At a Philadelphia bar owned by the Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, patrons who order bottle service are offered customizable letter boards, which they can ask staff members to arrange with messages of their choice, such as “break up with him” or “go birds!”
But at least one customer, a Temple University student who visited the bar on Saturday night, asked staff members to arrange the letters on his sign into an antisemitic message. The sign, according to Mr. Portnoy, had a four-letter expletive directed at Jewish people.
The incident has drawn nationwide fury, becoming a symbol of the rise in antisemitism.
Antisemitic episodes in the United States reached a record high in the 12-month period from October 2023 to September 2024, according to figures from the Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights organization.
The group identified more than 10,000 antisemitic incidents — triple the number recorded during the same period a year earlier — which were split into categories including verbal or written harassment, vandalism and physical assault. More than 8,000 of those episodes involved cases of verbal or written harassment, according to the figures.
It was not immediately clear how many customers were involved in the episode at Barstool Sansom Street, in Philadelphia’s Center City neighborhood. The bar said in a statement that it involved a customer whose actions were “deplorable,” but Mr. Portnoy said in a video on Instagram that two customers were involved.
The bar also blamed “misguided” employees who ignored the company’s training and “zero-tolerance policy for discrimination and hate,” and added that the employees had been investigated and fired.
The president of Temple University, John Fry, announced the next day that a student believed to have been involved in the incident had been suspended, and that the university was conducting an investigation. He added that “antisemitism is abhorrent” and “has no place at Temple.” A student named by Mr. Portnoy did not respond to a request for comment.
American universities have faced accusations of antisemitism from the Trump administration, which has pulled, or threatened to pull, billions of dollars in federal funding.
Mr. Portnoy, who rose to prominence as the founder of the sports news and pop culture publication Barstool Sports and has become a divisive media personality, has opened bars Philadelphia, Chicago, Nashville and Scottsdale, Ariz.
Mr. Portnoy, who is Jewish, expressed outrage over the incident in his profanity-laced video on Instagram.
“I’ve been shaking I’ve been so mad,” he said, adding several obscenities. “I’m gonna make it my life mission to ruin these people, like I’m coming for your throat.”
A few hours later, he posted another video saying he had reconsidered his approach, and instead had decided to send the young men on a tour of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in southern Poland where around 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, were murdered.
“Let’s try to like turn a hideous incident into maybe a learning experience,” Mr. Portnoy said, adding that the offer was “cliché and very unlike me.”
Later that day he wrote that he had revoked the offer for one student involved in the episode, who Mr. Portnoy said initially “took 100 percent responsibility for his actions” but later “did a 180 and said he had nothing to do with it.” He posted a screenshot of what appeared to be a note from the student claiming that he had not requested or paid for the sign.
Barstool Sansom Street did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Portnoy declined to comment, saying in an email that “I’d rather stick a pencil in my eye than give you the time of day.”
Mr. Portnoy has been the subject of criticism for what he has acknowledged were racist statements, including using the N-word. He also has a history of making misogynistic comments.
Genevieve Glatsky is a reporter for The Times, based in Bogotá, Colombia.
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