An enraged crowd near Harvard University hurled expletives – and a brick – at a “doxxing truck” circling the campus Friday morning to expose students who allegedly signed a letter blaming Israel for last weekend’s Hamas attack, The Post has learned.
Adam Guillette – the president of the nonprofit news watchdog Accuracy in Media that deployed the vehicle – said the rowdy mob blocked the female driver of the digital billboard-bearing box truck and began “banging on the windows, shouting things at the driver.”
“Once you get out of that truck I’m going to kick your f–king ass!’” one person allegedly yelled at the driver, Guillette exclusively told The Post.
The next thing the driver heard was a brick hitting the vehicle as a security guard hired by Guillette rushed to the back of the truck.
The guard found “a young white male in a hoodie (who)… put down the brick and ran,” said Guillette, adding it was the second-straight day the truck was vandalized.
It’s unclear if the culprit was a student at the Ivy League school, which has come under fire for allowing antisemitism to fester in its hallowed halls in Cambridge, Mass.
Guillette also didn’t know whether those blocking the truck were students.
Friday’s incident left damaged a portion of the digital screen – which flashed the names and faces of members of the more than 30 student organizations that co-signed a statement by the school’s Palestine Solidarity Committee – was damaged.
Representatives for Harvard did not immediately respond to noti.group’s request for comment.
The truck driver, whom Guillette described as a young woman from Kentucky, filed a police report with the Cambridge Police Department.
“The big irony in all of this to me is … all of these people who don’t like Israel were talking about how our truck was going to incite violence. The only instance of violence was from their side — not from us,” Guillette said.
The truck was defaced Thursday, Guillette said, when someone used red spray-paint to cross out the website HarvardHatesJews.com advertised on its side that encourages users to send an email to members of Harvard’s board of trustees.
“Tell them to take action against these despicable, hateful students,” the website says.
The site also offers a pre-written message to send the board: “As an overseer at Harvard, you have a moral obligation to take a stand against the antisemites on campus who issued a statement in support of Hamas,” and urges these high-ranking staffers to “expel these students and kick their organizations off campus immediately.”
He filed a police report for that incident as well.
As of Friday afternoon, he told The Post, he had yet to hear back.
When The Post tried to contact the Cambridge Police Department for comment, an automated voicemail said it closes at noon on Fridays.
Accuracy in Media deployed the truck on Wednesday, and the group has plans to take the vehicle for a spin “for the foreseeable future,” Guillette said.
The truck — with giant video screens hung on the sides and back displaying the words “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites” in gothic script — will be back Monday.
Guillette came to the campus from his home in Florida to interview students for Accuracy in Media’s campaign video.
“Most of them were against Israel. The loudest ones [students] were saying horrible, hateful and occasionally threatening things,” he said.
Though Guillette said a lot of what he experienced at Harvard was “perfectly opposite from what seems like the rest of civilization,” he still managed to come across pro-Israel supporters.
“It was more so adults, but we absolutely had people who were supportive. But when they did so, they would come up to us quietly and almost whisper in my ear polite words of encouragement because they were afraid of crazy radicals,” he explained.
Guillette said he had one scary encounter with a man who kept hounding him.
“There was one deranged and erratical [male] who didn’t seem fond of Israel, following me and the cameraman around for three hours.”
“Earlier in the day, he also tried to grab the camera out of the cameraman’s hands,” Guillette said.
And in the afternoon, after parking the truck on Massachusetts Avenue across from Harvard’s main entrance, Guillette and the cameraman “went inside a cafe to get a snack and a cup of coffee, and he followed us inside.”
“When I walked outside, he threw a cup of coffee at my head.”
Harvard president Claudine Gay has refused to reveal the names of students who signed the controversial letter after Hamas terrorists killed more than 1,200 in Israel.
Gay said the Ivy League school “embraces a commitment to free expression” in a video released Thursday night — her latest attempt to quell outrage from famous Harvard alumni including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman.
“That commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous,” Gay said.
“We do not punish or sanction people for expressing such views, but that is a far cry from endorsing them.”
Gay, who again condemned the “barbaric atrocities perpetrated by Hamas,” did not specifically mention the more than 34 student organizations that co-signed a statement Saturday by the school’s Palestine Solidarity Committee.
Accuracy in Media, meanwhile, has been updating a rolling list of Harvard student organizations and its members who continue to support “the letter and its inflammatory claims,” which the watchdog said it “independently confirmed,” though it’s unclear how.
Thirty-four student groups at Harvard signed the letter, though five of them have officially renounced their affiliation with the missive.
Amnesty International at Harvard, Harvard College Act on a Dream, the Harvard Undergraduate Nepali Student Association, the Harvard Islamic Society, and Harvard Undergraduate Ghungroo all withdrew their endorsements, according to campus newspaper the Harvard Crimson.
Danielle Mikaelian, a Harvard Law student who sits on the board of a group that co-signed the letter, said she resigned due to the “egregious” nature of the statement.
The student groups that initially signed the letters are African American Resistance Organization, Bengali Association of Students at Harvard College, Harvard Act on a Dream, Harvard Arab Medical and Dental Student Association, Harvard Chan Muslim Student Association, Harvard Chan Students for Health Equity and Justice in Palestine, Harvard College Pakistan Student Association, Harvard Divinity School Muslim Association, Harvard Middle Eastern and North African Law Student Association, Harvard Graduate School of Education Islamic Society, Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine, Harvard Islamic Society, Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine, Harvard Divinity School Students for Justice in Palestine, Harvard Jews for Liberation, Harvard Kennedy School Bangladesh Caucus, Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Caucus, Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Women’s Caucus, Harvard Kennedy School Palestine Caucus, Harvard Muslim Law School Association, Harvard Pakistan Forum, Harvard Prison Divest Coalition, Harvard South Asian Law Students Association, Harvard South Asians for Forward-Thinking Advocacy and Research, Harvard TPS Coalition, Harvard Undergraduate Arab Women’s Collective, Harvard Undergraduate Ghungroo, Harvard Undergraduate Muslim Women’s Medical Alliance, Harvard Undergraduate Nepali Students Association, Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, Middle East and North African Graduate School of Design Student Society, Neighbor Program Cambridge, Sikhs and Companions of Harvard Undergraduates, and Society of Arab Students.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
