Members of over 30 on-campus organizations at Harvard University are fearing for their safety after their organizations anonymously signed a statement claiming Israel was entirely responsible for the multitude of deaths during Hamas’s initial attack.
The undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee on Harvard’s campus created the statement, which was released hours after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.
This letter has led to multiple students’ names, addresses, work histories and much more being found and released in a mass doxxing on a website called Harvard Hates Jews, a site made by Accuracy in Media. Some students have had their family members threatened and future job opportunities taken away amid the backlash.
One of the main ways students are being doxxed is via a digital billboard truck with their pictures and names plastered on the sides under the title “Harvard’s Leading Anti-Semites.”
The bus started driving around Harvard’s campus on Oct. 11 and was paid for by the American conservative group Accuracy in Media. Accuracy in Media has existed since 1969 and is known as a non-profit media watchdog.
This digital billboard has appeared on a few other campuses, such as the Berkeley School of Law, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, in hopes of exposing anti-Semitic students and professors.
Students have had their pictures appear on the doxxing truck and have done interviews under fake names because they are afraid for their safety. If the organization they belong to takes back their signature, then the students’ names will be removed from the truck.
The president of Accuracy in Media, Adam Guillette, has faced criticism about the doxxing trucks, with people claiming these trucks are trying to intimidate students. The disagreement resulted in Guillette’s home being swarmed with Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT, members around 1:30 a.m. on Oct. 27.
The police received a call stating that Guillette had a gun and was pointing it at his wife’s head. They dispatched SWAT to handle the urgent call, only for them to arrive at an empty home. Guillette and his wife were away at a wedding. Guillette believes this was done to get him killed.
These tactics have caused people to question whether or not they have freedom of speech under the First Amendment, especially on college campuses.
“In general, students would have the ability to express an opinion,” said Benjamin Clark, a political science professor at GC. “In general, the Supreme Court has been more willing to allow government regulations of speech in kind of a K-12 setting and less accepting of it in the university setting. Since college students are adults, there is less of a role for the government to act in loco-parentis [state of the parents].”
Significant figures, such as donors for Harvard, Board members of Harvard and professors from other universities, have disagreed with the statement signed by the 30 organizations. After multiple criticisms of the statement, some organizations have removed their signatures, showing that the pressure is rising.
“Particularly in the Harvard situation, where it is a private campus, there would be limits on how much the government could regulate the speech there,” Clark said. “The student organization would have a right to express their views.”
Harvard itself has been criticized because it took a while to respond to the statement and the doxxing of its students. The critiques come from students, faculty, and alumni aimed at Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay.
“The university and people in the public sphere would have the right [freedom of speech] to criticize those views and be publicly exposing those views,” Clark said. “That does not mean that just because we have the right to say things that there are not healthy and unhealthy, helpful and unhelpful, ways that we can be exercising those rights.”
When the official statement came out, around a week had already passed since the initial reaction from the world.
“So, Harvard has a challenge not only to handle it particularly well, in the sense that they were silent for a while, and that’s always bad — or almost always bad — because what does that mean?” said Mikkel Christensen, an assistant professor of mass communication at GC. “Does that mean that they are okay with the statement? Does that mean they are not okay with the statement or do not know what to say? And a big institution like Harvard never gets the benefit of the doubt. Harvard has so much intellectual credibility that they need to react, and then they finally did react, but perhaps it could have been stronger.”
After Harvard’s response was released, Harvard also announced a task force to help the doxxed students. The task force is supposed to end on Nov. 3 if those involved in the task force deem that their services are no longer needed. The task force is meant to provide the students with resources to help them cope with this time. This task force comes after all the students who were doxxed started a buddy system to travel through campus in hopes of not being attacked.
When it comes to the future of the students, Guillette plans on making websites for each student and putting their information on it and why they are anti-Semites.
“Value safety more than your need to be right or public image,” Christensen said. “It is horrible where we are in the world now because people cannot use their right to express themselves out of fear for their safety. I think that if they lay low, soon, it will only be the most extreme people that will care.”
Some of the students who have been interviewed have stated that they do not feel support from Harvard, even after the release of the institute’s statement and the forming of the task force.
Harvard students are worried about their future and are trying to respond without revealing their identities in popular newspapers, such as Teen Vogue.
“If you want to send out a statement addressing this, do it through your organizations instead of doing it individually because you do not want to bring more attention to your person,” Christensen said. “Otherwise, as much as you want to address it from a traditional PR perspective, it’s important to address it. Harvard institution should have done it, but for those individuals, it is probably more important to not address and accept that there are some misconceptions.”
