Wendy Raymond, president of Haverford College, said that she is “heartbroken and furious” that a member of the private, Pennsylvania liberal arts college community could be so hateful, after Guangtian Ha, a religion professor, was arrested and charged with online harassment and intimidation.
“I am deeply distressed by these allegations and want to state in the plainest of terms that any form of harassment or discrimination based on identity is unacceptable, antithetical to our values and has no place at Haverford,” Raymond stated on Tuesday.
The professor, “who was on sabbatical leave and not teaching this academic year, has been placed on administrative leave and barred from campus while the criminal process moves forward,” Raymond stated. “A representative of the college has been in contact with the individuals targeted by these heinous online attacks, which were antisemitic in nature.”
“I am heartbroken and furious at the possibility that an individual within our community would seek to inflict such pain on another,” she added. “This disturbing news is made even more harmful for many given its proximity to both the Jewish High Holidays and the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks.”
Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director of the Deborah Project, told JNS that “the charging by the FBI of Haverford College associate professor Guangtian Ha for harassment and intimidation of a Jewish Israeli professor closes the dotted line between verbal acts of harassment and actionable violence which, when Jews are the recipients, is far too often ignored or falsely clothed as ‘academic freedom’ by academic and other institutions.”
Ha “threatened ‘Zionists’ on his social media for several years, as the Deborah Project explained in our civil rights complaint,” she told JNS. “Those threats and its speaker were coddled and condoned, and so it escalated. This morning’s action by the FBI was taken because moral clarity had been erased and replaced with immoral depravity.”
According to the indictment in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Ha allegedly used at least four anonymous social media accounts to send about 50 harassing messages to an unnamed victim from Oct. 9, 2025, until May 20, 2026. The professor is also accused of having “frequently utilized virtual private networks to obfuscate his internet protocol address and make tracing the source of the messages more difficult.”
Among the messages he is accused of sending are “Jew, get the f*** out of my country,” “Jew pig, get the f*** out of Lower Merion” and “If Jews are so special, then they should also be placed in special camps and receive special treatments.” The professor also allegedly wrote to the victim and included a picture of the victim’s home mailbox and wrote, of Jews, “you scum have had it too easy. Goyim are taking American back, blood-guzzling demons.” On four other occasions, he also allegedly posted the victim’s address.
After the victim took security measures, including blurring his address on Google Maps, Ha allegedly wrote, “The Goyim have woken up, Jew. Run. Flee. Leave. Blurring your home on Google Map and installing a security camera next to your mailbox won’t help.”
The professor is also accused of responding to a post of the victim’s about the assassination of Iranian terror leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and writing, “Get the f*** out of my country, Jew. Go back to your Jew land. Don’t force us to kick you out. Lower Merion will be cleansed of the Jew filth.”
The indictment also alleges that Ha posted about the victim’s son, a minor, by name and wrote that “the Jewish state will stop existing, whether you like it or not.” He also is accused of writing that “we know Jews are blood-sucking demons” and that “soon we are going to make sure you have no place to hide, fat rat.” He also allegedly used a shorthand for “heil Hitler” and wrote “give it another 10 years, and you shall see a true Holocaust.”
