Is Haverford College a Den of Antisemitism?
A Dissent
On Wednesday, Haverford College President Wendy Raymond will testify in the U.S. House of Representatives before the Committee on Education and Workforce. In an April 21 letter, Chairman Tim Walberg of Michigan summoned President Raymond to provide testimony and documents pertaining to accusations of antisemitic discrimination at the wealthy liberal arts college. The presidents of DePaul University and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, will appear before the committee as well.
In January, a federal judge in Pennsylvania rejected a Title VI lawsuit brought by three Jewish plaintiffs who alleged rampant antisemitism at Haverford: “A litany of complaints related in a general way to the same subject—in this instance the serious problem of antisemitism—is not the same thing as a legally cognizable complaint pled in accordance with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.” Last week, President Raymond posted her own thoughts about the upcoming hearing.
The following statement was given to us for publication by members of Haverford’s Jewish community in dissent. The members who drafted and endorsed the dissent have chosen to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. The irony is rich. But the statement speaks for itself.
—John Summers
A Statement from the Haverford College Jewish Community
We are members of the Jewish community at Haverford College, and we write this letter on behalf of many Jewish faculty, staff and students at Haverford who do not feel that our college is a hotbed of antisemitism. We feel that our voices have absolutely not been represented in the current public discussion of antisemitism at Haverford.
Our Jewish community at Haverford is diverse, if that is still a legal word to use in the United States. We come from Reform, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reconstructionist backgrounds and practices. Some of us do not support the nation state of Israel. Some of us do. Some of us support it and critique its current government and practices thoroughly, as do many Jewish people in Israel and in the diaspora. We are of different ages, we come from multiracial families, we reflect different political viewpoints. We talk about our family b’nei mitzvahs in the halls and see each other at temple or we prefer to have the right not to talk about and connect our religion to our workplace. We are not a single Twitter or X feed. Some of us are not on social media at all, which is perhaps why you are not familiar with our voices.
We do feel that our range of views, politics, and religious practices is not being represented in the name of our college on the national stage. And we can only describe this as an unacceptable way of policing, censoring, distorting and inhibiting our Jewish life and our Jewish identity, and the holy connection of our faith to humanity and justice.
We are concerned that poorly reported press accounts and public statements of the current plans for the House Committee of Education and Workforce to meet with our college’s president, Wendy Raymond, have exacerbated the flattening and silencing of our Jewish community to achieve ends that have nothing to do with our own. And we respect our college’s policy acknowledgment that any enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a law passed to end segregation, institutionalized racism and the longtime violence against Black people in the United States and fought for by many Jewish people, must apply to all the students who attend our college, not only to the Jewish ones. Anything less would mean the end of equal protection under the law, and our Jewish community at Haverford fundamentally supports equal protection.
We are concerned that a longtime set of struggles within the Jewish community, between our visions of religious practice, between the old and the young, between our differing views of Israel and its state projects, between the whiteness and the transforming multiracial life of the Jewish community, between straightness and queerness, and more, are now being adjudicated in a Christian nationalist public sphere, with some of our fellow Jews at Haverford and beyond using Christians who don’t actually care about our community to win punishing victories over other members of our Jewish community. We in the Haverford Jewish community don’t accept this strategy.
We write representing the range and diversity of the Jewish community at Haverford. We reject any actions conducted in our name that misrepresent the reality of our lives and our campus. We also reject any projects or directives that work to ban the connection of our religion to its sacred work of repairing the broken world.
To John-- The lawsuit has been dismissed twice, but without prejudice, and a second amended complaint has been filed, along with a new motion to dismiss. Oral arguments were heard on April 9, and the judge's ruling is pending. Your phrasing about the case may be technically correct, but is misleading.
You are correct in noting that the letter was written by *members* of Haverford's Jewish community whereas the letter-writers do not make that distinction in the title of their letter. The irony is not only the fear of retribution; it is also very likely a satirical retort to the lawsuit title ''Jews at Haverford v the Corporation of Haverford College" that implies representation of all Jewish individuals at Haverford, when it obviously does not.
To the Anonymous Haverford Faculty--
Well-played. This letter comes out almost simultaneously with the Haverford AAUP statement, accompanied with a Tri-Co Alumni letter of support authored by the same individuals and groups responsible for campus disruptions, occupations, and encampments.