Students doxed after writing anti-israel letter
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.>> On a campus bitterly divided, the statement poured acid all over Harvard Yard.
A coalition of more than 30 student groups posted an open letter on the night of the Hamas attack, saying that Israel was “entirely responsible” for the violence that ended up killing more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians.
The letter, posted on social media before the extent of the killings was known, did not include the names of individual students.
But within days, students affiliated with those groups were being doxed, their personal information posted online. Siblings back home were threatened. Wall Street executives demanded a list of student names to ban their hiring. And a truck with a digital billboard — paid for by a conservative group — circled Harvard Square, flashing student photos and names, under the headline, “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.”
Campuses have long wrestled with free speech. What is acceptable to say and what crosses into hate speech?
But the war between Israel and Hamas has heightened emotions, threatening to tear apart fragile campus cultures.
Complicating it all: outside groups, influential alumni and big-money donors, who are putting maximum pressure on students and administrators.
At the University of Pennsylvania, donors are pushing for the resignation of the president and the board chair, after a Palestinian writers’ conference on campus invited speakers accused of antisemitism.
At Harvard, a billionaire couple quit an executive board. Another donor pulled money for fellowships. And Lawrence Summers, a former Harvard president and Treasury secretary, criticized the leadership for a “delayed” response to the Hamas attack and the student letter.
This is not the first time that Harvard students have taken up an unpopular view. But those involved with the letter had not anticipated that their statement would go viral and unleash such repercussions.
The students had to contend with “people’s lives being ruined, people’s careers being ruined, people’s fellowships being ruined,” one student whose organization signed the letter said in an interview.
Many critics have little forbearance for these complaints, saying that the letter itself showed a lack of empathy. But other students and free- speech activists say that the outside pressure has created its own kind of heckler’s veto, dictating what can be said on campus and how institutions must respond.
“You kind of feel like you’re responsible” for the harassment, said one of the Harvard students, whose family’s personal information was released. “That’s how silencing works, right?”
Last week, in a bland conference room on the campus, four student leaders in the pro-palestinian movement — three women and a man, all undergraduates — sat nervously around a table. A kaffiyeh, a checkered scarf that has become a symbol of Palestinian solidarity, was tossed on a chair.
They were not Palestinian, they said, but activists for marginalized people.
The groups that signed the letter often worked together in a kind of informal support network, the students said. When one championed an issue, the others might sign on in a show of collegiality.
They had agreed to be interviewed but insisted on anonymity, saying that they feared for their safety. They asked that even the smallest details of their personal lives — freshman? senior? — not be published.
They have been avoiding publicity since posting their letter on Facebook and Instagram on the night of Oct. 7, hours after the attack.
As the world increasingly focused on Hamas’ trail of terror in Israel, their letter opened with the line: “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”
After the letter went viral, and anger against it erupted, some of the groups distanced themselves from the message.
Attention has now shifted to Israel’s ongoing retaliation and the toll on civilians in the Gaza Strip, and these students are sticking with their stance, although they said it has been wearing.
One of the women found out from a friend about the billboard truck. It was parked just outside the university gates, plastered with a giant image of her smiling face.
Customers sitting at a pastry shop, students looking out of their dormitory windows and commuters rushing to and from the train station could see her, along with a carousel of other students, being branded as antisemitic.
“I threw up in Harvard Yard,” she said.
The truck is operated by Accuracy in Media, a conservative group that also has deployed such trucks at other campuses, including Stanford and the University of California.
“It’s ironic that students on the campus where Facebook was invented are shocked that their names are publicly available,” said Adam Guillette, president of Accuracy in Media. “We’re merely amplifying their message.”
The group is not done. It has purchased domain names for Harvard students associated with the letter and is setting up individual websites for them. Each site will call for the university to punish the students.
Students’ names also were exposed last week through a website featuring a “College Terror List, a Helpful Guide for Employers” compiled by Maxwell Meyer, a 2022 Stanford graduate.
Meyer, 23, said in an interview that his information had come from public sources and tips sent to an email address. He said he had no affiliation with Accuracy in Media.
Bill Ackman, the hedge fund billionaire and Harvard alumnus, wrote on social media that the names of students should be circulated, to avoid “inadvertently” hiring them. His more than 800,000 followers boosted Meyer’s website, and led dozens of chief executives to ask for the list, Meyer said.
In another social media post, Ackman said he was “100% in support of free speech.” But, he added, “one should be prepared to stand up and be personally accountable for his or her views.”
Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional scholar and the dean of Cal’s law school, said he objected to the doxing and believed that displaying a truck billboard of student photos was “despicable.”
But he did not believe the actions had prevented either side from expressing their views. Ackman and Meyer may have heightened the tension, he said, but “you can’t express your views and then say, ‘ Those who criticize me are chilling my speech.’ ”
Universities have to strike a balance, he said. “The institution — the law school or university — has to help all students get jobs regardless of their views.”
Employers have a right not to hire people whose views they disagree with.
To other free- speech advocates, however, doxing and shaming have become a standard part of the cancel culture arsenal, and run the risk of suppressing opinion
adine Strossen, a former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, called the students’ statement “deplorable” but said that was beside the point.
Collecting names sounded like a throwback to Mccarthy- era blacklists, she said. The latest lists could muzzle not only these students, but also those who might share “more thoughtful and less categorical pronouncements.”