A Jewish Yale undergraduate has filed a police report after, he says, an American studies professor named Lisa Lowe “rushed up” to him and “forcibly grabbed” his phone when he was trying to film an anti-Israel event on the New Haven campus. Yale says that its police force investigated the incident and concluded there was no crime committed.

The student who says he was assaulted, Netanel Crispe, is a Yale junior active in the campus Chabad chapter. He says he had “permission to record” the event. In a video Mr. Crispe shared with the Sun, Ms. Lowe can be seen blocking his camera, then relenting after being confronted by someone who appears to be another Yale faculty or staff member.

In a letter sent to the Yale University President, Peter Salovey, viewed by the Sun, Mr. Crispe demanded that “immediate action be taken to reprimand this professor.”

Ms. Lowe forwarded the Sun’s request for comment to Yale’s Office of Public Affairs. In a message to the Sun, the office stated, “As was noted in the university statement, the event began with a request that no filming or photography take place. After the event ended, an individual entered the venue and appeared to be filming attendees and speakers as they left.

“An incident related to this filming was reported to the Yale police, who investigated and concluded that the incident did not involve any criminal conduct,” the Public Affairs Office concluded. 

Ms. Crispe says that during the event, Yale’s assistant vice president for university life, Pilar Montalvo, informed Ms. Lowe that students were allowed to film the event (despite Yale’s claims, post facto, that a request had been made at the beginning of the event not to film it).

Ms. Lowe, who holds the prestigious Samuel Knight Professorship of American Studies, focuses her studies on “an analysis of race, immigration, capitalism, and colonialism.” In recent years, she has signed on to petitions in support of members of academia taking strong anti-Israel stances.

Ms. Lowe was one of several faculty members to defend the anti-Israel scholar Steven Salaita in a petition created by the anti-Israel, Boycott, Divest, Sanction Organization. 

In 2014, The University of Illinois withdrew an employment offer of a tenured professorship to Mr. Salaita, who is a scholar in American Indian studies, after he posted several antisemitic comments on X, formerly Twitter. In one post shortly after Hamas kidnapped three teenage Israeli high school students, he wrote: “You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.” Mr. Salaita eventually left academia and became a school bus driver at the Washington, D.C., area. 

In addition, Ms. Lowe has signed on to a letter endorsing academic and cultural boycotts of the Jewish state. In 2016, she also signed on to a letter encouraging the Modern Language Association to pass a resolution boycotting Israeli institutions. 

The Yale event during which the confrontation between Ms. Lowe and Mr. Crispe occurred was part of an anti-Israel speaker series titled “Gaza Under Siege” that occurred on November 6th. The event had broad institutional support from Yale. Mr. Crispe said it “was co-sponsored by the American Studies, Anthropology and Religious Studies departments; the programs in Ethnicity, Race and Migration and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies; the Center for Middle East Studies; the Black Feminist Collective (co-directed by the head of Pierson College); the Ethnography Hub; the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund; and Yalies4Palestine.”

By contrast, Mr. Crispe claims in a recent opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal that the heads of Yale’s residential colleges — elaborate dormitories — were advised not to advertise Shabbat dinner invitations because the events were too “controversial.”  However, there seemed to be no qualms about the “Gaza Under Siege event.” The head of Jonathan Edwards College, one of the residential colleges, promoted the event in a weekly email, Mr. Crispe stated. 

In his Wall Street Journal piece, Mr. Crispe said that he was refused entry to the event and resorted to “sitting outside and pressing our ears against the door to listen.” He was told by organizers that he could not enter because he did not register for the event. However, he claims, the organizers “waved others through who also weren’t on the list.”

From outside the door, Mr. Crispe recalled, he could hear speakers justifying the October 7 attacks as necessary resistance to a colonial occupier.

“They called the terrorist group ‘militant,’ and one observed that ‘violent resistance movements often emerge in colonized spaces,’” Mr. Crispe said, adding that another speaker stated, “No matter what the solution is — a two-state solution or a one-state solution — the Israeli state cannot remain the state of the Jewish people.”

Following the November 6 event, Yale’s Office of Public Relations issued a statement justifying the event as “One of several educational events on campus about the Hamas-Israel war,” saying that it was in line with Yale’s free speech policies. Notably, Yale stated that organizers had requested that no filming or photography take place, linking the interdiction to “Yale’s freedom of expression policies … Administrators were present to ensure that the event proceeded in a way consistent with the university’s policies which allowed for it to take place without disruption.    

“Students and other community members of all backgrounds had an opportunity to attend the event, engage intellectually and respectfully, and ask questions and participate in the discussion,” the statement said.

As for Mr. Crispe and others being forced to listen through the door, Yale said that the event was at capacity and that ”a few students were not aware that organizers had required pre-registration, and even some students who had pre-registered were unable to enter due to space constraints. As a result, a small number of people listened from the hallway.”