Patrick Dai, a former Cornell University student who posted threats against Jewish classmates online in October, was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release on Monday after agreeing to enter a guilty plea.
Dai posted a series of messages on the Greekrank internet forum — a page where students discuss fraternity and sorority life — that included threats of murder and rape against Jewish students at Cornell and specifically named the address of the university’s Center for Jewish Living.
“If I see another synagogue another rally for the zionist globalist genocidal apartheid dictatorial entity known as ‘israel,’ i will bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig jews,” he wrote, alongside other posts like “if you see a jewish ‘person’ on campus follow them home and slit their throats. rats need to be exterminated from cornell.”
Dai expressed regret at his sentencing hearing, saying, “It’s all my fault,” the Cornell Daily Sun reported.
While guidelines held that Dai should serve 27-33 months in federal prison, he received a shorter sentence on the back of a January autism diagnosis. The court noted during the hearing that Dai had also experienced suicidal depression, a claim consistent with statements his parents made after he was arrested.
“My son is in severe depression,” Dai’s father said at the time. “He cannot control his emotion well due to the depression. No, I don’t think he committed the crime.”
Dai entered Cornell as an accomplished student before leaving the university for two semesters to address mental-health issues on the advice of a doctor. His mother said Dai stopped communicating with her and her husband in the days before the arrest.
Several hours after Dai published the threatening messages, another post appeared on Greekrank in which an anonymous user seemed to apologize.
“I should not have pressed sent on a comment on a conflict I had no standing to talk about, but I did,” the author — who has not been confirmed to have been Dai — wrote. The anonymous author continued, saying that “no amount of depression or loneliness or isolation is an excuse for terror or terroristic threats,” before signing off as “a depressed suicidal person.”
Cornell canceled classes out of an abundance of caution after Dai posted the threats, and then-president Martha Pollack said in a statement that the university would “not tolerate antisemitism” and that the “incident highlights the need to combat the forces that are dividing us and driving us toward hate.”