Harvard is asking the anonymous social media app, Sidechat, to crack down on the antisemitic rage being unleashed by some of its students on the platform. 

University officials have sent a sample of Sidechat’s content to the Harvard University Police Department to determine whether it warrants law enforcement action, university spokesman, Jason A. Newton, told The Harvard Crimson. Mr. Newton added that Harvard’s office of information security and data privacy will also escalate further reports of concerning content directly to Sidechat leadership.

The university’s push for content moderation on Sidechat comes after it stood silent while antisemitism has surged on the platform’s Harvard-exclusive group in recent weeks. The university does not control or own the site, nor can it determine who posted the offensive material. But Harvard’s anti-harassment policies might predicate intervention as students, returning to campus this week from winter recess, would be posting content from campus servers.

One recent example is a heated debate between several users over over accusations that Israel is committing genocide in its war in Gaza. 

“The INTENT of Israel’s war with Hamas is not to destroy an ethnic group i.e. the Palestinian Arabs,” one student commented on a post last week. “Its intent is to destroy the actually genocidal death cult known as Hamas…” The comment had a “karma” score of -6 — the platform’s tally of many times a post has been upvoted or downvoted — suggesting that more people disagreed than agreed with it. 

“Hamas is an excuse,” another user replied. “They have very clearly said, over and over again, that they see all Palestinians as terrorists, that they will collectively punish them, and they want to ‘raze’ Gaza and see it wiped from the face of the Earth. They’ve also talked a lot about forced displacement and deporting Gazans to nearby countries. That’s clear genocidal intent.”

Sidechat’s Harvard group has now become even more exclusive. Last week, it closed its doors to Harvard graduate students, which it says was its original membership condition. “Last May we accidentally started allowing any @harvard.edu email address join the Harvard Sidechat community,” Sidechat informed users in a post on its platform last week. “We always intended Harvard Sidechat to be for Harvard College.”

The content circulating on the platform Monday has strayed from Israel-Palestine debates toward more innocuous conversations about class registration as Harvard students begin the spring semester.