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Additional reporting by Sara Jin Li
When Molly* first heard that a truck was driving around her campus showing the faces and names of her friends and calling them “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites,” she felt a flood of emotion: fear, disgust, devastation. She watched as her friends appeared, one by one, on a large digital screen on the side of the truck, and she knew it was just a matter of time until her face was there too.
“In a sense, there was almost like a twisted relief when I finally heard that I was on the face of the truck because at least I knew what the threat was,” she tells Teen Vogue about the time she spent wondering whether she’d eventually appear on the screen. Molly, an Arab Muslim Harvard undergraduate student, wraps herself in a pashmina while speaking in an empty Harvard classroom; she has asked that her real name be withheld for safety reasons.
Molly’s face and name have been displayed on the truck meant to expose Harvard students affiliated with 34 student groups who signed a letter blaming Israel for the October 7 attacks by Hamas, in which 1,400 Israelis — the majority of whom were civilians — were indiscriminately killed and kidnapped. Some student groups have since removed their support from the letter.
“Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum,” the letter read. “For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison. Israeli officials promise to ‘open the gates of hell,’ and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced…. The apartheid regime is the only one to blame.”
The letter, published the same day as the attacks, was quickly condemned by many. Backlash was swift, and not just restricted to the campus community: Prominent professors spoke out against the letter, major donors pulled their support from the university, some students in groups that signed on had job offers rescinded, and the doxxing began.
The billboard truck, sponsored by conservative watchdog group Accuracy in Media, showed up on Harvard’s campus on October 11, flashing photos of students in the groups that had signed the letter. Their names and faces were posted online, websites started appearing under their names, and personal details were divulged. As a result, students say they are facing harassment, their families have been targeted, and some feel deeply unsafe walking alone on campus.
“My mother has been reached out to numerous times because of this," Molly says. “The high school where my brother goes is listed online publicly, which obviously puts him in danger too. This has, I think, very much gone far beyond backlash.”
The truck arrived on campus as threats against Arab, Muslim, and Jewish people across the country rose in the wake of the Hamas attack; and division among Harvard students made many people feel unsafe on campus, even without the added stress of backlash from outside groups. Now some students are saying the administration hasn’t adequately supported them and has contributed to them feeling unsafe on campus.
Teen Vogue has reached out to Accuracy in Media for comment but, as of publishing time, has not heard back.
For those on the doxxing truck, the public exposure seems to be an effort to silence the voices of students on campus who support Palestine.
“I definitely have not felt safe…. on multiple levels,” Molly says of the last two weeks on campus. “I think, more than ever, I've been reminded again and again of what being Muslim means in the world, with what's going on in Gaza and Palestine; what it means in this country, with some of the Islamophobic attacks that have happened over the past couple of days; but also, what it means to be a marginalized person on this campus.”
The first faces to appear on the truck, according to Molly and Amy,* another heavily doxxed undergrad who requested that her name be withheld for safety, were mostly Black and brown students, some of whom Molly and Amy say are undocumented.
“It is not lost on us that there's an extreme level of anti-Blackness that has come with the doxxing,” says Prince Williams, a cofounder of Harvard African and African American Resistance Organization (AFRO). “And it's unfortunate, given that literally every corner of the Western tradition has two things in common: anti-Blackness and antisemitism. They're weaponizing… antisemitism against any critique of Israel, and what that does is undermine existing antisemitism.”
Tom,* a Jewish Harvard undergraduate who asked that his name be withheld because of safety concerns, says he also has not felt safe on campus over the last few weeks. While Harvard has seen student disagreement over Israel and Palestine in the past, he says, the current conflict has quickly “exposed a lot of antisemitism under the surface.”
“I think people have been extremely jarred by the rise and the opacity of the antisemitism,” Tom tells Teen Vogue. He says he’s seen antisemitic comments from fellow Harvard students on social media, and has heard from friends that they’ve seen the same.
In 2022, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recorded the highest number of antisemitic incidents since the organization began tracking them in 1979, marking a 36% increase over 2021. The last few years have seen multiple violent hate crimes targeting Jewish people, including the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, which killed 11 people. The ADL notes that Jewish people are, historically, the most targeted religious group in the country.
