Anti-Semitic graffiti was found at Yale Law School — an attack on the New Haven school “and its values,” officials said.
The graffiti — a white, spray-painted swastika above the word “Trump” — has since been removed after appearing on the steps of the Connecticut law school’s side entrance sometime late Saturday or early Sunday, the Yale Daily News reports.
“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, Yale Law School’s associate dean of students, wrote in an email. “Diversity and inclusion are core values of our institution [and] attacks against individual students or communities of students will not be tolerated.”
An investigation to find whoever is responsible for the graffiti is ongoing, Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, Yale’s Jewish chaplain, told students affiliated with the university’s Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life in an email.
Rubenstein said investigators are “relying on video footage,” the Yale Daily News reports.
As a precaution, university police visited “all other likely targets of anti-Semitic activity” on campus and found no other acts of vandalism or evidence that the graffiti was part of a wider effort, Rubenstein told students.
Administrators at the law school consider the incident an attack on both its Jewish community and on “Yale itself and its values,” Rubenstein’s email continued.
There’s no evidence that someone affiliated with the Ivy League school was responsible, Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken stressed in an email to students.
A message seeking comment from Yale Law School was not immediately returned early Tuesday, but a spokesperson for the school confirmed Monday that an investigation into the incident was ongoing.
“The Law School has zero tolerance for discrimination or harassment of any kind, and symbols or hate have no place on our campus or in our society,” director of media relations Debra Kroszner told WVIT. “We take this incident seriously and are currently investigating.”