Yale Law School campus Image by Getty

By PJ Grisar October 8, 2019

A white, spray-painted swastika appearing above the word “Trump” was found on the Yale Law School campus over the weekend an an act referred to as “utterly antithetical” to the school’s values.

The graffiti, which, the Yale Daily News reports, was covered by noon on Sunday with black paint and a doormat, appears to have been painted late Saturday or early Sunday morning on the steps to a side entrance. The hate symbol has since been washed away.

“We are saddened by this act of hate against our community at any time but understand that this is particularly difficult occurring between the High Holy Days,” Ellen Cosgrove, associate dean of students at Yale Law School, told the Yale Daily News.

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The Jewish chaplain at Yale, Rabbi Jason Rubenstein wrote an email to the school’s Jewish community, stating that investigators were looking at video footage to find the suspect, and added that there was “no evidence that this incident is part of a larger campaign.”

Yale Law School has produced a great many Jewish jurists who go on to great things, including former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, defense attorney and Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, actor and speech writer Ben Stein and author Elizabeth Wurtzel. The school is currently home to a number of Jewish faculty, including constitutional law scholar Jed Rubenfeld, Pulitzer-winning reporter Linda Greenhouse and former president of the Israeli Supreme Court Aharon Barak.

The Yale Daily News noted that swastikas were found twice before at the old campus in 2008 and 2014.

Correction, October 10, 11:40 a.m.: An earlier version of this story identified Rubenfeld, Greenhouse and Barak as professors. Greenhouse and Barak are lecturers.

PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture fellow. He can be reached at [email protected].

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