The Salon Jihadists of Sarah Lawrence College

Sarah Lawrence College has always been an academic figure of fun. It has long been known as the college especially favored by the ditzy daughters of deep-pocketed denizens of New York, fetching girls in leotards liable to major in ballet and basket-weaving and Buddhist thought and Benzedrine. It now takes male students as well; they make up 20% of the student body. The poet and critic Randall Jarrell — whose essay on Frost I remember reading with great pleasure, for it put me on to, in Jarrell’s words, Frost’s “immortal masterpiece” “Provide, Provide” — taught at Sarah Lawrence in the early 1950s. Having taken the school’s measure, the comical preening of its administrators and faculty who could be counted on to reflect the left-wing political Zeitgeist — Salon Bolsheviks the lot of them — he wrote about the school in his piercing and very funny Pictures From An Institution.

Those Salon Bolsheviks have now been replaced by Salon Jihadists, who sing the praises of Muslim murderers, especially those 6,000 Hamas operatives who smashed into Israel on October 7, 2023, and proceeded to rape, torture, mutilate, and murder 1,200 Israelis and kidnap another 251 who were taken back to Gaza. Several faculty members at Sarah Lawrence have praised those atrocities as a great event, an act of admirable resistance. They do not know that these Muslim fanatics they praise would, if given half a chance, force the female students and faculty at SLC to cover themselves in niqabs, and submit to belated clitoridectomies, and then they would shut down the school altogether, just the way the Taliban have just done in Afghanistan, banning girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade.

Now the anti-Israel animus, that swiftly turns into antisemitism — and the reverse is also true — has spread through the classrooms, lecture halls, and dormitories of Sarah Lawrence. More on the current situation can be found here: “Sarah Lawrence Has Allowed and Encouraged Antisemitism; I Would Not Send My Own Children There,” by Peter Reitzes, Algemeiner, February 14, 2025:

On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists invaded southern Israel and perpetrated the biggest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

On that same day — while these atrocities were occurring — Sarah Lawrence College (SLC) professor Suzanne Gardinier made 17 social media posts with the hashtag “#freepalestine.” In one of the posts, Gardinier appeared to celebrate the attack.

On Oct. 8, 2023, Emmaia Gelman — Sarah Lawrence professor and Director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism — made an Instagram post featuring a photo of Hamas invading Israel by breaking through a barrier fence with the accompanying comment, “Solidarity with those who break prison walls.”

You deserve to know a little more about Emmaia Gelman, who not only directs, but was the founder of the “Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism.” Here is what her very own website provides:

I research race/gender identity, knowledge production, and empire, with a focus on Cold War and neoconservative legacies. Irish-Jewish queer New Yorker, parent, organizer, collectivist, archives-dweller.

Bio:
Emmaia Gelman is a professor in Social Sciences at Sarah Lawrence College and the founding Director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, which examines the political and ideological work of Zionist institutions beyond their direct advocacy for Israel. Her research and writing investigate the history of ideas about race, queerness, safety, and rights, and their production as political levers in the realm of hate crimes policy, surveillance, anti-terror measures, and war. She is at work on a critical history of the Anti-Defamation League (1913-1990) as a Cold War neoconservative institution, as well as an edited volume of social justice movement writings and academic research on resistance to the ADL. She is the co-chair of the American Studies Association Caucus on Academic and Community Activism, and a longtime activist in New York City on Palestine, policing, antiracism, and queer issues….

“Palestine, policing, antiracism, and queer issues” — the Four Horsemen of Our Current Apocalypse — why, I couldn’t sum up our current descent into idiocy any better myself.

This week, on a Sarah Lawrence alumni social media page, a graduate of the college wrote, “May no Zionist, be they Christian, Jewish, or atheist (because all of these exist) be safe from harassment just as white men who espouse white supremacy should not be safe from harassment either.”

In the same social media thread, another graduate of the college shared: “i’m not a zionist but nevertheless.. when i was at SLC someone graffitied a swastika onto my dorm and i had fake eviction notices slipped under my door, just because i celebrated jewish holidays. people threatened me because i went to hillel. it’s tough out there even for jews who 1000% support Palestine [sic].”

In early 2025, the US Department of Education opened a Title VI antisemitism investigation into Sarah Lawrence in response to a complaint filed by Hillel accusing the college of fostering a hostile environment towards Jewish students.

I received a rigorous education at Sarah Lawrence and am proud of it. For decades, I recommended Sarah Lawrence to anyone who asked. Now, I would not send my own children to Sarah Lawrence.

The Salon Jihadists at Sarah Lawrence are running wild. They’ve painted anti-Israel pro-Hamas slogans on campus walls. They’ve drawn swastikas on the doors of rooms belonging to Jewish students. They’ve taken over the main administration building, daubing its walls with anti-Israel pro-Hamas sentiments, boarding up its windows, blocking its entrances. They described this takeover on social media as “answering Hamas’ call for an escalation.”

They — the Sarah Lawrence chapter of the Students For Justice In Palestine (SJP) — have harassed and threatened Jewish classmates physically. They have urged fellow students to boycott classes taught by “Zionist Jews.” On alumni social media pages threats have been made to all Zionists: “May no Zionist, be they Christian, Jewish, or atheist (because all of these exist) be safe from harassment.” They promised to provide funds to Gaza, which means to Hamas, and raised over their campus “encampment” the banner of Samidoun, a “sham charity” that fundraises for the PFLP, a designated terror organization. Faculty members said it was not Hamas, but the Israelis who carried out the killings on October 7.

Briana Martin, who is not a student, but the director of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) at Sarah Lawrence, called on students to ignore Jewish suffering on October 7, and instead to attend on October 9 an “Hour of Solidarity with Palestine,’ an event co-sponsored by SJP.”

Oh, there is so much more. Above you will find not “pictures,” but rather, “Snapshots From An Institution.” Randall Jarrell had a vivid imagination, but not in his most nightmarish moments could he ever have dreamed that Sarah Lawrence would end up like this. “Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington” was Noel Coward’s advice. “Don’t send your daughter to Sarah Lawrence” is mine.