Haverford’s Meeting the Moment: Community in Dialogue initiative, which launched at the start of the Fall 2024 semester, hosted a teach-in given by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) dubbed Antisemitism 101. In response, Bi-Co Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) organized a counter teach in and protest titled #Drop the ADL, for which the poster read “Teach in on Antisemitism VS Anti-Zionism.”
With the announcement of the ADL workshop organized for September 30, Bi-CO JVP wrote a letter to Haverford administration, imploring them to disinvite the ADL from campus. The letter stated “as Jews, we know that it is deeply important to address antisemitism on campus, and the way to do this is not by inviting a group to our campus that espouses hateful rhetoric.” Citing #DropTheADL, which is an open letter signed by numerous social justice organizations, the letter to admin outlines that “the ADL’s history of suppressing liberation groups and allying with perpetrators of state violence has recently been uncovered after research attempting to understand the ADL’s condemnation of the Movement for Black Lives and Palestinian rights groups.” It was also noted that the ADL has accused pro-Palestinian student groups of terrorism and specifically targeted SJP and JVP chapters. The letter was signed by 48 students and alumnae who expressed “We, as Jewish Students of Haverford, are telling you that the Anti-Defamation League’s presence as an organization that promotes repression on college campuses, racist policies, and the falsehood that all Jews are Zionists would make us feel unsafe and unheard on our own campus.”
As students flocked to the Haverford Dining Center on September 30 to attend the teach in hosted by the ADL, other members of the Bi-Co student body gathered in Stokes auditorium at 11:45 a.m. to boycott and protest the teach in. Flyers put up around both Bryn Mawr and Haverford’s campus’s read “No Zionist Propaganda on our campus.” Outside the Dining Center, flyers were given out titled “The Anti-Defamation League is not a Credible Source on Antisemitism and Racism.” As students filled up a classroom in Stokes, masks were offered to students as well as posters for protestors to carry before they made their way over to the outside of the Bryn Mawr room in the DC where the Antisemitism 101 teach in was held.
Leaving Stokes after a brief introduction and practice of chants, the group began walking to the DC where the organizers led chants such as “The ADL session is student oppression” and “The students united will never be defeated”. The event was structured as both a teach-in and a protest, therefore, in between chants, organizers gave brief speeches. One organizer spoke about “real acts of Antisemitism” providing the example of Nazi symbols being put on display by rioters during the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol in 2021. “Our safety is intertwined… None of us are free until all of us are free”, one organizer said through the load speaker, finally stating that these are “real cases of antisemitism which the ADL ignores”, before continuing with chants. The teach-in aspect of the event also included JVP members noting that “Judaism includes so much more that has nothing to do with the state of Israel. For example, I enjoy eating apples and honey on Rosh Hashanah”.
One member of JVP, who has requested to remain anonymous due to concerns about doxxing, was involved in the organization of the demonstration and told the Bi-Co News “For me, an integral part of Judaism is activism. For example, my grandmother, she was born in 1923, and she was a huge anti-Zionist her entire life so she really raised me with that. As a child, I always understand that Israel did not stand for us as Jews.” They also noted that admin was “not receptive” to the letter signed by Jewish students and alumnae and therefore, JVP decided to have “our teach in at the same time to provide information about how claims of anti-semitism can be weaponised and on the difference between anti-semitism and anti-Zionism.”
In the midst of the protest, it was announced that one of the members of JVP who had entered the ADL workshop in order to speak out against it in a pre-planned action, had been kicked out. It was later revealed that several other JVP members had been placed inside the teach-in in acts of protests. As the protest continued outside, protestors who were inside the building and interrupted the talk in order to protest it were seen leaving one by one. Each of them wore a red t-shirt with the phrases “NOT IN OUR NAME” and “JEWS SAY STOP ARMING ISRAEL”.
