‘ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE’: Chilling Posters Target Hillel Director at University of Oregon

Lenny Steinberg, director of the Oregon Hillel Foundation, was shocked and outraged to discover that posters had been hung all over campus bearing his photo and the caption “Enemy of the People” and accusing him of supporting genocide, along with the injunction to get “Hillel off campus.”

“There was a huge level of, like, I saw this coming, and that’s absolutely absurd in and of itself,” he said. “This is my face being plastered in places and falsely accusing me of things I don’t actually support, and this is really truly affecting my staff, our students, our parents.”

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Two Democratic senators and one Democratic representative from Oregon issued a joint statement condemning the action, saying that “we should all unequivocally condemn the antisemitic targeting of Oregon Hillel and its executive director on the University of Oregon campus.”

“Targeting Hillel and its leadership with this hateful rhetoric is a blatant effort to intimidate and demonize a Jewish organization and the Jewish students it represents,” they added.

Karl Scholz, the university president, sent a campus-wide message also condemning the posters and vowing that action would be taken.

“While we do not know if the flyers were posted by someone affiliated with our university, this type of language on our campus—language that targets based on religious and ethnic identity—is reprehensible,” he wrote.

The flyers “promoted isolation and fear, and fear erodes the foundation of our community,” he added. “Antisemitism, violence and threats have no place here.”

Jewish advocates and advocacy groups also expressed outrage over the posters.

“It takes true cowardice and real depravity to target a Hillel international director whose job simply is to support Jewish life on a college campus. This kind of campaign isn’t free speech; its targeted harassment and the University of Oregon must take action,” wrote Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, on X.

CAM Alerts noted that these wanted-style posters constituted intimidation, not protest.

“Campus posters branded Oregon Hillel director Lenny Steinberg an ‘Enemy of the People’ and demanded ‘HILLEL OFF CAMPUS!!!’ Wanted-style targeting of a Jewish campus leader is intimidation, not protest,” the group posted on X.

Steinberg said that after viewing the posters, he felt “sad, angry, and scared.”

In an interview with an Israel-based outlet, he said it was “heartbreaking” to see this happen around the same time Hillel’s sukkah was stolen.

“To have to send my community two messages of, ‘Hey, this happened and guess what, now this happened,’ I don’t want to be sending these messages,” he told the outlet. “I want to be promoting Jewish joy and having smiling students go on hikes and sing prayers with us and be in the sukkah.”

“It’s not fair,” he said.