The truck, which calls all those featured on it antisemites, is dividing students, senior Jeremy Orenstein told local NPR affiliate WBUR. Orenstein, a member of Harvard Hillel, a Jewish group on campus, confronted Accuracy in Media president Adam Guillette in person, according to the report, saying, “I wish you could come back with a more constructive message, because this is dividing us in a terrible way…. The Harvard Hillel, the Jews of Harvard, asked you to leave. But you're still here!"
Representatives for Harvard Hillel were not available for an interview with Teen Vogue, but the organization sent a statement calling on the Harvard community to condemn antisemitism.
“We know firsthand that our campus community is safest and our students are best supported when leaders in university administration and student organizations speak out unequivocally against violent hate,” the statement read. “In our continued conversations with Harvard leadership, we will emphasize the need to forcefully condemn antisemitism and this heinous terrorist attack. As we do so, the needs of our students are top of mind.”
Harvard’s Hillel chapter has condemned both the doxxing truck and the letter that sparked it. A statement posted on the group’s website said, “We will continue to reject the [Palestinian Solidarity Committee’s] statement in the strongest terms — and demand accountability for those who signed it. But under no circumstances should that accountability extend to public intimidation of individuals. Such intimidation is counterproductive to the education that needs to take place on our campus at this difficult time.”
Says Williams, “We love life, and the accusations that we don't, and that we somehow are catering to an extremist narrative that doesn't care about the life of human beings, is absurd. The fact that we keep coming outside [to protest] is a testament to that.”
The Harvard Palestinian Solidarity Committee (PSC) issued a follow-up statement to the initial letter that sparked the doxxing, which read, “To state what should be clear: PSC staunchly opposes all violence against all innocent life and laments all human suffering.”
In terms of doxxing, Williams says he won’t be intimidated. He and fellow AFRO cofounders Amari Butler and Kojo Acheampong, whose names were on the truck, requested to use their names in this article specifically to illustrate that point. “They want us to be afraid, that's the intent,” Williams tells Teen Vogue. “It's motivated us to be even more empowered and… to advocate stronger, to stand up for people who feel like they can't be public because of these threats."
Williams continues, "So, they're feeding us. I think the truck is doing that, and we've seen more and more people come to our aid as they've tried to intensify these fear tactics. They're doing our work for us.”
According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, doxxing can make its victims vulnerable to online and in-person harassment, threats, and “pranks,” which can include dangerous ones like swatting. Doxxing can be considered a form of cyberbullying, per the digital well-being organization CyberSmile, and can threaten mental — and in some cases physical — health.
This isn’t the first time the doxxing truck has appeared on college campuses; it has targeted Berkeley School of Law students multiple times in the past, and is now driving through Columbia’s campus. Websites such as Canary Mission have been dedicated to “exposing” pro-Palestinian student activists for several years now.
Some students have been removed from the truck, but only if their group issued a retraction of support from the letter. This, Molly says, is essentially making students trade their beliefs for their safety. “That's very much pressuring students, where they have to choose between their safety, their community safety, their community's resources, even their family safety,” she explains. “For some of them, legal status and citizenship obviously play a role into that, versus continuing to be a voice of Palestine at a time when Palestine and Gaza need it now more than ever.”
Molly tells Teen Vogue that some students who wear hijab are afraid to walk on Harvard’s campus alone. Across the country, antisemitic and Islamophobic attacks are on the rise. On October 14, six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, a Palestinian American, was killed by his family's landlord in an alleged hate crime that was reportedly motivated by the war. The Department of Homeland Security recently warned that hate crimes against Muslims, Arabs, and Jews are increasing, and “targeted attacks” are expected to happen even more frequently as the war continues.
This seems to be true around the world. London police reported a 1,353% increase in antisemitic incidents and a 140% increase in Islamophobic offenses in October, compared with the same time last year, according to Reuters.
Some students have created a buddy system, Molly says, escorting one another to and from class for safety. These student-led support systems have been crucial, she adds.
It’s in this community that AFRO cofounder Butler finds safety. She references the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition’s letter of support for Harvard organizers, the growing crowds at pro-Palestinian protests on Harvard's campus and across the country, and the people on campus who have expressed support to her and other organizers.
“That, to me, is what safety looks like — knowing that we have the support of the people,” says Butler.
