Swastikas were spray-painted on the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity house at Stanford University Saturday night.The incident comes after months of controversy on campus over anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activity.

Two weeks ago, Molly Horwitz, a Jewish student running for election to Stanford’s Senate, was asked how her Jewish identity would impact her vote on divestment, in an incident that led to accusations of anti-Semitism. Students denied that the incident was anti-Semitic, and the University administration failed to release a statement on the incident. That incident came after the Stanford student senate’s February vote in favor of a bill which called on the University to divest from “corporations identified as complicit in human rights abuses in Israel and Palestine.” The Tower Magazine covered the Stanford hearings on divestment in a piece on Stanford’s atmosphere for supporters of Israel.

There is currently minimal information on the incident, but the police and Stanford administration are reportedly aware of the situation. The swastikas spray-painted on a fraternity house call to mind similar incidents that have occurred at numerous universities across the country over the past two months, such as at George Washington University, Northeastern University, the University of Missouri, Northwestern University, and the University of California, Berkeley. Recently, swastikas were painted on the house of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi at the University of California, Davis, just a few days after the Davis student senate called on the “University of California Board of Regents to divest from ‘corporations that aid in the Israeli occupation of Palestine and illegal settlements in Palestinian territories.’” Fraternity leaders there believe the anti-Semitic action was a direct result of the fraternity’s support for Israel.

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