“Disgusting,” “inappropriate,” and “frightening” is how a Jewish student describes an anti-Israel protest at a Rutgers University town hall event with the university president on Thursday, after a mob of anti-Israel demonstrators took over the event, forcing Jewish students who feared for their safety to leave through emergency exits. 

The event unfolded as the university is being investigated by a congressional committee for “its failure to protect Jewish students” and for its administrators contributing to “the development of a pervasive climate of antisemitism.”

In video footage flagged by an author, Bethany Mandel, and viewed by the Sun, the university’s president, Jonathan Holloway, can be seen trying to answer questions during a Rutgers University Student Assembly event on Thursday night as he is repeatedly interrupted by student protesters screaming “coward” at him. When he doubled down on the fact that Rutgers would not cut off its research partnership with Tel Aviv University, students booed and shut down the remainder of the event. Mr. Holloway left the stage and was escorted out through an emergency exit.

“What unfolded was absolute chaos,” a Jewish sophomore at Rutgers who attended the event, Joe Gindi, tells the Sun. “It was disgusting. It was unacceptable, and it is a poor representation of what Rutgers students should stand for.”

Mr. Gindi recently testified to the Committee on Education and the Workforce about “Jew-hatred” that “has become rampant,” as he detailed a lengthy list of antisemitic incidents — many allowed or encouraged by the school’s administration — over the past several months. 

“The past couple of months have been tough,” he says. “Things have not been easy at Rutgers since October.”

The town hall event follows a contentious student body vote last week on two referenda — one on if the Student Assembly should advocate for the divestment of university funds from companies that do business with Israel, and one that asked if the Student Assembly should advocate for the school to cut off its research relationship with Tel Aviv University. 

Mr. Holloway sent an email to students after the vote clarifying his position, in which he said the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement is “wrong” and defended the school’s relationship with Tel Aviv University. 

Ahead of Thursday’s town hall, several anti-Israel campus groups amplified the event on social media. They encouraged students to attend and ask questions of Mr. Holloway such as, “How do you sleep at night knowing that you contribute student funds to a military that has killed over 13,000 children?” and, “Why do you value a deal with TAU more than the safety of Palestinians/comfort of Palestinian students at Rutgers?”

Once at the event, they screamed a slew of anti-Israel chants, including “Holloway’s a Zionist,” “All Zionists are racist,” “Divest now,” and “Israel’s an apartheid state, stop the killing, stop the hate.” At one point they shouted, “Holloway you can’t hide, you’re supporting genocide,” and, “Say it loud say it clear, we don’t want Zionists here.” 

Mr. Gindi says he went to the town hall to hear more from the president following last week’s contentious student body votes. 

“No Jewish students came to protest, no flags were brought, no chants were shouted by any Jewish students whatsoever. We were there to be respectful and to hear a town hall,” he says. 

On the protesters’ part, though, it was “very much an organized attack,” he says, with coordinated groups and a leader calling out the chants. 

“This is very much, I believe, a pervasive minority. It’s a minority that’s making Jewish students and Jewish faculty and just Jews in general at Rutgers feel unsafe and afraid,” he says, adding that Thursday night’s meeting was “frightening” and he was “afraid to be in that room” at some points. 

Both Mr. Holloway and the group of Jewish students exited through the emergency doors in the back, he says, avoiding the screaming mob of protesters.

“I refused to exit through the back doors,” Mr. Gindi says. “I’m not going to let the past horrors of my ancestors be repeated, and so I proudly walked out through the front door alone.” 

Although Mr. Gindi says he is thankful that Mr. Holloway is “sticking to his guns” when it comes to problems with the BDS movement and defending Tel Aviv University, he says it’s upsetting that the town hall was “dictated by the mob.” 

“No group should be forced to have to exit through emergency exits during a university town hall discussion,” he says. “This isn’t acceptable for any group — Jewish, Black, Arab, Palestinian — no group should be treated this way.”

A Rutgers representative tells the Sun that the students “disrupted” the town hall and said Student Assembly leaders ended the meeting. “President Holloway, with his driver who is a Rutgers University police officer, and other attendees left the meeting without incident,” the representative says.

Thursday’s town hall is the latest in a series of antisemitic events and instances that have unfolded at the university. Last week, Rutgers students supporting the anti-Israel referendum plastered pictures of a Jewish student, Rivka Schafer, on flyers and hung them around campus — even targeting the student’s own dorm. 

The Jewish student’s attorney, Cory Rothbort, tells the Sun that upon seeing the posters, Rivka was “shocked” and “scared.”

“The message right then and there was very clear: ‘don’t support Israel, we know where you sleep,’” Mr. Rothbort says. For months, he adds, Rutgers has had a “general climate on campus that just was not favorable to Jewish students, very hostile to Jewish students.”