Haverford College President Wendy Raymond expressed heartbreak and fury following the arrest of religion professor Guangtian Ha on charges of online harassment and intimidation, which included antisemitic threats.
"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 Tuesday in a message to the college community.
Ha, who was on sabbatical and not teaching this academic year, has been placed on administrative leave and barred from campus while the legal proceedings unfold. A college representative has been in contact with the individuals targeted by the online attacks.
According to the indictment filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Ha allegedly used at least four anonymous social media accounts to send approximately 50 harassing messages to an unnamed victim between October 9, 2025, and May 20, 2026. The professor is also accused of using virtual private networks to obscure his internet protocol address and make tracing the messages more difficult.
Prosecutors allege that Ha sent messages such as "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 indictment further states that Ha allegedly sent the victim's home address and included comments like, "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."
Ha also allegedly responded to a post about the assassination of Iranian terror leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by 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 claims Ha posted about the victim's minor son, writing that "the Jewish state will stop existing, whether you like it or not." He is also accused of writing, "we know Jews are blood-sucking demons" and "soon we are going to make sure you have no place to hide, fat rat." He allegedly used a shorthand for "heil Hitler" and wrote, "give it another 10 years, and you shall see a true Holocaust."
Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director of the Deborah Project, commented on the charges, stating that the FBI's action "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."
Marcus added that Ha "threatened ‘Zionists’ on his social media for several years," as detailed in the Deborah Project's civil rights complaint. "Those threats and its speaker were coddled and condoned, and so it escalated," she said. "This morning’s action by the FBI was taken because moral clarity had been erased and replaced with immoral depravity."