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By: Ilana Siyance
It was the first day of a fresh new semester at the prestigious ivy league Cornell University—but haters on campus were back to the same tricks.
As reported by the NY Post, on Monday, on the first day of classes, anti-Israel vandals defaced a building at Cornell University — shattering the glass of a doorway and scrawling hateful messages like “Blood is on your hands.” The vandals had acted sometime overnight or in the early morning hours, breaking the glass at an entrance to Cornell’s Day Hall and spray-painting messages including “Israel bombs and Cornell pays.”
“We had to accept that the only way to make ourselves heard is by targeting the only thing the university administration truly cares about: property,” the vandals said in an anonymous statement to the Cornell Daily Sun, the student newspaper that first reported the story. “With the start of this new academic year, the Cornell administration is trying desperately to upkeep a facade of normalcy knowing that, since last semester, they have been working tirelessly to uphold Cornell’s function as a fascist, classist, imperial machine,” the activists wrote, without divulging their names.
Joel M. Malina, Vice President for university relations, commented saying, those responsible would be “subject to suspension and criminal charges.” “We are appalled by the graffiti spray painted, and glass shattered overnight along the front entrance of Day Hall,” Malina said in a statement. “Acts of violence, extended occupation of buildings, or property damage (including graffiti) will not be tolerated and will prompt an immediate response from public safety.”
Cornell Law professor William A. Jacobson said the crimes sent a strong message at the start of a new semester. “Given the weak response at Cornell last academic year to intimidation tactics by anti-Israel activists, it is no surprise that they have upped the aggressiveness by opening the semester with vandalism and destruction of property,” said Jacobson, founder of EqualProtect.org. “This is a bad omen.”
Per the Post, the hateful act was committed on the same day that Gov. Kathy Hochul held a virtual meeting with college and university presidents across New York discussing how to curb anti-Semitism on campuses. Since Hamas’ brutal and deadly attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023, college campuses have been rampant with lawless pro-Palestinian protests and violence. The universities’ lackluster response to the perpetrators has led to accusations that leaders allowed antisemitism to fester— with several high-profile university presidents stepping down in the limelight.
Former Cornell president Martha Pollack announced her resignation last May, and president of University of Pennsylvania Liz Magill stepped down in December, while Columbia University’s president Nemat Shafik resigned earlier this month.
Despite the shakeup in the Universities’ upper echelons, one New York college official, who requested anonymity, said it wouldn’t be surprising if the campus unrest continues, due to the ongoing Hamas-Israel war in Gaza. “There is no cease-fire. There is a war going on,” said the source who requested anonymity, comparing the persistent protests to demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Even before the first day of the semester at Baruch College in New York, a small group of protesters gathered outside the CUNY school calling for “war” in the United States and targeting the college’s Hillel Jewish student club, as reported by the JTA. In an Instagram post about the protest, Baruch’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine called for the “construction of militant resistance to imperialism in all its manifestations.”
