People of the Pod What Jewish Students at Penn Want You to Know About Antisemitism and the Palestine Writes Event
All eyes have been on the University of Pennsylvania and the Palestine Writes event, a gathering meant to give voice to Palestinian art, poetry, and literature on campus. However, a number of the speakers, including Roger Waters and Marc Lamont Hill, have well-documented histories of antisemitic statements.
Maya Harpaz, Vice President of Israel Engagement at Penn Hillel, and Jonah Miller, a reporter for The Daily Pennsylvanian, take you through what unfolded, growing campus antisemitism, defining free speech on campus, and the responsibility of university administrators to protect Jewish students.
*The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC.
Episode Lineup:
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(0:40) Maya Harpaz, Jonah Miller
Show Notes:
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Everything you need to know about the Palestine Writes event at Penn and antisemitism.
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AJC Campus Library: Resources for Becoming a Strong Jewish Student Advocate
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Transcript of Interview with Maya Harpaz and Jonah Miller:
Manya Brachear Pashman:
Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman, AJC's Senior Director of the Alexander Young Leadership Department, guest hosts this week’s conversation with two Jewish college students about a situation on their campus and how they responded. Meggie, take it away.
Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:
Thanks, Manya. This past week, it seemed like all eyes were on the University of Pennsylvania in the lead up to the Palestine Writes event. The event was meant to give voice to Palestinian art, poetry, and literature- all of which are quite appropriate and indeed valuable to have on a university campus. However, a number of the announced speakers strayed from the event’s purpose and instead have well-documented histories of antisemitic statements.
These include Roger Waters, who was recently described by the U.S. State Department as having a long track record of using antisemitic tropes, after he desecrated the memory of Holocaust victim Anne Frank, compared Israel to the Third Reich, and recently paraded around a stage wearing an SS Nazi uniform during a concert in Berlin.
It also included Marc Lamont Hill, whose public remarks as a CNN commentator called for Israel’s eradication. At play were questions around growing campus antisemitism, free speech on campus, and the role of university administrators in preventing such bigotry–particularly with the release in May of the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, and its outsized focus on how antisemitism affects Jewish students on campus.
To help us break down these events and what unfolded are two Jewish students who experienced this all firsthand and helped drive the course of events.
Joining me are Maya Harpaz, a junior at Penn, and Vice President of Israel Engagement at Penn Hillel, and Jonah Miller, a junior at Penn, and a reporter for The Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn’s student newspaper.
Maya and Jonah, thanks for joining us on People of the Pod.
Jonah Miller:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to our discussion.
Maya Harpaz:
Yeah, thank you for having us.
Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:
Great. So with that, let's jump in. So there are many chapters to what happened at Penn, and I think a great deal of misinformation. So let's go back to the beginning. When did Jewish students first hear about the Palestine Writes event, and particularly its speaker lineup? And upon initially learning about it, what were the specific concerns that Jewish students had?
Jonah Miller:
I think that when I learned about the Palestine Writes event, I learned about it simultaneously with who some of these speakers are. Penn is a large university and institution that has countless events each day, hosted and co-sponsored by numerous different departments and facets of the university. If I had learned about this festival, solely, just about the festival, I would say, you know, great, it's great that this culture, and these literary items are being amplified on campus. Everyone and every culture should have a space on this campus.
But to learn about at the same time as concerns of antisemitic speakers, that's when I as a Jewish student, started to get a little nervous. Nervous, because how could Penn allow antisemitic speakers to come speak on a campus that is close to 20% Jewish? And even without that high percentage, how could they be invited to speak at all?
Maya Harpaz:
Yeah, I can touch on that as well. In my role as VP Israel, a big part of that is seeing what events are going on, whether it be related to the Middle East at large, Israel, Palestinians, all of that combined. So I learned about this event A while ago, late July, early August. So before it was really even being spoken about on campus. I was having conversations as the speakers were still being finalized, as marketing materials were still being put out and discussed with a lot of the other student leaders and Hillel staff, about what our approach was going to be to handle this event.
And how we were going to relay that to the Jewish community at large. So similar to what Jonah said, Jewish students definitely learned about the event and the problematic speakers hand in hand after Hillel started sending out emails about it. And after we sent our letter to the administration and after the DP coverage.
Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:
So Maya, I want to dive into that approach in the letter that you just raised. At least from the outside, one of the first steps seemed to be a letter drafted by Penn's Jewish student leadership to President Magill, of which you were a signatory, outlining specific steps the community wanted the university to take on. So can you give us some background of how that letter came into being and can you share for our listeners what it outlined for the administration?
