Lenny Steinberg, executive director of the Oregon Hillel Foundation, was outraged and disgusted when he first learned that posters with his face and the words “enemy of the people” were appearing on the University of Oregon campus.
The posters also said that he supports “the ongoing genocide in Palestine” and that Hillel should be removed from campus, he told JNS.
“There was a huge level of, like, I saw this coming, and that’s absolutely absurd in and of itself,” he said. “This is my face being plastered in places and falsely accusing me of things I don’t actually support, and this is really truly affecting my staff, our students, our parents.”
Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. Val Hoyle (D-Ore.) stated on Sunday that “we should all unequivocally condemn the antisemitic targeting of Oregon Hillel and its executive director on the University of Oregon campus.”
“Targeting Hillel and its leadership with this hateful rhetoric is a blatant effort to intimidate and demonize a Jewish organization and the Jewish students it represents,” the lawmakers stated.
Karl Scholz, president of the public university, which is based in Eugene, stated in a campuswide message that “while we do not know if the flyers were posted by someone affiliated with our university, this type of language on our campus—language that targets based on religious and ethnic identity—is reprehensible.”
The flyers “promoted isolation and fear, and fear erodes the foundation of our community,” he wrote. “Antisemitism, violence and threats have no place here.”
Steinberg told JNS that he has “buckled up and gotten things done for my community,” but there have also been moments when he “sat down and cried with my wife and my dog.”
It’s hard not to think, “Why me? Why is this happening? How is this 2026?” he said.
And it is “heartbreaking,” he said, that the posters showed up the same week that the Hillel’s sukkah was stolen.
“To have to send my community two messages of, ‘Hey, this happened and guess what, now this happened,’ I don’t want to be sending these messages,” he told JNS. “I want to be promoting Jewish joy and having smiling students go on hikes and sing prayers with us and be in the sukkah.”
“It’s not fair,” he said.
Steinberg said that he and his family are finding a balance between making sure they’re safe “without feeding too heavily into being so over the top and scared.”
He told JNS that he talked to university officials, university police and the Eugene Police Department. He spoke with the latter about having a community risk assessment officer come to his home and “make sure that we are doing the right things and have the right cameras,” he said.
“Got to be prepared for the worst and hope for the best,” Steinberg told JNS.
Posters with his face appeared right below materials promoting an “al-Aqsa flood demonstration” on Wednesday evening a few blocks from the Hillel building on campus, he said.
The Hillel building generally has security when it hosts Shabbat or other events, he told JNS.
“Right now, we have security at the building from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every single day this week,” he said. “It’s not easy to say to our students, ‘Hey, come to Hillel, but now we have almost round-the-clock security.’ It’s not fair to them, and it’s not fair to anybody else, and we have to do what we know is right for our community.”
Over the past 48 hours, Steinberg has received “messages of love and support” from people all over the world, he told JNS.
“It’s been wildly beautiful, and it’s overwhelming,” he said.
