The Professors Who Supported the Student Deportation Frenzy

 

GoFundMe donations, social media posts, and board memberships reveal how a handful of faculty members are backing Zionist doxxing outfits.

In March 2024, Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus (DJHC) emerged on Instagram and X as another node in a network of organizations decrying pro-Palestine faculty and students at Columbia University. The group slowly grew to focus on what it called other “participating schools”—such as CUNY, which it called a “hotbed of antisemitism.” Like its fellow Zionist doxxing outfits Betar and Canary Mission, its preferred solution was student deportation. On Election Day, DJHC posted a clip of Trump promising to deport “jihad-sympathizers and America-hating radicals,” and wrote “We have the receipts!” It announced on social media that it had names of students, once tagging Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Throughout November and into December, the DJHC account continued celebrating the prospect of student deportations. And on December 5, a couple months before such deportations began in earnest, Jeffrey Lax—chair of the business department at Kingsborough College at the City University of New York (CUNY)—joined the advisory board of DJHC. S.A.F.E. Campus, an organization that Lax had founded in 2023, was already serving as DJHC’s fiscal sponsor, which allowed the newer group to receive tax-exempt donations.

Lax is one of a small but active cohort of professors on American campuses vocally supporting groups pushing student deportations, even as the detention of students on visas and green cards has stoked anxieties in many university communities. A longtime pro-Israel activist at CUNY and a frequent contributor to right-wing media, Lax has initiated repeated lawsuits against colleagues, his union, and the university for alleged discrimination from pro-Palestine members of the campus community. Now, Lax appears to be reprising this role in groups like DJHC, continuing to champion the administration’s targeting of noncitizen student activists.

Last week, when CUNY’s Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez was interrogated by House Republicans over alleged antisemitism at the university system, lawmakers referenced many of the same incidents Lax’s groups had focused on over the last year. Lax himself was in attendance. “ I am so proud to have been involved in the process that led to this day,” he wrote on X.  (more..)

The Professors Who Supported the Student Deportation Frenzy