Religion professor charged with cyberstalking after using X to harass Jewish co-worker

A religion professor has been accused of using X (formerly Twitter) to anonymously stalk and harass his Jewish co-worker for months in what lawyers are calling a “hateful obsession.”

Guangtian Ha, an assistant professor of religion at Haverford College, has been charged with cyberstalking and accused of antisemitic harassment of a co-worker.

While in the field, Ha focused on the Hui Muslim community in China, specifically in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, where Islam is the dominant religion.

He created anonymous accounts over the course of several months and sent more than 50 threatening messages to the victim.

Lawyers are arguing that Ha’s unrelenting pursuit of his co-worker (named as Victim 1 in the lawsuit) shows that he is a “clear danger” and needs to be detained until his trial.

X accounts used to stalk and threaten co-worker

The first threatening post Ha allegedly made was in October 2025. The post featured a picture of the victim's mailbox accompanied by the eyes emoji, implying that someone is watching them.

Ha didn’t make this post from his personal account. Instead, he used the X account “America1st33509, which was made around 14 minutes before Ha allegedly posted the picture, according to the lawsuit.

While the assistant professor’s involvement is still being investigated, authorities linked the IP address from the X account to Verizon IP addresses connected to Ha’s home and cell numbers.

He created multiple accounts using similar monikers, and the abuse amped up.

“The führer is coming”

Ha allegedly attacked the victim with antisemitic language referencing Nazi Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler, responsible for one of the worst genocides in human history.

While digital abuse remains prevalent online, what alarmed the victim most is that Ha ensured them that he knew where the victim and his family lived.

One of Ha’s alleged comments read, “Blurring your home on Google Maps and installing a security camera next to your mailbox won’t help.”

Following the barrage of abuse, the victim took precautions to blur their house on Google and installed security cameras, showing that the X account was watching them.

Ha then continued to berate the victim with cruel comments regarding the holocaust.

The professor has since been charged with one count of cyberstalking, which holds a statutory maximum of 5 years in prison, 3 years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine.

The President of Haverford College, Wendy Raymond, released a statement that claims that Professor Ha was “on sabbatical leave” and not teaching at the time of his arrest.

The former college professor “has been placed on administrative leave and barred from campus while the criminal process moves forward,” according to Raymond.

X is a breeding ground for hate speech

Elon Musk’s X has previously been criticized for pushing right-wing agendas and letting hate speech run rampant on his platform.

Back in 2024, Musk claimed that an independent audit found there was less antisemitism on X than on other social media platforms.

Well, in 2025, X’s inbuilt chatbot Grok praised Adolf Hitler publicly on the platform, posts which the social media site later removed.

Despite claiming to quell the amount of hatred on the platform, researchers discovered that hate speech rose 50% after Musk purchased the site. That was back in 2025.

Often disguised as free speech, hate speech has been so rife on X that watchdogs like Ofcom have vowed to “monitor the social media platform closely” after identifying terrorist content and illegal hate speech on the platform.

Dutch civil servants also urged the government to leave X, citing hate speech, racism, and disinformation.