MIT President Sally Kornbluth attended a special screening on Tuesday evening showcasing a film compiling atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists during the October 7 attack on southern Israel.
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Kornbluth, along with the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, recently faced criticism for their handling of antisemitism on their campuses during a congressional hearing earlier this month.
Kornbluth said that she faced pressure from some faculty and administrative members to cancel the screening, which was hosted by the MIT Chabad house and Israel's UN envoy, Gilad Erdan.
Attendees noted that Kornbluth appeared visibly shocked by the images displayed in the film, occasionally looking away. She promptly left the venue after the 47-minute film ended.
Despite her attending the screening, the highest-ranking official in American academia to do so to date, Erdan reiterated his calls for Kornbluth to resign after she refused to say before Congress that calls for the genocide of Jews amount to harassment.
"Now that MIT president saw what despicable murderers receive support on her campus, and whom she had defended in Congress, I call her to resign tomorrow morning," he said. "I expect MIT to take the most stringent action against students who call for the genocide of Jews or who support Hamas and to fire professors and members of faculty who support Hamas. I call on Jewish organizations and communities not to send their children or to donate to universities that allow antisemitism on their campuses."
The screening was also attended by 40 MIT faculty and administration members, including Chairman of the Board Mark Gorenberg who said antisemitism should be fought on campus, in the United States and around the world.
Military attaché to the Israeli mission to the UN, Guy Barak, spoke after the film and told the audience that this was a black-and-white matter with no grey areas. "You either condemn such atrocities or you support them," he said.