Anti-Semitic Vandalism Rocks San Diego Campus

Image by sandiego.edu

By Daniel J. Solomon March 7, 2017

As vandals target Jewish cemeteries and community centers, Jews at the University of San Diego have also been on the receiving end of hate crimes, with numerous swastikas discovered on campus over the past month.

“Defacing our facilities with this deplorable symbol is hateful and reprehensible, and the incidents are being investigated,” the university’s dean of students, Donald Godwin wrote in an e-mail last month after five swastikas were discovered at different sites across campus. “We are keenly aware and sensitive to the historical and present-day incidents against our Jewish brothers and sisters.”

And that’s not all, with Jewish studies professor Shai Cherry reporting that after the November election, someone left a pile of feces outside his office, something that he think that was targeted at him because he is Jewish.

“I have never been faced with that kind of explicit anti-Semitism,” Cherry, an ordained rabbi, told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “These are cowardly acts,” he added. “If somebody wanted to confront me, this wouldn’t be how they would do it.”

Campus police are investigating the incident, according to the administration.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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