Cornell University stated on Friday that an email impersonating Michael Kotlikoff, its president, who is Jewish, and containing “vile antisemitic and homophobic language,” came from an “overseas account.”
The private, Ithaca, N.Y., Ivy League school stated that it reported the incident to the FBI and that the university’s police department and information technology security were investigating.
The Cornell Daily Sun, a student paper, said that several of its departments received the spoof email, which it said contained “graphic death threats.”
“The sender directly targeted Jewish students on campus and Cornell Hillel, a hub for Jewish student life on campus, describing the threats as ‘the consequences of investing in war instruments of genocide-death in Palestine’” and “extorting the local population out of so-called ‘income taxes’ and ‘property taxes,’” per the student paper.
