of the protesters sat or stood silently during the event — which is permitted under campus policy.

“I went into that event not with hatred for Jewish people, as some … have claimed was the intention of the protesters at the event,” said one Haverford student protester who asked that her name be withheld for safety reasons. “I went in with love, empathy, and deep concern for the Palestinians experiencing abhorrent amounts of violence in their homeland, as well as an understanding of the historical contexts that led to this violence, including the historic persecution of Jewish people that led to the development of Zionist thought.

“This context, in my opinion, is not an excuse for the genocide. It’s something really tragic that is going on, and I feel really strongly that it has to be stopped.”

Cade Fanning, the associate editor of the Clerk, Haverford’s student newspaper, cited three interruptions by protesters. One early on argued with Gur for an extended period, followed by the bullhorn incident less than an hour into the event, and then some banging on doors and yelling outside the room, said Fanning, 21, a senior history major from Annapolis, who attended the event.

Haverford professor Barak Mendelsohn, who helped organize the nearly three-hour event and has complained about the college’s handling of antisemitism in the past, said attendees were terrified as disruptions continued.

“I can’t tell you how ashamed I am as one of the organizers,” said Mendelsohn, an Israeli-born professor of political science and a terrorism scholar.

Leaders of Haverford’s students’ council, meanwhile, voiced concerns that an audience member had initiated physical contact with the protester, “which deeply frightened and disturbed members of Students’ Council,” they wrote. “We believe it is paramount to prioritize the safety of members of our college community. Actions like this have no place in our community.”

Some community members also interrupted and “heckled” protesters, Fanning said, adding that Gur belittled the activists as “children” who did not know enough about the world. The college, Fanning said, should have addressed that in its statement to the community.

“It would have been beneficial had they at least acknowledged that he wasn’t the most conducive to respectful, honest, open debate either,” Fanning said of Gur. “He didn’t treat the students with the most respect.”

But Anna Braun, 21, a senior English major from New York City who attended the event, said she was impressed with how Gur handled the protesters.

“He decided to engage with them one on one to really ask them questions and try to deconstruct why they were protesting,” she said. “The only way we can have any hope for peace is for people to listen to each other and to find some middle ground. And if you’re ignoring each other or if you are interrupting each other, then there is no potential for seeing eye to eye.”

An effort to ensure safe events

“It has become clear that there are gaps in how events are reviewed, supported, and managed on campus,” Raymond said in her message to campus. “We are actively revising our event management and space use policies to improve clarity and processes.”

The new policy, she said, “will clarify expectations for different types of events, strengthen coordination among College offices, and establish additional planning and support for events that require heightened attention.”

Factors such as “significant attendance or operational complexity, heightened public visibility, safety, security, or crowd-management considerations, media presence or external participation, and increased likelihood of disruption or protest activity” may trigger the need for additional review to determine whether more resources are needed, said Melissa Shaffmaster, Haverford’s vice president for marketing and communication.

“Our intention … is not in any way to restrict free speech or restrict access for different speakers or topics to be discussed on campus,” she said. “We want to make sure that the proper resources are allocated so events can happen safely, people can have really thoughtful discourse, and these events can go off the way they are intended.”

The indoor use of bullhorns violated the school’s “expressive freedom” policy put in place last spring, she said.

The college is participating in the Hillel Campus Climate Initiative, touted as an effort to help college leaders counter antisemitism. A survey “to better understand the current climate for Jewish students” will be part of the effort.

Haverford also is preparing for a major change in leadership. Raymond said in November she would step down as president in June 2027; John McKnight, the dean of the college, also announced he would be leaving at the end of this semester for a new role at Dartmouth College; and the college’s vice president for institutional equity and access also will exit that post in May.

‘The howling cry of an uneducated child’

Gur’s talk was titled “Roots, Return, and Reality: Jews, Israel, and the Myth of Settler Colonialism.” In an opinion piece for the Free Press after the talk, Gur said he had gone to Haverford to talk “about the Jewish history that forged Israeli identity.”

While he saw the audience “tense up” when protesters entered, he wrote, he saw it as “a chance to explore managing an encounter with the abusive ideologues.”

During the event, Gur called the bullhorn protester’s disruption “the howling cry of an uneducated child.”

He said he invited protesters to stay, but told them they had to remove their masks, which they did not do. Most protesters remained for the entire talk, he said, some even crying and engaging in dialogue with him.

“The more I treated them like neglected children hungry for knowledge, the more likely they were to respond in healthy and productive ways,” he wrote.

The event was organized by Kevin Foley, a 1983 Haverford graduate. Foley said he was impressed with Gur, a political correspondent and senior analyst for the Times of Israel, after seeing a video of him teaching.

“I thought I could do something good for Haverford by having him teach there,” said Foley, who lives in Connecticut and New York City and spent his career running electronic trading businesses at Bloomberg and Cantor Fitzgerald.

Foley’s best friend was killed in the 9/11 attacks and he said he experienced Hamas’ October 2023 attack on Israel as an “echo trauma.” To see concerns at Haverford about its handling of antisemitism “was disappointing,” he said, and what happened at Gur’s talk reinforced those concerns.

“What I can’t believe is that Haverford has so abandoned its liberal values of academic freedom, freedom of inquiry, that it’s considered acceptable for protesters to come in and disrupt and shut down an educational class,” Foley said.

Foley called on the college to ban masks and have metal detectors available when needed, and to apologize to Gur’s audience.

Shaffmaster said the college’s policy allows people to wear masks, but they must remove them if they are asked by campus safety officers or administrators for identification purposes.

Ongoing tensions on campus

Several students in attendance, who asked not to be named because of tensions on campus over the issue, said they thought campus safety and the college handled the event as best they could without silencing either side.

“No matter what they had done, people would be mad at them,” one said.

Fanning, the student editor, understood why older community members may have been fearful, but said protesters also have fears of being harassed or doxed for their pro-Palestinian advocacy if their identity is known.

“They are not fearless themselves,” Fanning said. “Nobody is.”

But Mendelsohn, the professor, was disturbed that Haverford seemed to equate the actions of the audience member who grabbed the bullhorn with those of the protester.

“The person acted in self-defense and managed to get the bullhorn from her hands,” he said. “If someone turned to you with a microphone and screamed, you would not sit there and do nothing.”

Mendelsohn has been at the forefront of allegations that Haverford has not done enough to address antisemitism, and the college has investigated him for speaking out on social media and in emails, according to a lawsuit filed against the college last year by a Jewish group. Much of the complaint was dismissed, but the judge allowed a portion involving breach of contract that would result in nominal damages to proceed, and that is in mediation, court records show.

The actions at Gur’s speech were just one of several ongoing problems with antisemitism on the campus, Mendelsohn said. His mezuzah — an object signifying the Jewish faith — was stolen from his office door a couple of months ago, he said. And he referred to a bias complaint over comments made around funding for the Haverford Chabad board. That remains under review, the college said.

Braun, the English major, said that she was heartened to see improvement in Haverford’s handling of the Gur event and that the campus has been more welcoming to Jewish students. Most people she has spoken with, she said, did not think the use of the bullhorn was appropriate.

“That’s not something I would have heard two years ago on this campus,” she said. “I sincerely believe there is more of a desire to create an inclusive environment.”