Franco, 19, claimed that his hostility toward Jews intensified after he was fired from a job by a Jewish supervisor.
By Shula Rosen
The Cornell University student who became notorious for declaring that he would not work for “a Jew” revealed the broader extent of his antisemitism in an undercover conversation published last week, discussing Holocaust denial, racial hierarchy, and conspiracies about Jewish power with a woman he believed shared his views.
“It might not have been the smartest thing to say,” Austin Franco told an undercover investigator working for Accuracy in Media, referring to the message he sent the Jewish founders of a rental-technology startup. “But the reaction was overwhelming, not equal to what I said. I thought I was being nice. This is why I don’t want to work for them.”
Franco, 19, claimed that his hostility toward Jews intensified after he was fired from a job by a Jewish supervisor, describing the episode as a turning point that pushed him toward online personalities and publications promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial.
“You just have to lay the cards on the table and realize there is no way you’re getting to power — I mean, unless you want to wear the little hat, right? Kiss the wall,” he said. Franco then recommended a Substack writer whose work he described as interesting, while acknowledging that he did not necessarily believe everything the author said about Jews and the Holocaust.
Franco also discussed supposed racial differences in intelligence, arguing that Black people should accept being intellectually inferior to other groups even while outperforming them athletically.
“Have you played Fallout?” he asked. “You can max out intelligence, but you’re not going to be able to max out strength. It’s the same thing here. You have to make sacrifices within each race, within the bell curve.”
Franco first drew national attention in June after applying through Handshake for a growth and sales internship at VrfyID, a startup founded by brothers Gabe and Aiden Einhorn that connects verified renters and landlords. After the brothers repeatedly attempted to arrange an interview, Franco responded on June 8: “Not interested in working for a Jew. Thanks.”
Gabe Einhorn shared the exchange online while attempting to conceal Franco’s identity, but social-media users quickly identified him. Franco then refused to apologize, writing that his “experiences with Jews have not been pleasant” and arguing that the backlash vindicated his prejudice. Far-right supporters subsequently raised roughly $25,000 for him through a crowdfunding campaign.
Cornell publicly condemned the message and said it had referred the incident to its Office of Civil Rights as a bias complaint. In the undercover recording, however, Franco claimed the university had taken no disciplinary action and that an “advocacy team” had contacted him.
“As of now, they said there’s not anything going on on their back end,” he said. “I think it’s because I didn’t say anything that could be classified as hateful.”
Cornell has not publicly confirmed that account or announced the outcome of its review.
The episode adds to Cornell’s recent record of antisemitic turmoil. Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, a professor has praised the attack as “exhilarating,” a student threatened to murder Jewish men and rape Jewish women, and anti-Israel activists have defaced university property with slogans and imagery depicting Israel and Zionism as agents of death. Franco’s remarks show how the same campus climate can accommodate anti-Jewish hatred arriving not only from the activist left, but from an increasingly emboldened far right.
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