The Northeastern University Hillel, an organization for Jewish students, has denounced the drawings of swastikas in a dorm common room this weekend and tied recent anti-Semitic incidents to the Israel boycott movement on campus.
"We will not be bullied by these cowardly acts," wrote the Hillel's executive director Arinne Braverman in an email.
The swastikas were found around 1:30 a.m. on Sunday by a residential assistant in a common area of the university's International Village dorm, wrote University president Joseph Aoun in an email to the campus community.
According to Braverman, it was not the only possibly anti-Semitic incident to affect students this weekend. A mezuzah, a religious door hanging, was vandalized at an off-campus apartment building popular with Northeastern students, she wrote.
Braverman also placed blame for a climate of anti-Jewish sentiment with the Israel divestment movement, an effort to encourage boycotts of Israeli products to protest the country's policies within the Palestinian territories. The university's student government rejected an effort to put divestment from Israeli companies to a campus-wide vote earlier this month.
"I don't think it's coincidental that the swastika appeared in the same residence hall where [Students for Justice in Palestine] conducted 'dorm storming' with mock eviction notices last spring, and went door-to-door soliciting signatures for their divestment petition, in violation of quiet hours, during midterms just a few weeks ago," she wrote. "To me, it isn't important if the same individuals were involved: hate begets hate and it appears we're experiencing the after effects now."