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MIT President Sally Kornbluth says police also are investigating a ‘sign wishing violence on a conservative non-profit’
Police at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are investigating a series of vandalism and other “disturbing” incidents on campus last week that included two swastikas and a “sign wishing violence” on an unnamed conservative group.
MIT President Sally Kornbluth informed the campus of the investigation in a message Friday.
The institution witnessed multiple “disturbing” incidents last week, including “in two cases, a hand-drawn swastika; a sign wishing violence on a conservative non-profit; and multiple cases, in graffiti and on an email list, of messages celebrating violence,” according to Kornbluth.
A Sept. 11 MIT Police report lists more details about what appear to be several of the incidents. In one, an employee noticed pro-Palestinian graffiti written on several walls along a hallway on an East Campus building. The graffiti included “Free Palestine” and “other phrases referencing the Israeli military,” according to police.
The same report mentions a separate incident on the same date in which a “hateful image” was “drawn on a hallway wall” in Random Hall. A report also was filed that day about a “poster hanging on a wall” in an East Campus building “that referenced threats to [a] conservative non-profit,” according to police.
MIT Police directed The College Fix to campus media relations when contacted Thursday about the investigation. A spokesperson declined to provide more details, telling The Fix the institution will not “restate and spread the messages themselves.”
“President Kornbluth was clear in rejecting each of these manifestations of hatred toward others for their views, beliefs, or identity,” spokesperson Kimberly Allen said in an email. “I’d underscore what she said: ‘Such corrosive incidents have become commonplace in our society, and they can invite violence. Together, we must make sure they have no place at MIT.'”
Kornbluth’s message did not name the conservative group that was targeted, but she did note the significance of the incidents occurring around the same time as the assassination of conservative leader and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
“In the context of this week’s horrifying murder of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, these manifestations of hatred towards others for their views, beliefs or identity are even more concerning,” she wrote.
“Such corrosive incidents have become commonplace in our society, and they can invite violence,” she wrote. “Together, we must make sure they have no place at MIT.”
Kornbluth said it is not clear if the campus incidents were connected or what the motivation behind them was. Anyone found to be responsible will be disciplined, she said.
“Belonging to the MIT community is a privilege, not a right, and it comes with the responsibility to treat each other with decency and respect,” Kornbluth wrote.
Editor’s note: This article was updated to include comments from an MIT spokesperson to The Fix.
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