Education · Philadelphia, PA Metro · August 11, 2026
Haverford College Settles Antisemitism Complaint, Terms Not Disclosed
What Alinsky tactic is being used
3 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 4
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
The whole case turns on holding Haverford to its own written commitments. The Education Department's August 2025 press release faults the college for contravening "its own anti-discrimination policies," and the settlement's fruit is internal rulemaking: a revised Honor Code, an Antisemitism Committee reporting annually to the Board of Managers, annual antisemitism awareness training, and the Civil Rights Director given exclusive jurisdiction over Title VI antisemitism claims. The tactic worked because the gap was real — reported responses like telling students to be "brave" or blaming torn posters on the wind sat badly against the stated policy.
Counter-Rule 4 · Radical Integrity
Close the gap between stated values and actual practice before anyone else finds it. This tactic only works where the gap is real.
This month, pull your own institution's or church's nondiscrimination and bias-reporting policy and read it start to finish, noting the effective date and the promised response deadline. Then check whether it is actually run: ask the responsible officer, in writing, how many reports came in last year, how many got a written acknowledgment, and how many were closed within the stated timeline. Where the practice does not match the paper, say so to your board before an outside party finds it.
Rule 8
“Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions.”
Pressure on Haverford came in a sequence of different forms rather than one long push: suit filed May 2024, dismissed in early 2025 with leave to refile, President Raymond before the House Education and Workforce Committee on May 7, 2025, Chairman Walberg's July 2025 demand for disciplinary data, an Education Department directed Title VI investigation opened in August 2025, then the August 7, 2026 settlement and a Wall Street Journal editorial. Court, Congress, agency and press each opened a new front as the previous one cooled.
Counter-Rule 8 · Institutional Resilience
Decide in advance, in writing, what the institution will and will not concede — so exhaustion cannot make the decision for it.
Ask your board, session or trustees to put in writing — before the next demand arrives — which commitments are fixed and which are genuinely open to negotiation, and have it minuted with a date. Keep a dated log of every letter, subpoena, records request and press inquiry alongside what was conceded in reply, so the pattern is visible. Decisions made at 11 p.m. by an exhausted committee are the ones later regretted.
Rule 13
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
One person was picked out and frozen. Walberg's public statement named Raymond as the only president at the hearing who failed to supply numbers of students and faculty disciplined, and the Inquirer's coverage framed her as taking the worst of the grilling; a named faculty member was likewise singled out in the complaint over recommendation letters. On the other side of the same campus, individual Jewish students were the ones left isolated after October 7, 2023.
Counter-Rule 13 · Radical Solidarity
Stand publicly with whoever has been singled out. Isolation is the whole mechanism; refusing it disarms the tactic.
Refuse the isolation in both directions. If Jewish or Israeli students at your campus or in your congregation are being avoided, show up by name — attend an event, sign a letter, sit with them. And when a specific professor or administrator is being passed around online, do not forward it until you have read the actual filing or the actual transcript; ask for the document, and say plainly that you will not repeat a charge you cannot source.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
Know where you stand
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