Cornell shuts classes after arrest over antisemitic threats

Cornell University in the United States cancelled Friday classes due to “extraordinary stress” amid a junior being federally charged with making antisemitic threats, writes Emilie Ikeda, Marlene Lenthang and Daniella Silva for NBC News.

Instead, Friday 3 November was to serve as a “community day”, Provost Michael Kotlikoff and Christine Lovely, the vice president and chief human resources officer, said in an email to students and staff, school paper The Cornell Daily Sun reported. It comes after officials at the Ithaca, New York, university said antisemitic “threats of violence” appeared online over the weekend – the latest in a series of concerning incidents on college campuses across the US since the start of the Israel-Hamas war last month.

On Tuesday, Patrick Dai, a 21-year-old junior at the Ivy League school, was charged with posting threats to kill or injure another using interstate communications, federal prosecutors in the Northern District of New York said. Prosecutors said that in an online discussion board, Dai allegedly threatened to “shoot up” a campus building. In another post, he said he would “stab” or “slit the throat” of Jewish men, and rape or throw off a cliff Jewish women he encounters on campus, prosecutors said.
Full report on the NBC News site