Antisemitic stickers were spotted on Boston University’s campus along Commonwealth Avenue this week as students returned from Thanksgiving break. The stickers appeared approximately two months after they first appeared at Harvard University in October, according to the Harvard Crimson.
The stickers depict an Israeli flag with a swastika symbol in the center in place of the Star of David, among the words, “Stop funding Israeli terrorism.”
BU Facilities removed the stickers, and the BU Police Department is working with Boston Police Department’s Civil Rights unit, BU Spokesperson Colin Riley wrote in an email to The Daily Free Press. BUPD is working under the direction of BU President Melissa Gilliam to investigate and identify the party responsible.
“Boston University strongly condemns these hateful and abhorrent statements, and we are taking this incident very seriously,” Riley wrote. “The University is committed to providing a safe and inclusive campus and to protecting our Jewish community on campus.”
Approximately 4,000 Jewish undergraduate students attend BU, the largest population at any private university, according to Hillel International.
BU Hillel declined to comment.
“Coming back from Thanksgiving break is always hard getting readjusted to school, and then seeing this is just extremely hurtful,” said sophomore Ivy Besikof, a communications intern for the Jewish Leadership Team of BU Hillel. “[It] obviously just made me be like, ‘Wow, am I even accepted in the community that I’m in?’”
Besikof, also a member of Jewish on Campus at BU, a group that amplifies Jewish voices and is open to all students, said she woke up Monday morning to a text from JOC BU notifying members about the stickers. As a descendant of four Holocaust survivors, she said the swastika imagery on the stickers was “very jarring.”
“It’s very scary to see a hate symbol spread around my campus,” Besikof said. “It being put in that context with the Israeli flag is just absolutely not okay, because it’s drawing these connections between Israel and the Holocaust in a very negative way.”
Sophomore Isabella Diglio, a BU Hillel member, said she found the stickers “shocking.”
“With the swastikas, that’s such a nasty thing to do to a flag, especially because so many lives were lost during the Holocaust,” Diglio said.
The stickers first appeared on Harvard’s campus on Oct. 7, the first anniversary of the attack on Israel by the militant group Hamas. Getzel Davis, Harvard Hillel’s campus Rabbi, said the stickers were placed within a three-block radius of Harvard Hillel.
“It’s an anathema to university values, and the invocation of swastika imagery in any context, especially targeting Jewish institutions, is abhorrent,” Davis said.
Davis said he hopes the BU community unites to condemn the stickers and “to make clear that no Jews on any campus should ever have to experience hate like this.”
In following weeks, the stickers were also spotted in Brookline near Coolidge Corner, a neighborhood home to many Jewish and Israeli businesses and residents, as well as a number of synagogues.
Senior Amanda Kopelman, co-president of JOC BU, said the stickers spreading to Brookline is “horrific” and “very problematic” given the neighborhood’s large Jewish population.
“This isn’t only antisemitism, but it’s also harmful to other marginalized communities because Jews were not the only population affected in the Holocaust,” Kopelman said.
Kopelman said she individually reported the stickers to the City of Boston and filed a report through the Boston Human Rights Commission. BUPD told Kopelman the city would have to get involved because the stickers were not on BU property itself.
In an Instagram post on Monday, Dec. 2, JOC BU condemned the stickers. As a Jewish student leader on campus, Kopelman said she feels a duty to educate people outside the Jewish community about antisemitism.
“These stickers are a form of Holocaust Inversion,” the post wrote. “Turning the reality of the Holocaust on its head by weaponizing historical trauma to attack the Jewish community. They distort Jewish history, trivialize Jewish suffering, and fuel hate.”
Kopelman said JOC BU is hopeful Gilliam and new University leadership “will be able to stand with Jewish students.”
Junior Shayna Dash, president of BU Students for Israel, said antisemitism is an “epidemic” students face across the country.
Dash said BUSI reported the stickers to the Equal Opportunity Office, BUPD, BPD and the new Living our Values Project, an initiative to “identity and practice the core principles and beliefs,” of the University. BUSI encourages students to always report antisemitic rhetoric.
BUSI has been communicating with BU administration to address antisemitism on campus. and Dash said the group is “so lucky that administration comes to the table with us.”
“Every single day, students have to decide to be Jewish,” Dash said. “We have to be proud, and we have to be aware of who we are and where we come from. We choose to be Jewish. That choice comes with a cost, and the cost is feeling hatred around us.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article stated that both BUPD and BPD are working under Gilliam to investigate. The updated article reflects this change.
This last quote is quite concerning and incorrect, as being Jewish is not a choice we make. Especially taking into account that during the Holocaust, being Jewish was not a choice, and six million of us were killed regardless of that decision.
Also, Hillel refusing to comment? Not great, but also not surprising. What’s the point of having events like Latkapalooza if students are being haunted by swastikas?
Thankful for BU and President Gilliam having plans of action to help us combat antisemitism, but upset that Hillel declined comment