Maya Harpaz:
Yes, so this letter came to be sort of as we were having these conversations over the summer. And then once we got to campus, we all sat down with the presidents of PIPAC, SSI, Tamid, presidents of Chabad. And we sort of sat down and we were like, we know why these speakers and why this event could be problematic for our community. How do we outline that to the administration in a way that is logical and not also attacking of another group's culture. Because that's not what we wanted to do. It wasn't our goal to get this event canceled, it wasn't to blow it up in their faces. It was really just, we have specific concerns, and how do we articulate that?
So we wrote this letter addressed to the president, the provost, and the dean, and sent it to high-level members of the President's administration, specifically referencing Roger Waters and Marc Lamont Hill. And we asked them to have a meeting with us so we could really sit down and have a conversation, and to make a statement about this event.
And from my perspective, it was definitely a productive meeting, we voiced our concerns about the speakers, we asked them a lot of questions about what was the process of this event being welcomed on our campus, and they explained how they rented out the space and the head of the NELC department explained the process of co-sponsoring, and we really had an open dialogue about what really happened and how we can improve on that in the future. And then shortly after that, the President released her statement about the event.
Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:
So Maya, I want to dive into a number of things that you just got at. So one is, and you alluded to this, the letter specifically did not call for the canceling of the event. And from my understanding, that's not something that Hillel was asking for. Can you talk about why that is?
Maya Harpaz:
Yes. So as Jonah also said, when you learn about just the event as the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, it sounds perfectly normal. Sounds like it's just a group wanting to celebrate their culture and their literature. And our goal was not to cancel that. There was over I think, 120 speakers. And our goal was to call out the ones that were problematic towards our community, not cancel their right to speak, their right to celebrate.
I'm a big believer in free speech. And I didn't want to ask anyone to cancel something. I know that, I'm sure that we at Hillel and Chabad have events with proud Zionists that have maybe done questionable things or said questionable things in the past too, that maybe even some of our own Jewish students don't agree with.
But Roger Waters definitely crossed the line for us. And we ended up asking for him to be uninvited and even though he was on Zoom, we were definitely very, very concerned about that, because it definitely crossed the line of our threshold of comfortableness in terms of hate speech, but it wasn't our goal to get this event canceled. And we knew it wasn't a reasonable ask either. It was a huge event that's been in the planning and in the works for a year.
Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:
And then I want to touch on kind of the tail end of what you just described. So what did come out of that initial letter is President Magill, and her administration, indeed issued an initial statement following that letter, following what you had articulated. And that statement did have a clear condemnation of antisemitism, but it left some unsatisfied with what may not have been in there. So I'm curious from both of you, what was your interpretation of that initial statement? And can you describe what came next, particularly as the national attention started to build around Penn?
Jonah Miller:
Yeah, I can take this one. So in President Magill's letter, she described antisemitism as antithetical to the values of the University of Pennsylvania, which as a Jewish student was very comforting, reassuring to hear that the president of our university is very clearly against antisemitism. At the same time, she also explained how this is an event that is not being promoted or organized by the university. And at the same time, she also wrote how the university supports the notion of free speech and the free exchange of ideas.
So I think what you're getting at is that, definitely a condemnation of antisemitism, which is a win. But at the same time, it doesn't really seem like there was much action that was going to be taken from the letter. It was more an acknowledgement that the Jewish voices on campus who have concerns with, as Maya said, a few of the many speakers of this festival, were being recognized, but they were not being acted upon.
Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:
So Jonah, I mentioned at the start that you are a reporter for The Daily Pennsylvanian. So from a different lens, shortly before Shabbat and Yom Kippur, it was reported that a member of the Penn community entered Penn Hillel and in essence somewhat ransacked the lobby while also screaming antisemitic vitriol.
So Jonah, can you share, first of all what we know about that, and also what it was like reporting on something that so directly affected your community?
Jonah Miller:
That's a great question. So in order to walk you through this timeline–to my knowledge, this is still under a form of investigation by the university, and we'll see what comes out in the next few days or weeks. But in terms of the timeline: so last Thursday morning, The Daily Pennsylvanian received information that an individual entered Penn Hillel, so all of a sudden our journalistic gears start turning, and we wanted to reach out to as many sources that have some relation to Penn Hillel, which for those of you listening is kind of the epicenter of Jewish life and culture on Penn's campus.
So from what we understand now, an individual entered Penn Hillel, as someone was opening the door for early morning services, a member of the Orthodox community at Penn. Entered in to Penn Hillel a few minutes before the building officially opened for the day at 7am. So there was no security guard posted, to my knowledge. And entered the lobby, smashed a podium, flipped over a table, all while reportedly shouting antisemitic speech.
So that's kind of what we understand was happening. And in terms of how it affected me, as someone who was writing it, I was really passionate and driven to make sure we have the full story. And I think as a journalist, or as an aspiring journalist, it's really important. But at the same time, as someone who I know, people from my community on campus, chances are people from my family or the extended Jewish community, in the Philadelphia area, and across the country might be reading something like this. It was really important to make sure that we had all the facts as strong and robust as possible.
