Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

Swastika found at Yale Law School ahead of Yom Kippur

“This is an attack not just on Yale’s Jewish community, but on Yale itself and its values,” said Jewish chaplain and Rabbi Jason Rubenstein.

Yale University Law School, Sterling Law Building
Yale University Law School in New Haven, Conn. Credit: Juan Paulo Gutierrez/Flickr via Wikimedia Commons.

Yale Law School in New Haven, Conn., is investigating swastika graffiti discovered on steps of the school’s side entrance on Saturday night, days before Yom Kippur, the Yale Daily News reported.

“Yale Law School has zero tolerance for discrimination or harassment of any kind, and symbols of hate have no place on our campus or in our society,” Yale Law School dean Heather Gerken said in a statement on Monday. “We take an incident like this extremely seriously and are currently investigating.”

The graffiti was of a white, spray-painted swastika above the word “Trump” and has since been removed. This is the first reported incident of a swastika appearing on the Yale campus since 2014.

Gerken said no evidence indicates that a member of the Yale community painted it.

She added that the anti-Semitic act is “utterly antithetical” to the school’s values and encouraged anyone with information to reach out to her office.

Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, Jewish chaplain at Yale, revealed on Monday night that investigators are examining video footage from late Saturday night and early Sunday morning.

He said that the Yale Police Department told the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life on Sunday that they visited “all other likely targets of anti-Semitic activity” and found “no evidence that this incident is part of a larger campaign.”

Rubenstein said university administrators “see this as an attack not just on Yale’s Jewish community, but on Yale itself and its values, which is some of the most powerful consolation we can receive as we figure out what this mean[s] for our community.”

“It’s a great victory for the First Amendment right to free speech, including the right to draw attention to bigotry and hateful speech,” Paul Eckles, of the Brandeis Center, told JNS. “We commend our client for having the courage to speak out.”
U.S. President Donald Trump appears to have precipitated the move by demanding congressional action in a social media post earlier on Wednesday.
JNS sought comment from Aria Fani and received an autoreply, “On leave until September. Will not check email with capitalist frequency.”
A spokesman for the Ivy told JNS that the school believes being required “to create lists of Jewish faculty and staff, and to provide personal contact information, raises serious privacy and First Amendment concerns.”
The new program adds “America First foreign policy lectures” and shifts focus to merit and core diplomatic skills.
Police officers found evidence that Dejaun Angelo was running a marijuana business in his apartment and “hundreds of ammunition boxes” in a storage unit.