Professor charged with threatening Jews while posing as right-wing extremist

Professor of religion hid behind multiple fake far-right handles online to spread antisemitic rhetoric and harass a Jewish family.

By David Rosenberg, World Israel News

A Pennsylvania college professor who previously called for Israel’s dismantlement has been arrested on federal cyberstalking charges after allegedly conducting a months-long campaign of antisemitic threats against a Jewish man and his family while hiding behind anonymous social media accounts designed to appear right-wing.

Guangtian Ha, an associate professor of religion at Haverford College, was arrested Tuesday following a federal indictment accusing him of sending approximately 50 threatening and harassing messages between October 2025 and May 2026.

The indictment, filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleges that Ha used at least four accounts on X, formerly Twitter, to target the unidentified victim, repeatedly threatening his family, invoking the Holocaust and publishing information about his home.

Several of the accounts bore names suggesting far-right political affiliations, including “America1st33509,” “America1stLM” and “Im_GoyimDL.”

Prosecutors say that Ha also used virtual private networks to conceal his online activities.

Among the messages attributed to him was a warning that Jews should be placed in “special camps and receive special treatments,” an apparent reference to Nazi concentration camps.

Another message declared, “Goyim are taking America back, blood-guzzling demons.”

In February, an account allegedly operated by Ha threatened to drive Jews out of Lower Merion, the Philadelphia suburb where the victim lived.

“Get the f*ck 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 message stated.

The alleged harassment extended beyond antisemitic insults to threats suggesting that the sender was monitoring the victim’s residence.

In October 2025, Ha allegedly posted a photograph of the man’s home mailbox, displaying his house number alongside an eyes emoji.

The victim and his family subsequently implemented additional security precautions, including efforts to conceal their home address online.

According to the indictment, Ha responded by explicitly referring to those precautions.

“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,” he allegedly wrote.

Other messages referenced the victim’s wife and young son, including one that warned him to watch his child.

In April, another account allegedly operated by the professor threatened the future of Jews in the United States.

“The end of American jews is close. Let’s start with the jews in Lower Merion,” the message said.

Ha faces one federal count of cyberstalking, carrying a maximum sentence of five years in prison if convicted.

The arrest has also renewed scrutiny of the professor’s history of anti-Israel activism and earlier complaints about his conduct at Haverford.

Ha was previously named in a lawsuit brought by Jewish students against the college, which accused the institution of failing to address antisemitism on campus.

The lawsuit cited statements he had made publicly attacking Zionism and advocating the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.

“The state of Israel must be dismantled and the society de-Nazified,” Ha wrote in one post cited in the complaint.

He also called for an arms embargo, sanctions and boycotts against Israel, declaring that “Zionism is Nazism, it is fascism. Zionists are racists.”

In another post, he argued that “Zionism is fundamentally a modern racist ideology that has next to nothing to do with Judaism as an ancient religion.”

Under his “America1stLM” account on X, Ha defended antisemitism while posing as a white supremacist.

“There is nothing wrong to be anti-Semitic. In fact, we should all be anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism is a must if we are to survive. Jews are must be expelled. Anti-Semitism is a matter of life and death for the White race.”

Ha was also a member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine and co-authored a 2024 article in the college’s student newspaper defending anti-Zionist activism.

In that article, he characterized Israel as a “genocidal, settler-colonial project” and condemned what he described as “Zionist witch hunts.”

According to the earlier lawsuit, Haverford administrators had been informed of his social media statements in September 2024, but the complaint alleged that they failed to take appropriate action.

The college reached a settlement with the Jewish plaintiffs in August 2026, although the terms were not publicly disclosed.

Following Ha’s arrest, Haverford President Wendy Raymond announced that the professor, who was on sabbatical and not teaching during the current academic year, had been placed on administrative leave and prohibited from entering the campus.

“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 said in a statement Tuesday.

She confirmed that college representatives had contacted those targeted by the alleged harassment and thanked the FBI, local police and campus security for their involvement in the investigation.

“I am heartbroken and furious at the possibility that an individual within our community would seek to inflict such pain on another,” she added.

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