But at the same time, it was hard typing those words, it was hard typing how someone entered a place that I like to call a home, for me and for the rest of my Jewish community here on campus. So kind of finding that balance was definitely difficult.
Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:
I can only imagine. And I want to turn to I guess to yet another lens, again with your journalistic hat on. Roger Waters, who Maya alluded to earlier, has a long history and well documented history of antisemitic speech, has, in recent days, basically lashed out at the paper and its coverage. I'm curious what your thoughts are about that and how that is being received by the paper.
Jonah Miller:
I think that, as campus journalists, it's our duty to be non biased as much as we can. And like I said, really just stick to the facts. We wrote how Penn Hillel was entered by some individual and he was yelling antisemitic speech in a clear and vivid example and trend of rising antisemitism, without a doubt. Roger Waters took this, he actually, I know the video that you're talking about, he said that he was on his way to Penn State, which first of all is not the university that we attend. But he said that he was on his way to Penn State for the Palestine Writes Festival and how the Daily Pennsylvanian commented on his history of antisemitism.
But like you said, this is well documented, this is not something that we pulled out of thin air and labeled him as having a history of antisemitism. It's there, it's online, for everyone to see. And it's unambiguous. So for him to lash out at student journalists, you know, all students who are trying to do their best and maintain this journalistic integrity and share facts with our campus community members. For him to lash out at us, it's disappointing, but at the same time, we don't want to respond and kind of promote this behavior of his in any way.
Maya Harpaz:
And something else I'll just add is, he also mentioned in that video that he came to Philadelphia ready to speak, and then was just informed that he couldn't come to campus and posed this whole idea that Penn isn't allowing him to come on campus. And this just happened. And he came all the way here and he's ready to be here. And he wants to show his support for the Palestinian community. But as I mentioned, I've been following this event since over the summer. And I think Penn also commented this in a new article in the DP, that he was never speaking in person, it was always planned that he was going to speak on Zoom.
So for him now to twist the facts and frame it as our school is his canceling him just as he arrives to speak here was definitely very misleading. Because it was never the intention of the university to have him come in person on our campus due to his extensive history of antisemitism. And he ended up coming onto our campus and rolling his window down, as I'm sure many people saw on the video, to actually articulate to participants of the conference that Penn isn't allowing him to speak.
Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:
So I want to try and turn to something more positive, which really stems from both of you. I think, to me, what really was so inspiring to see is that instead of simply focusing on the pain, and there was tremendous pain that this caused, Jewish student leaders took a completely different path, rooted in celebrating the vibrancy and the pride of the Jewish community. And this led to the creation of Penn Unity Shabbat, which our own CEO, AJC's CEO Ted Deutch attended in solidarity.
How did that come into being? And importantly, what was the feeling like in the room on Friday night?
Maya Harpaz:
Yeah, so this was sort of in the works from that initial meeting we had, at the beginning of the semester, when we were talking about how we want to respond to this, it was definitely always an idea that we want to have a big gathering. It's right before Yom Kippur, it's right before a very holy weekend for us. Regardless of what's going on on campus, it's important for us to feel that togetherness, and definitely because of that event, even more so.
So it's been in the works for a bit and then sort of as media attention progressed on the Palestine Writes event, and as we were getting more inquiries from people about what was going on, it became really clear that this needed to be a big event and it had to go beyond just our campus community. We needed to invite leaders like Ted Deutch and leaders from Hillel International to really come and join us and to speak with them and to have their support. And the actual feeling of being in there was really awesome. I've never seen Hillel so packed before. The entire building was full, the first floor and all the rooms on the second floor. I've never seen so many people there. So it was really special.
Jonah Miller:
To add on, from the perspective of someone who did not have a hand in planning it, but was a proud attendee of this event, you could really feel, like you said, the vibrancy in the room and the energy where you know, in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur students from all different parts of the Jewish community were really excited to be there. I've been to my fair share of Penn Hillel shabbats. But you know, this time I had seen people who I might not have seen before at one of these events. So I think it was really, you know, I was really proud to be a member of the Jewish community at Penn and to really see people, you know, really just come together.
Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:
What a way to bring joy to a moment that really could have just focused on the challenge, so that–it's really unbelievable.
Zooming out, now that you're a few days, just a few days, away from everything. So campus issues affecting Jewish students do get press coverage, but often it is simply within Jewish news outlets, and rarely in the wider press, and certainly rarely for such an extended period of time. What we saw at Penn felt unprecedented, both in the national interest and in the last in coverage. Why do you think it led to such significant coverage? And how did that affect the campus environment at Penn?
