Threatening Antisemitic Note Left at Brown University Hillel
by Dion J. Pierre
The campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
An antisemitic note threatening Jews was found at a Hillel center that serves students attending Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), a campus newspaper reported on Tuesday.
“It’s not an easy moment for Jewish students,” Hillel Rabbi Josh Bolton told the Brown Daily Herald. “It’s scary to have this type of rhetoric show up in your home.”
Bolton also called on “Non-Jewish partners…to stand up and say, ‘anti-Jewish hatred has no place here. Antisemitic rhetoric has no place in the university.”
The Herald added that the university’s Department of Public Safety (DPS) and the Providence Police Department are investigating the incident, the third within the last five months. In July and August, swastikas were carved on a tree and wall panel.
Neither agency DPS nor the Providence Police Department has responded to The Algemeiner’s request for comment. DPS has urged students to use an online Silent Witness Form to report anonymously any information they may have about the incident.
“We stand at the ready to assist Providence (Police) in their investigation in any way we can help,” DPS chief Rodney Chatman said in a previous statement. “We certainly want to position ourselves to support our community members affected by this disturbing act.”
“Any act of religious intolerance, including antisemitism, is entirely unacceptable and a direct affront to the ideals of inclusion and sense of belonging that are essential to the Brown community,” the university said on Tuesday. “We remain resolved in our collective, campus wide effort to ensure a community where all individuals feel safe and valued and where the value of religious tolerance is upheld.”
Antisemitic graffiti has appeared on the Brown University and RISD campuses before. In 2020, a swastika was graffitied in Brown’s Hegeman Hall. In 2017, another was found in a gender-neutral bathroom at RISD. It was, according to the Brown Daily Herald, drawn using human feces.
