Cornell University students walk on campus, November 2023. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect

Far-right extremists have raised nearly $25,000 in a crowdfunding campaign for a Cornell University student who told a potential employer that he has “no interest in working for a Jew” after being invited to interview for a position to which he applied on his own volition.

The student, Austin Franco, 19, made the now infamous comment earlier this month in a message to Gabe and Aiden Einhorn, the Jewish founders of a new start-up which aims to prevent fraud in apartment rentals.

Franco, as first reported by The New York Post, had asked the brothers for a summer internship earlier this academic year through the website Handshake but changed his mind after learning their backgrounds. This was unbeknownst to the Einhorns, who offered Franco three interviews before the Ivy Leaguer disclosed that he is antisemitic.

Gabe Einhorn later shared Franco’s note on social media, where it drew viral attention and users quickly identified the Cornell student behind Einhorn’s attempt to conceal his name from a screenshot he took of it. Called on to explain himself, Franco declined to apologize in a post which argued that his antisemitism is the consequence of his having had “experiences with Jews [that] have not been pleasant, both in person and online.” That exchange prompted Cornell University to condemn Franco’s comments and assign its civil rights office to investigate him for discrimination, a decision which mobilized the far right to his side.

Within hours, someone established a crowdfunding page for the student on the website GiveSendGo, titled “Fund Austin Franco after Jewish doxxing,” with the goal of raising $100,000. Donations large and small poured in as Franco’s page went on to amass nearly as much hate speech as it did money. In the comment section, for example, “Jateson Hews” who gave $50, wrote, “The children of Satan support their own.” Another, anonymous giver said, “We need to take a stand against this evil tribe who have way too much power in the West. Good luck Austin.”

On Friday, a user on the X social media platform who may have organized the fundraiser thanked GiveSendGo for “their support for persecuted Christians” and announced that Franco is now available to withdraw his money.

“Thank you to all who donated,” he said.

Antisemitism at Cornell University is an often-overlooked case study on rising anti-Jewish hatred in the US. The Ivy League institution has seen some of the most harrowing incidents of antisemitism in which faculty celebrated the mass murder of Jews on Oct. 7, 2023, a student threatened to massacre Jewish men and rape Jewish women, and Students for Justice in Palestine graffitied hate speech across the campus in disturbing acts of vandalism. Anti-Zionists at Cornell have also heavily featured blood in their political messaging. Last year, they doused a statue in red paint and left behind a graffitied message which said “occupation=death.”

The university took center stage in another campus antisemitism outrage in October, as its student newspaper published an anti-Zionist opinion piece which promoted Holocaust inversion by melding a Nazi symbol with the Star of David. The article, titled “Thousand & One Eyes for an Eye” and written by indigenous studies professor Karim-Aly Assam, argued that Israel’s military strategy for the Gaza war against Hamas prioritized revenge for the Oct. 7 massacre over security “under the pretext of obtaining justice.” The article further accused Israeli officials of describing Palestinians as “animals” to justify “ruthless destruction and killing” — a distortion of former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s describing the Hamas fighters who murdered, raped, and maimed women, children, and men on Oct. 7 as “human animals” two days after the atrocities transpired.

Assam’s article implied an equivalence of Israel’s military objective to eradicate Hamas from Gaza with the Nazi genocide of Jews across Europe during World War II, a trope which anti-Israel activists and antisemites traffic to foster negative public opinion against Israel’s efforts to secure its borders and quell jihadist activity in the Palestinian territories.

Other disturbing antisemitic incidents, emanating from both the far right and far left, rocked higher this academic year. Last month, a New York University student raised a swastika flag over a campus building during a graduation-week event. Designed to counterfeit NYU’s official purple and white standard, the offensive display featured two swastikas flanking the Star of David in a blue and white color palette representing the state of Israel. Historically, similar illustrations and symbols signal belief in antisemitic conspiracies of Jewish power and control, and in recent years anti-Zionists at NYU have castigated the university’s academic partnerships with Israel, as well as its efforts to combat antisemitism.

In April, Students for Justice in Palestine’s Duke University chapter posted on social media a political cartoon in which “Zionism” is personified as pig hoisting a Star of David while its arm interlocks with another pig, labeled “US Imperialism,” hoisting the Torch of Liberty.

Historically, depicting Jews as pigs has been done to reduce them to the status of animals and mock the fact that dietary restrictions forbid Jews to eat pork.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.