Truck-Mounted Billboards Naming Harvard Students Who Signed Pro-Hamas Letter Are Driving Around Campus as Backlash Against ‘Antisemitic’ Students Intensifies

Truck-mounted billboards showing the names and photographs of “Harvard’s leading antisemites” have been appearing in the streets around the university’s campus at Cambridge — part of a growing campaign publicizing students who signed a now-notorious statement blaming Israel for Hamas’s war. The LED boards were put up by the nonprofit watchdog Accuracy in Media, as part of a broader effort to make public the members of the 31 Harvard student organizations who signed the anti-Israel statement on Sunday. The names of the groups have since been removed from the statement, while several of those groups have issued apologies as outrage against Palestinian supporters intensifies on campus. “We’re going to use a variety of tactics to make sure that everyone in their community knows exactly the kind of person they’re dealing with,” the president of AccuracyInMedia, Adam Guilette, tells the Sun in an interview by telephone on Thursday. “I think people in that community and on that campus deserve to know who the antisemites are.”Several online campaigns are listing the full names, class years, past employment, social media profiles, and hometowns of students linked to the student organizations or clubs that signed the statement. AccuracyInMedia is managing a list of these students, removing the names of those who withdraw from the groups “while adding new names every hour,” Mr. Guillette writes on X. This crackdown on students blaming Israel for violence perpetrated by Hamas has gained traction after prominent business leaders began vowing that they wouldn’t hire Harvard students who are signatories to the letter. “If you were managing a business, would you hire someone who blamed the despicable violent acts of a terrorist group on the victims?” a famed hedge fund manager who is a Harvard graduate, Bill Ackman, posted on X Wednesday. “I don’t think so.”He added: “It is not harassment to seek to understand the character of the candidates that you are considering for employment. In fact, as CEO, it is your obligation to do so on behalf of all of the other employees in your company, the clients and customers it serves, and all of your other stakeholders.”Mr. Ackman posted on X this week that he’s been asked by a number of chief executives if his alma mater would release the names of the students affiliated with the groups that signed the anti-Israel statement, an inquiry that garnered backlash from students claiming they had no knowledge that their clubs were signing the statement. Mr. Ackman retorted: “If you have made a mistake, acknowledge it, and immediately correct your mistaken actions.” Some student clubs have indeed issued apologies, such as the Harvard Undergraduate Ghungroo, a South Asian student arts group, which said in a statement that its members “stand in solidarity with both Israeli and Palestinian victims.”While the student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, has yet to release an editorial condemning the violence by Hamas, prominent campus voices in the Jewish and Israeli community are ratcheting up pressure against supporters of the Palestinian Arabs or Hamas, an Iranian-backed terrorist organization.The Crimson did publish an op-ed piece by three undergraduates calling on the “entire Harvard community to condemn” the recent statement by the Palestine Solidarity Committee “for what it is: a justification of horrific terror attacks on the Jewish people and Israel.” The piece published yesterday asserts that “there is no justification” for the violence.Safety concerns are also growing among students on all sides of the issue. The Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee shared on Instagram a message saying that it has postponed its vigil for what it claimed to be “all civilian lives lost” following “credible safety concerns and threats against student security.”The amended version of the group’s anti-Israel proclamation now includes a footnote explaining that “for student safety, the names of all original signing organizations have been concealed at this time.” Yet the group maintains that it is “proud to stand steadfast against Israeli apartheid.” It has not explicitly condemned Hamas’s violence.In a new statement on Wednesday, the Palestine Solidarity Committee and Graduate Students for Palestine call on Harvard “to categorically reject the racist attacks leveled against the vulnerable students and to stand in solidarity with all those affected.” Even some members of the Harvard community who denounced the anti-Israel statement argue that the campaign against its signatories is going a step too far. “I am reassured by the widespread condemnation of the statement by the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Group,” a Harvard economics professor, Jason Furman, said on X. “But I am appalled by people threatening individual students. I’m even more appalled since many of them had nothing to do with the letter.”A former president of Harvard, Larry Summers, who previously said he was “sickened” by the university’s hesitancy toward condemning Hamas, posted: “please everybody take a deep breath. Many in these groups never saw the statement before it went out.” He added that “this is not a time where it is constructive to vilify individuals and I am sorry that is happening.”“Vilification is never a prudent pathway to progress,” a Harvard senior, Will Goldsmith, says, adding that he is “heartbroken” over the safety threats. He tells the Sun, though, that he wishes “those students who spoke out in support of the PSC statement — and those who continue to stand by it — stop to consider how their actions affect the feelings and safety of their Jewish classmates as well as their classmates who call Jews friends and neighbors.”In an open letter to the school’s president, Claudine Gay, published in a student weekly, the Harvard Independent, Mr. Goldsmith criticized the newly inaugurated president for failing to issue a more forceful statement against Hamas: “Why did it take a public outcry to make you feel compelled to denounce terrorism?”Earlier this week, Ms. Gay was criticized by Mr. Summers for slow-walking Harvard’s response to the tragedy, as opposed to her emotional statement about “the callous and depraved actions of a white police officer in Minneapolis” after the death of George Floyd in 2020.As for Accuracy in Media, the group is planning to scale its campaign against campus “antisemites” to other colleges in the coming weeks. According to its motto, the nonprofit pledges to be “on the front lines of the culture war.” The Sun asked AIM’s Mr. Guillette if his billboards stationed at Cambridge are provoking pushback from local authorities over the question of defaming the featured students. “I think publishing someone’s name and photo is far less dangerous in terms of legality than signing statements in support of Hamas,” he said. “It’s a bit ironic that students would be shocked that their names and photos would be out there on a campus that literally invented Facebook.”

Truck-Mounted Billboards Naming Harvard Students Who Signed Pro-Hamas Letter Are Driving Around Campus as Backlash Against ‘Antisemitic’ Students Intensifies

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