Acheampong echoes that: He says he’s seen nothing but support from his peers on campus, which means more to him than any institutional protections would. “Maybe in the beginning it was like, ‘Oh, wow, Harvard really isn't doing anything to protect us.’ But we never let that deter us in any way,” he recalls. “Then we understood, this is just how it is, this is just how it's going to be. [So] we don't look to them for safety, we look to us for safety. We look to the people actually in struggle for safety.”
Still, Amy and Molly feel Harvard hasn’t provided adequate support or resources for doxxed students. “I think it's just hard to feel safe when not just your face is on a truck, but also the faces of community members, of friends, of people you look up to," Molly says, "and most of all, of people who look like you.”
On October 25, the Harvard Crimson reported that Harvard has formed a task force to support doxxed students. “We are truly grateful for all the tremendous work that students have put forth in supporting each other through this most difficult time, and we appreciate the collaborative spirit in which students, faculty, and staff have come together to repel this repugnant assault on our community,” Dean of Students Thomas Dunne wrote in a statement to students, according to the Crimson.
But students wonder where that support was previously. While the Harvard administration is aware of the truck, the New York Times reported, there’s little they can do about it as it has stayed on public streets. In a video message, Harvard President Claudine Gay said the university “rejects the harassment or intimidation of individuals based on their beliefs.”
In another statement, Harvard Executive Vice President Meredith Weenick said the university “takes seriously the safety and well-being of every member of our community. We do not condone or ignore intimidation. We do not condone or ignore threats or acts of harassment or violence.”
Additionally, Harvard has closed the gates of Harvard Yard to non-students overnight, offered more frequent cross-campus transportation at night, and directed students toward cyber-safety guidelines.
Molly and Amy have called on the institution to provide online privacy resources, such as services that wipe private information from the internet free of charge; they say the school can also do more to connect students with legal services and help students navigate entering the workforce while being doxxed.
“I think the university has put the burden on heavily doxxed students to deal and help their communities deal with doxxing,” Molly says, “as opposed to stepping in and providing students with the resources they need.”
For Tom, though, seeing a doxxing task force makes him wonder where that same effort is for his community. “[There’s] no task force, no diversity committee on antisemitism,” he says. “The Harvard Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion website doesn’t have a [resources] section for Jews or what antisemitism is. Generally, there’s this big gap between people not realizing or not caring [that antisemitism is happening].”
Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar issued a statement on October 24 condemning both antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus, outlining plans to address both within that school. Harvard has referred Teen Vogue to its existing statements on recent events, as cited above.
Says Molly, comforting and attempting to aid her more vulnerable friends who have been doxxed, along with grieving the ongoing bombings in Gaza and coping with increasing racism and Islamophobia — all while being doxxed herself — is making it extremely difficult to continue her activism while doing the thing she’s at Harvard for: to be a student. “I haven't even had a single second to think about midterms because I’m worried about my friend's legal status in this country as a result of this doxxing,” she says. “Heavily doxxed students like myself, who've been dealing with this and have dealt with this first, are then kind of seen as the resources.”
Even more, Molly says, feeling that the university isn’t supporting her and her community enough sends a message about who seems to belong at Harvard. “I just don't think that the humanity of Gaza has been recognized the same way others’ humanity has been over the past week and a half,” she explains. “And that's definitely made students like myself [feel] like we don't belong here at Harvard.”
Israeli alumni have alleged that the university is failing its Jewish and Israeli students too. The Harvard Crimson reported that members of the Harvard Club of Israel wrote a letter saying they “expect better” from the university in both supporting Israel and protecting students.
On October, 13, The New Yorker reported that Harvard's President Gay appeared at a Shabbat celebration to send a message to the school’s Jewish community. “What I want to say is that Harvard has your back,” she stated. “We know the difference between right and wrong.”
Though Molly is afraid of the consequences of doxxing, she says, it won’t stop her from her activism and support for Palestine. “It's been really scary. But at the same time, I think of how scary it must be to be a child or even a 20-year-old in Gaza right now, and a lot of these fears kind of go away or pale in comparison.”
Molly continues, “It feels like the only thing that I have to contribute to the safety of Palestinians all over the world, not just in Palestine, is my voice. So I have to keep using it.”
*Indicates a pseudonym used for privacy.
