Dear members of the Cornell community,

Earlier today, a series of horrendous, antisemitic messages threatening violence to our Jewish community and specifically naming 104 West — the home of the Center for Jewish Living — was posted on a website unaffiliated with Cornell. Law enforcement was immediately notified.

At this time, Cornell Police (CUPD) are on the scene and investigating. Police will continue to remain on site to ensure our students and community members are safe.

Cornell Police have also notified the FBI of a potential hate crime.

Threats of violence are absolutely intolerable, and we will work to ensure that the person or people who posted them are punished to the full extent of the law. Our immediate focus is on keeping the community safe; we will continue to prioritize that.

We will not tolerate antisemitism at Cornell. During my time as president, I have repeatedly denounced bigotry and hatred, both on and off our campus. The virulence and destructiveness of antisemitism is real and deeply impacting our Jewish students, faculty and staff, as well as the entire Cornell community. This incident highlights the need to combat the forces that are dividing us and driving us toward hate. This cannot be what defines us at Cornell.

All of our community deserves to feel safe at Cornell. If you become aware of any threats to your safety or to the safety of the community, please contact CUPD at 607-255-1111. We also encourage you to download the RAVE Guardian app, which will enable you to report any safety concerns to CUPD in real time.

In the days ahead, we will work to reinforce a culture of trust, respect and safety at Cornell. Regardless of your beliefs, backgrounds or perspectives, I urge all of you to come together with the empathy and support for each other that we so greatly need in this difficult time.

The Hamas massacre in Israel has revealed that the the DEI norms embraced by most American universities don't include protecting Jewish students from intimidation. Every day I hear new stories from friends about their college kids being threatened, ostracized, and bullied, because they object to the glorification of Hamas terrorists by other students. A good friend of mine, for example, has had to hire a civil rights attorney because other students in his daughter's program have taken to referring to her as "the little Jew bitch," and the program's administrators have not done anything about it.

At my own school, George Mason University president Gregory Washington has championed a variety of expensive, time-intensive, DEI measures. The goal, he wrote in an email to the university community in July 2023, is to ensure that "every student, faculty, and staff member is welcomed and respected as a full equal in this community of learning." He has, unfortunately, fallen far short of that lofty goal with regard to Jewish GMU students and faculty.

Just two days after Hamas's genocidal rampage in southern Israel, Mason Students for Justice in Palestine published a statement endorsing the actions of the Hamas terrorists, whom they described as "reclaiming land and seizing settlements considered illegal and a violation of international laws."

SJP then announced that it would be holding a rally on the university's main campus on October 12. In support of "the resistance," i.e., the perpetrators of the massacre, Hamas. SJP Mason also called for the destruction of the State of Israel, the "liberation of our homeland and our people, from the river to the sea. Show up and show out for Palestine, and let GMU know that we will rise against the occupation!" Moreover, SJP Mason suggested that students bring "face coverings or kuffiyehs" to hide their identities.

In short, SJP Mason was proudly organizing a pro-genocide rally, and, like other racist and antisemitic hate groups such as the KKK, sought to mask themselves. I, and I'm sure many others, urged President Washington and other university officials to make a statement condemning a recognized student group being poised to endorse genocidal terrorism, and expressing a commitment to protecting Jewish students' safety. I did not get any responses to my emails, nor did any university official say anything about the rally. Meanwhile, I understand that many Jewish Mason students were too frightened to be on campus during the masked hate-fest.

As of this writing, the only official GMU mention of the pro-genocide rally was an oblique reference in an October 17 email from President Washington, alluding in a morally neutral tone to a "quite visible [gathering], in the middle of the Fairfax Campus, in the middle of a day of classes."

President Washington hid behind the First Amendment in the email, noting that he may not quash student protests. That's true, with two caveats. First, masking at a protest is illegal in Virginia, and the university police have not been enforcing the law despite being alerted to it and urged to enforce it. Second, nothing in the First Amendment prevents Washington from condemning the rally.

I'm in favor of universities following the famous Kalven Report, which recommends that university leaders should rarely if ever opine on controversial matters, including publicly expressed opinions on hot-button issues by faculty and students. But such a policy must be consistently applied, and Kalven has not been George Mason University policy under President Washington. It has been ignored especially when it comes to DEI issues, and in particular when it comes to promoting an inclusive climate on campus.

