A faculty member at a small Pennsylvania college has been accused of harassing a colleague with a campaign of anonymous antisemitic posts on social media.
The professor, Guangtian Ha, who teaches religion at Haverford College, was charged with one count of cyberstalking and was taken into federal custody on Tuesday.
In a court filing on Tuesday arguing that Dr. Ha should be detained, federal prosecutors said that he “terrified” a co-worker by posting the victim’s home address, his infant child’s name, a photograph of the family’s mailbox and “countless antisemitic slurs and threats.”
The court filing outlines what investigators say was a series of threatening messages from Dr. Ha to the targeted person.
In one message, according to the filing, Dr. Ha used an anonymous X account to respond to the victim, saying: “Get out of my country. You don’t belong here. The Führer is coming, rats,” Five days later, he wrote: “Remember this. You scums have had it too easy,” prosecutors said. In another message in February, Dr. Ha wrote, according to the prosecutors: “Run. Flee. Leave. Blurring your home on google map and installing a security camera next to your mailbox won’t help.”
Court records did not identify the person whom prosecutors say was targeted. The person is a Jewish faculty member, according to three people who know the person and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they wanted to preserve the person’s privacy.
Twice, the victim’s spouse and their three children went to stay with relatives out of fear of being attacked, according to prosecutors.
“These posts had devastating, lasting effects on victim 1 and their family,” the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, David Metcalf, wrote in the detention memo along with three of his prosecutors.
They said that investigators traced the anonymous social media accounts to IP addresses connected to Dr. Ha. After his arrest, the prosecutors said, the professor told F.B.I. agents that he had created the anonymous accounts.
Court records do not show the name of any lawyer representing Dr. Ha.
Wendy Raymond, the president of Haverford College, said in a statement on Tuesday that Dr. Ha, who was on sabbatical and not teaching, had been placed on leave and barred from campus while the criminal case proceeded.
“I am heartbroken and furious at the possibility that an individual within our community would seek to inflict such pain on another,” Dr. Raymond wrote. “This disturbing news is made even more harmful for many given its proximity to both the Jewish High Holidays and the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks.”
Dr. Ha’s name was brought up during one of several congressional hearings convened last year to examine antisemitism on college campuses.
At one hearing in May 2025, Representative Virginia Foxx, who was chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce at the time, asked Dr. Raymond about statements Dr. Ha had made on social media. “The state of Israel must be dismantled and the society de-Nazified,” he wrote in one. “Zionism is Nazism, it is fascism. Zionists are racist.”
Representative Foxx asked Dr. Raymond whether there was a distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Dr. Raymond responded that antisemitism was unacceptable, but that there was room for criticizing any nation or government.
In August, Haverford settled a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by a group of Jewish students, parents, faculty members and alumni that accused the school of failing to protect Jewish students from discrimination and harassment. Dr. Ha’s name and social media posts under his personal account appeared multiple times in the suit.
Michael Levenson contributed reporting. Seamus Hughes contributed research.
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