UPenn Alerts FBI After Jewish Staff Members Received ‘Disturbing’ Emails Threatening Violence

A file photo shows the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in Philadelphia. (Google Maps/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

The University of Pennsylvania called the FBI and conducted safety sweeps at campus facilities after several staff members received “vile, disturbing” anti-Semitic emails threatening violence.

In a letter sent on Monday afternoon, UPenn president Liz Magill told the campus community that the university is working with the FBI to investigate the threatening emails, which included “hateful language” targeting “the personal identities of the recipients.”

Although the safety sweeps at the two buildings specifically named in those emails found “no credible threat,” police officers will remain on site until further notice, said Ms. Magill. The campus police have also increased their presence throughout the Philadelphia campus.

“At a time when campuses across the country are being targeted with these types of threats, my first and highest priority is the safety and security of our community,” Ms. Magill wrote, promising “swift and forceful action” against threats of violence.

“The perniciousness of antisemitic acts on our campus is causing deep hurt and fear for our Jewish students, faculty, and staff and shaking their sense of safety and belonging at Penn,” the UPenn president’s letter continued. “This is intolerable. I condemn personally these vicious and hateful antisemitic acts and words.”

One of the two buildings involved in Monday’s incident houses Penn Hillel, a Jewish organization at the university. A statement from Hillel said police searched the building multiple times, including with a bomb-sniffing dog.

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“All Jewish students deserve a learning environment that is safe and free from anti-Semitism and hate,” the group said. “At Penn Hillel, our doors are open for anyone who needs a safe space to process, find comfort and community with other Jewish students and staff, learn about the war in Israel, or just show up and be here.”

The other building is Lauder College House, a residential unit named after the Lauder family, which includes Ronald Lauder, a Wharton School graduate and president of the World Jewish Congress, an international network of Jewish communities and organizations.

A long-time donor to UPenn, Mr. Lauder last month announced that he had decided to close his checkbook, citing his frustration over the university’s support of the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, which featured speakers who had promoted anti-Semitic rhetoric and took place just weeks before the war between Israel and Hamas broke out.

“It was the biggest anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli pep rally ever held at Penn,” the Jewish billionaire said during a speech at a forum held by the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “When I pointed out to Penn’s president that this conference would tarnish Penn’s reputation, she refused to cancel it, citing freedom of speech.”

“Something has gone very wrong in our education system,” said Mr. Lauder. “Not long ago, the hatred of Israel in academia was confined to a few far-left socialist professors... But this upside-down logic now is spread everywhere, and almost every college president and administrator is afraid to stand up and condemn it.”

Congress Members Criticize UPenn’s Response to Israel-Hamas War

The UPenn leadership’s reluctance to take a stance amid the Israel-Hamas war is also drawing criticism from lawmakers. Earlier this month, more than two dozen members of Congress wrote to Ms. Magill, saying that they were “disappointed” by her initial silence in condemning Hamas.

“Silence, in this case, is resounding applause for the acceptance of evil,” the Nov. 1 letter read.

A total of 26 legislators, led by Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), signed the letter. The lack of a “prompt and unequivocal condemnation” of Hamas’ terrorism, they said, raises “serious concerns about the institution’s moral compass.”

The Republicans also took issue with the Palestine Writes Literature Festival. Among the festival’s speakers were Roger Waters, a Pink Floyd co-founder notorious for performing in a costume resembling a Nazi uniform; and Marc Lamont Hill, a former CNN commentator fired after he gave a speech calling for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea,” a chant many see as equivalent to a genocidal call of the removal of Jews from what is now Israel.

The event’s primary organizer herself, self-described “exiled Palestinian” Susan Abulhawa, has a track record of controversial remarks, including a Twitter post this January saying that she “take[s] comfort in knowing without a doubt” that the “colonial apartheid state” of Israel will eventually be “wiped off the map.”

More recently, Ms. Abulhawa wrote in the pro-Palestinian online magazine The Electronic Intifada, praising “brave Palestinian fighters” who “overtook Israeli colonies built on their ancestral villages, seeing their stolen lands for the first time in their lives” in what she called a “spectacular moment that shocked the world.”

The letter comes the same day Ms. Magill announced a university-wide “action plan” to combat anti-Semitism. As part of the plan, police officers will conduct a review of existing safety and security for religious life centers in and around campus, including those serving Christians and Muslims.

There will be a task force on anti-Semitism, constituting a student advisory group focused on the Jewish student experience and partnering with organizations such as the American Jewish Committee, according to the university.