A mural at Duke University in North Carolina memorializing the 11 people who died in the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh this month was vandalized over the weekend with a swastika.
“Last night, a tribune on the East Campus Bridge to the victims of the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre was defaced by a large, red swastika,” Duke president Vincent E. Price wrote in a letter to the university community Monday. “That such a craven and cowardly act of vandalism — a desecration of a memorial to individuals who were killed because they were Jewish and practicing their faith — should happen anywhere is extremely distressing.”
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Price said that the school had taken steps to ensure its Jewish community’s safety, including providing physical security at the Jewish center on campus and security cameras near what’s known as the “Free Speech Bridge” on campus where students paint murals.
In September, a mural on the same bridge at Duke celebrating Latinx Heritage Month was scribbled out with black graffiti less than 24 hours after it was completed. “It saddens us to say that this is not the first time an act of hate has happened on Duke’s campus,” Mi Gente, the school’s Latinx organization wrote in a statement at the time. “This incident is just another one of many that have happened, but have received no justice.”
According to a recent report by the FBI, hate crimes on college campuses are on the rise across the country. In 2017, campus police departments reported 280 hate crimes, up from 257 in 2016 and 194 the previous (those are all likely vast underestimates of the scale of the problem, as only a fraction of campus police departments or regular police departments submit data to the FBI).
In his statement, Duke president Price acknowledged the creep of hatred into campus life, and beyond. For example, three swastikas appeared at different locations on Cornell University’s campus in New York state in the last nine days.
“This poison of hate is not confined to Duke,” Price said. “It is part of a national, even global, trend that has seen hate crimes in general, and anti-Semitism in particular, increase dramatically in the past year. And since this incident follows others on campus and in Durham, we have an urgent obligation to confront anti-Semitism and other forms of hate on campus and in Durham.”
Cover image: A woman and her children pause Saturday, Nov. 3, 2018, to take in a makeshift memorial outside the Tree of Life Synagogue honoring the 11 people killed Oct 27, 2018 while worshipping in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