Campus Safety officers, present both inside and outside the workshop, were noticed by several people taking photos of student activists outside the Dining Center, capturing their faces – though most were masked – and identifying their dress. In an interview with the Bi-College News, Dean McKnight noted that it is well within the rights of these officers to do so: “They are supposed to then upload those images and videos into a protected platform, remove them from their personal devices, and use them only for the purposes of identification. So that’s what was going on in that moment”. Students who protested the event from the inside are now facing disciplinary action for the violation of 3 policies; disrupting the ADL speakers, banging on windows from the outside and reportedly zip-tying the blinds in the room. According to Dean McKnight, this act constitutes as tempting with buildings in a way that creates unsafe conditions. Mcknight continued to say “Obviously, it’s not something that I or Campus Safety want to engage in on a regular basis. It depends upon the nature of what’s happening, again, because of those three policy violations I mentioned earlier, identification was necessary.”
Several students who have spoken with the Bi-Co News, but wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, have questioned how the removal of these pictures and videos from officers’ phones is ensured; are devices checked? McKnight mentioned speaking with a student about this very topic within the last week. Officers’ devices are not checked systematically, though he outlined how the system makes it easy for those files to be immediately deleted from personal devices. “I do think the matter should be taken up by the Campus Safety Advisory Committee that has students present on it,” he said. “There are other models at other institutions about when campus safety officers can record and so it’s an ongoing — even though there is an established kind of practice right now, it is an ongoing conversation about the best way to responsibly handle that authority that they have.”
Another protestor, who also requested anonymity for fear of potential backlash, stated that the ADL “conflates anti-zionism with anti-semitism in a way that is very dangerous to Jewish students like myself who are extremely critical of the state of Israel and the ongoing genocide in Gaza”. The student went on to note that they have experienced acts of anti-semitism which have “all come from people calling me a fake Jew for speaking out against the state of Israel.” In terms of the organization process, this student mentioned that JVP had “folks on the inside who are making attendees aware of the harmful practices of the ADL.”
Several members of faculty and staff were present and observing but entirely un-involved in the protest. Though faculty declined comment on the event, numerous community members who were seen filming and recording students, expressed their dissatisfaction for the protest.
Marina Spitkovskaya told the Bi-Co news that the protest reminded her of “people outside of abortion clinics, shaming women trying to access services… it is trying to intimidate people who are seeking information or knowledge.” Two Haverford alums were also present, alongside their daughter, Lily Ruth Mannary, who told the Bi-Co News “My point is, Jews, since forever, have been accused of trying to dismantle the white Christian structures. Jews are always having to defend against charges… to have this on campus is almost comical. The ADL cannot be both pro-immigration and training ICE on Thursday”. Mannary is referring to one of the chants throughout the protest that stated “ADL trains ICE, our communities pay the price”. In their letter to the administration, JVP cited Ebony Magazine to support this claim. Ebony magazine’s article stated that in April 2011, National Counter-Terrorism Seminar was sponsored by the ADL. In a press release about the event, the ADL stated that Israel’s counter terrorism experts “shared knowledge and lessons learned” with American law enforcement.
An organizer of the demonstration, who requested to stay anonymous for fear of potential backlash, sat down with the Bi-Co News to discuss the event. When asked about ideas of finding common ground on opposite sides of the political spectrum, he stated “the way that change happens [is] through talking to people… I think it’s always very important to talk and to leave a space open for that. That’s how people change sides or go from… supporting the status quo to supporting something different. I question whether that kind of empathetic dialogue can happen on the level of people acting through an office of an organisation…I mean apply it to other things… I’m not convinced that the way to solve police brutality is to have people who have been brutalised by the police talk to the police about how it sucks to be brutalised by the police”. He went on to state that attempts at finding common ground through dialogue between “the two sides” in actuality diminishes the movements. “It cements…this mythological presumption that there are only two sides and the answer is somewhere in between… There are more than two sides here. For example, the Palestinian side and the JVP side, while aligned on a lot of things, are different because a lot of the JVP folks don’t live in Palestine and have, therefore, different interests… So if you put JVP and the ADL in a room together to talk, what you’re saying is ‘this is a Jewish issue, not a Palestinian issue’ or at least ‘this is an issue that Palestinians don’t have 100% self determination on’”.