Washington's silence about a pro-genocide rally on his own campus is in marked contrast to, among other examples, his multiple campus-wide emails in the wake the killing of George Floyd, and launched a flurry of initiatives to overhaul university policy to extirpate "racist vestiges" and "racial inequities." A mandatory DEI training at GMU calls discrimination a form of "violence" – and we can now see that those who call words violence, have no words for violence.

On October 18, sixteen Law School professors sent a letter to President Washington, asking that the university administration reconsider its silence on SJP hate rallies on campus. We have not received a response, or even an acknowledgement.

It seems that when it comes to DEI at GMU, Jews don't count.

Hackers have compiled a giant apparent list of people with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry after taking that information from the genetic testing service 23andMe, which is now being shared on the internet.

A database that has been shared on dark web forums and viewed by NBC News has a list of 999,999 people who allegedly have used the service. It includes their first and last name, sex, and 23andMe’s evaluation of where their ancestors came from. The database is titled “ashkenazi DNA Data of Celebrities,” though most of the people on it aren’t famous, and it appears to have been sorted to only include people with Ashkenazi heritage.

NBC News was able to verify the data of two 23andMe users in the breach as authentic.

“Crazy, this could be used by Nazis,” one person who appears in the database said.

The company is still investigating the incident, but is treating the leak as authentic. In an emailed statement, a 23andMe spokesperson said the company believes it wasn’t hacked per se. Instead, it believes that the hackers simply gained some users’ passwords that had been hacked and leaked from other sites, then exploited the fact that 23andMe can give users vast access to each others’ genetic information....

... The genetic testing company 23andMe confirmed on Friday that data from a subset of its users has been compromised. The company said its systems were not breached and that attackers gathered the data by guessing the login credentials of a group of users and then scraping more people’s information from a feature known as DNA Relatives. Users opt into sharing their information through DNA Relatives for others to see.

Hackers posted an initial data sample on the platform BreachForums earlier this week, claiming that it contained 1 million data points exclusively about Ashkenazi Jews. There also seem to be hundreds of thousands of users of Chinese descent impacted by the leak. On Wednesday, the actor began selling what it claims are 23andMe profiles for between $1 and $10 per account, depending on the scale of the purchase.

The data includes things like a display name, sex, birth year, and some details about genetic ancestry results, like that someone is, say, of “broadly European” or “broadly Arabian” descent. It may also include some more specific geographic ancestry information. The information does not appear to include actual, raw genetic data.

...

Since news of the hack, many customers have expressed worries their ethnicity and other sensitive information could be used against them if leaked. A U.S. lawmaker last week sought more detail on the leaks.

Several users on social media on Tuesday said they got the email, but it was unclear how many customers had been informed. 23andMe spokeswoman Katie Watson declined to comment, citing its ongoing probe, and referred to the blog where the company said on Oct. 20 that it was temporarily disabling features in the “DNA Relatives” to protect user privacy.

Earlier, the company had said hackers may have used credentials leaked from other websites to breach 23andMe accounts – a technique known as ‘credential stuffing’. It advised users change their login information and enable two-factor authentication to prevent compromise....

An Indiana woman, whom cops described as a “terrorist,” has been arrested after she allegedly plowed her car into what she thought was a Jewish school.

Ruba Almaghtheh, 34, allegedly backed her vehicle into a building associated with Black Hebrew Israelites in Indianapolis late Friday while several adults and children were inside, Fox 59 reported.

The driver copped to targeting the building, which houses the Israelite School of Universal and Practical Knowledge, because she was allegedly offended by a “Hebrew Israelite” symbol out front, according to a police report.

Ruba Almaghtheh, 34, was arrested for allegedly driving her car into what she thought was a Jewish school in Indianapolis on Friday night, police said. IMPD

“Yes. I did it on purpose,” Almaghtheh allegedly said in the wake of her arrest.

She repeatedly described the building as the “Israel school,” cops said, adding that the driver also made a reference to “her people back in Palestine.”

The Israelite School of Universal and Practical Knowledge, however, is a sect of the Black Hebrew Israelites, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Indianapolis said Safe Indiana, a Jewish community security program, is working with cops to probe the incident.

“Safety and security for our community is of the utmost importance, and we are more secure and prepared than ever before,” the federation said in a statement.

“Although a Jewish facility was not targeted, solely due to ironic misidentification, this is yet another reminder to maintain security protocols, remain vigilant of suspicious activity and to (report promptly) to the appropriate authorities.”

Police called Almaghtheh a “terrorist” and said she was arrested on a preliminary charge of criminal recklessness. She will make an initial court appearance on Wednesday.