Maya Harpaz:
I think one reason for that is because of Penn as an institution, as an Ivy League institution, and also as a well-known Jewish institution. Penn has a long history of a very strong Jewish community that's actually been decreasing in size pretty steadily over the years. So I think that was a big reason why we got so much attention.
I also think because of the way that we responded to it, I think if we decided that we weren't going to say anything, and we were going to let antisemites come onto our campus and spew hate, and we just put our hands up, that there wouldn't have been so much attention. But I think because we pushed back on it, it became this discourse that got a lot of attention.
I don't even know how to describe it still, because I'm still processing everything that's happened over the last few weeks. But me personally, I'm not a journalist. I'm not usually someone who's ever in the news or speaking to the press. But the amount of attention that that's been on us has really, really been unprecedented. As you mentioned, it's definitely been a bit overwhelming too but I'm also grateful that we've been given a platform to share what's been happening and to bring awareness to it.
Because we've seen this happen at many other schools that have large Jewish communities and very strong Jewish communities. And I never thought that an event like this would or could happen here. So I've definitely been very appreciative of all of the support that we've gotten.
Jonah Miller:
At the same time, I think that the incident at Hillel follows a long lasting and unfortunately, growing trend of rising antisemitism. And I think that news outlets picked up on that. Secondly, to give some credit to my amazing team of reporters and copy editors at The Daily Pennsylvanian, I think that our quick and trustworthy coverage at the paper allowed news outlets, national news outlets, to cite us in their own articles. So for instance, this incident that happened at Hillel, I noticed that within 12, 24 hours, it was picked up by Fox News, and CBS News, both of which cited interviews that I myself conducted with students who were at the scene, in their own articles.
Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:
So connected to that, in addition to the media attention, I think, many Jewish organizations, some of which had little to no relationship with the Jewish community on campus, came to campus with their own ideas of how the situation should be resolved. What advice can you give to Jewish organizations who want to help when a situation arises on campus?
Maya Harpaz:
The biggest advice that I can give is just talk to us. No campus is the same and although unfortunately a lot of antisemitic incidents happen on a lot of universities, the climate of each campus is very different and the wants and needs of students are very different based off of their campus. So it's definitely important to speak to students before you make an assumption about what they you think they want or make a plan for what can be done and how to solve this issue because it's really us who have a stake in this, obviously the Jewish community at large cares, but it's it's us who have to live this as our reality. Penn is our school. It's also our home. It's our social lives. So it's our everyday lives, we can't escape that.
Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:
So while the particular event itself may have passed for right now, there is a great deal to do on Penn's campus in the wake of these events. The President has committed to implementing much of the US National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, of which dozens of AJC recommendations were included. And Penn Hillel itself has dedicated time and resources to educational programming around antisemitism. So as student leaders, what do you want to see next? And importantly, what advice do you have for other Jewish students should something like this happen on their campus?
Maya Harpaz:
So something that we talked about with members of the administration and things that we want to see next is more–and this is something that President Magill mentioned, as well–is more oversight when hosting events on our campus. When this event came through, it was just listed as the Palestine Writes Literature Festival. And they were like, cool, literature festival, fine.
But there definitely needs to be more work done to make sure that the lineup of any event is not including someone that is not in line with, as President Magill said, our institutional values. Something else that we discussed is further training for Penn faculty, whether that be residential advisors, or professors, to be trained on how to combat antisemitism and how to identify antisemitism and really introducing that into the other forms of training against hate that faculty go through. And a big longer term goal that I think at some point, maybe in the nearer future than I initially anticipated, is implementing the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
Jonah Miller:
Hopefully, an incident like this does not happen at the campuses of other Jewish students. But should something happen, my recommendation would be to just remember that our unity can overcome the hate and the vitriol being spouted at us. At the Shabbat together event at Penn Hillel, a Penn alum and someone who's very involved with the Penn community and with the Jewish community, Stuart Weitzman, spoke about how Jews have triumphed over hundreds of years and 1000s of years of banding together. I think that message remains ever-important, to remind ourselves about today. That we really as a community are stronger and can overcome this adversity when it comes right on our doorsteps.
Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:
What a beautiful note to end on, and I have to say for myself, for us here at AJC, and certainly for the Jewish community at large, the reason we feel so hopeful about the Jewish future is because of Maya, your leadership, Jonah, your leadership, and both the courage and joy and thoughtfulness that you brought to this situation. So for all of us, I just have to say a big thank you.
Jonah Miller:
Thank you so much, and thank you to AJC for all the work that they're doing for students like us on campuses.
Maya Harpaz:
Thank you so much for having us. It really means so much to both of us to be able to have our platform and to share what's been going on at Penn.
Manya Brachear Pashman:
If you missed last week’s episode, we went behind the scenes at the UN General Assembly with Simone Rodan Benzaquen, the Managing Director of AJC Europe.