Firsthand accounts of the turmoil over the Israel-Hamas war that has gripped college campuses nationwide will be brought into focus at the Republican National Convention this week in Milwaukee, where a recent graduate of Harvard University and a group of University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill fraternity brothers are slated to take to the stage and share their experiences with the estimated 50,000 attendees. 

Shabbos Kestenbaum, who graduated in the spring with a master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School, told Jewish Insider that despite usually voting Democrat, he agreed to speak at the RNC because “the Democratic Party has abandoned me.” 

“The hostilities to the Jewish people and Jewish faith that I witnessed firsthand as a student at Harvard is incomprehensible, and I would like to be part of a party that recognizes the necessity of the liberal democratic state of Israel,” said Kestenbaum, who in March spoke to a roundtable organized by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce about the antisemitism he experienced on Harvard’s campus. 

Kestenbaum said that his goal of speaking at the RNC is to “elevate certain policies that I believe lead to antisemitism.”

For example, “supporting foreign students who violate the law and harass and intimidate Jewish students,” Kestenbaum, who is slated to speak on Wednesday, told JI. “I am also interested in policy that would secure the immediate release of the Americans held hostage in Gaza and promoting policies that allow the state of Israel to bring back their hostages and to dismantle Hamas.” 

“I also want to make Americans aware of how illiberal and broken higher education has become,” Kestenbaum said. “It is anti-American and antisemitic.”  

Republicans are largely unified in their support for Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks. A Gallup poll taken in June showed that 76% of Republicans supported Israel’s response against Hamas, while Democratic and Independent support was 23% and 34%, respectively.

Also scheduled to speak at the four-day event in a lineup of “everyday Americans,” described by the former President Donald Trump campaign as people “who have faced immense hardship and are worse off under the Biden-Harris administration,” are a group of UNC fraternity members. In a photograph from April that has since gone viral, the students, members of several different fraternities — including Alpha Epsilon Pi and Zeta Beta Tau — were seen holding up an American flag after anti-Israel encampment protesters took the flag down from a flagpole on campus and then mounted a Palestinian flag in its place.

The RNC has confirmed that the convention will proceed as scheduled, despite the assassination attempt of Trump that took place on Saturday at his rally in Butler, Pa. The former president is expected to officially become the 2024 GOP nominee at the convention, where he will announce his running mate and dozens of Republican rising stars will give speeches.