Cornell University canceled Friday classes after New York State Police arrested a 21-year-old junior at the school who is alleged to have posted threats of murder and rape against Jewish classmates on an anonymous online message board.
Friday lectures would be suspended for a “community day,” in which students and faculty would be encouraged to focus on mental health and relaxation. The administration deemed the day off appropriate after “the extraordinary stress of the past few weeks,” marked by multiple antisemitic incidents affecting Cornell, a university spokesperson told the New York Post.
Police took Patrick Dai into custody Tuesday after his violent posts, which appeared on the GreekRank forum — a discussion page centered around fraternity and sorority life — were discovered. His messages included threats of murder and rape against Jewish students at Cornell and specifically named the address of Cornell’s Center for Jewish Living, which houses Jewish students and sits next to the university’s kosher dining hall.
Dai admitted in an interview with FBI agents that he authored the threats, according to a federal complaint. His statements included: “if i see another synagogue another rally for the zionist globalist genocidal apartheid dictatorial entity known as ‘israel’, i will bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pic jews.”
“If you see a jewish ‘person’ on campus follow them home and slit their throats. rats need to be exterminated from cornell,” wrote Dai in another message.
Dai was detained on a federal criminal complaint that charged him with threatening to kill or injure another individual using interstate communications, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New York said in a statement. If convicted, Dai could face a five-year prison sentence and a fine of up to $250,000.
“While we take some measure of relief in knowing that the alleged author of the vile antisemitic posts that threatened our Jewish community is in custody, it was disturbing to learn that he was a Cornell student,” Cornell President Martha E. Pollack said in a statement to the campus body on Wednesday.
That letter followed her Sunday statement condemning the online threats. Pollack announced that the Cornell University Police Department would be patrolling near the kosher dining hall and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been informed of a potential hate crime.
Cornell has been rocked by a swell of antisemitism since terrorist group Hamas invaded Israel, perpetrating the most brutal massacre against Jews since the Holocaust. Before Dai’s arrest, a Cornell history professor was caught at an off-campus protest telling attendees that Hamas’s attack on Israel was “energizing” and “exhilarating.” Following the backlash, associate professor Russell Rickford took a leave of absence.