Rutgers University President Announces Departure Following Backlash Over Handling Anti-Jewish Campus Protests

Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway. Image: Credit Rutgers University

Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway has announced he will step down from his position at the end of the 2024–2025 school year.

Holloway has been under fire for how he and the university have handled radical pro-Hamas, anti-Jewish protests on campus following the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel.

In April, during a town hall event discussing BDS (boycott, divest, and sanction) referendums, the event was disrupted by a group of “out of control” pro-Palestinian protesters shrieking anti-Israel slogans like “one solution, intifada revolution.”

The meeting ended early, and Jewish students were ushered out by police. According to one student who spoke with Fox News Digital, “Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway and administrators ‘ran away,’ ‘leaving behind the Jewish/pro-Israel students to deal with an unruly and obviously antisemitic crowd, whose attention turned to the Jews after the administration left.’”

Jewish students, who had come to the town hall to discuss their safety on campus with officials, were abandoned by Holloway in a room full of radicals calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state.

In another incident, Rutgers University students from ‘Students for Justice in Palestine’ issued a set of demands to the school over its stance on the continuing conflict between Israel and Hamas while masked by Keffiyehs emulating Middle Eastern terrorists.

During a May demonstration, pro-Hamas agitators chanted the genocidal slogan, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!’

Holloway made the announcement in a statement on September 17:

In August, I informed Amy Towers, Chair of the Board of Governors, that the 2024-2025 academic year will be my final year as university president.

I will take a sabbatical the following year during which I will return to long-standing research projects before joining the faculty on a full-time basis.

This decision is my own and reflects my ruminations about how best to be of service.

U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC)  responded to Holloway’s announcement noting the president’s legacy would be one of “empowering antisemites and terrorist sympathizers.”

Per Fox News:

“If he resigned today, President Holloway’s legacy would be one of empowering antisemites and terrorist sympathizers,” Foxx wrote in a statement.

“He must use his final year at Rutgers doing everything in his power to change that, starting by closing the antisemitic, pro-terror Center for Security, Race, and Rights; enforcing the rules; and enacting policies to protect Jewish students and faculty.”

 

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