Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

Fifth-grade NYC teacher arrested for alleged online threats

Joshua Penn was charged with second-degree aggravated harassment and pleaded not guilty, reportedly.

Police car lights
Police car lights. Credit: tevenet/Pixabay.

A fifth-grade teacher at a Manhattan private school was arrested after allegedly posting online threats aimed at participants in an interfaith event at the City College of New York, prosecutors and law-enforcement sources said, according to the New York Post.

Joshua Penn, 39, of Corlears School, is accused of sending the message after a Nov. 13 event, during which a speaker singled out a “Zionist” attendee and urged Muslim students to walk out.

Penn reportedly admitted to police that he sent the messages. He was charged with second-degree aggravated harassment and pleaded not guilty, per the Post. His next court date is set for Jan. 15. Corlears School told Post that Penn is on administrative leave.

The U.S. Justice Department said the man moved Iranian nationals through Turkey and Mexico into the U.S., including one who admitted to working for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Talking to Michal Herzog at the President’s Conference in Jerusalem, the famous actress shares that being Israeli abroad has become “very complicated.”
“It’s both a Jewish story and an American story at the same time,” a curator at the Washington, D.C., museum told JNS of a series by Mitch Epstein.
The two met as the ceasefire has run up against Hamas’s refusal to disarm.
“Advancing religious freedom protects a fundamental human right that underpins a nation’s security, economic prosperity and stability,” said the chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Alyza Lewin, of Combat Antisemitism Movement, told JNS that the district attorney is “getting disqualified from prosecuting a case involving antisemitism” for recognizing modern Jew-hatred.