Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Make a Passover gift and support Jewish journalism. DONATE NOW
Fast Forward

Swastikas, Slurs Scrawled at John Jay College

Swastikas and anti-Semitic slurs were discovered drawn on the campus of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan.

The hate messages discovered last week also included racist and homophobic messages, WCBS-TV in New York reported.

The college’s vice president, Lynette Cook-Francis, met with representatives of the groups that were targeted in the hate messages, according to a letter written to the campus community by John Jay’s president, Jeremy Travis, WCBS reported.

“We should all be concerned and offended by these incidents,” Travis wrote. “We pride ourselves as being a community that celebrates diversity and values differences. We aspire to treat one another with respect and dignity.”

College officials also reportedly met with the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Unit.

The John Jay Hillel in an email to the administration called the college’s response to the incident “inadequate,” The Algemeiner reported, and complained that the campus security handled the first discovery of a swastika internally without notifying the campus administration or faculty.

The Hillel also called for more uniformed and plainclothes security patrols near its offices, according to The Algemeiner.

This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.

We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.

This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.

With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.

The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.