Four University of Rochester Students Face Felony Charges Over Jewish ‘Wanted’ Posters
“The Department of Public Safety is leading an ongoing investigation and exhausting all available resources to collect evidence and hold those involved accountable for their actions.”
We have been following a disturbing story at the University of Rochester in New York, where ‘wanted’ posters featuring Jewish faculty members recently appeared.
Just days ago, persons of interest in the case were identified. Now four students have been charged.
Rochester First reports:
4 UR students face felony charges in connection with antisemitic posters case
Four University of Rochester students now face felony charges after “wanted” posters described by officials as antisemitic reportedly targeting Jewish faculty were discovered around River Campus, public safety leaders announced Tuesday.
According to Chief Quchee Collins with the Department of Public Safety, a fifth person is still under investigation for their possible involvement in this case.
While their identities haven’t been released, Collins said the students were charged with felony criminal mischief.
“While we always hope to address student misconduct from an educational perspective, there are some acts that require referral to the criminal justice process. As Chief Collins outlined in his message, the activity that we’ve experienced reaches that level,” announced President Sarah Mangelsdorf.
Meanwhile, the investigation into vandalism at UR Medicine’s Brighton Health Center remains open.
It is positively stunning that this is happening on an American college campus.
BREAKING: The pro-Hamas students and faculty plastered the University of Rochester with wanted posters of Jewish faculty.
These faculty were not Israeli, they were Jewish. This is textbook antisemitism. Reform has never been more needed at American universities. pic.twitter.com/jdMzlHEAr7
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) November 12, 2024
Hundreds of ‘wanted’ posters at University of Rochester accuse Jewish faculty members of supporting ‘ethnic cleansing’ https://t.co/7GUmK5fgFZ pic.twitter.com/DSNcPhXgNw
— New York Post (@nypost) November 13, 2024
University President Sarah C. Mangelsdorf has released this statement:
Message Regarding ‘Wanted’ Posters
Dear Members of the University Community,
I want to be as clear as I can that the University of Rochester strongly denounces the recent display of “Wanted” posters targeting senior University leaders and members of our faculty, staff, and Board of Trustees. This act is disturbing, divisive and intimidating and runs counter to our values as a university.
Furthermore, several of those depicted appear to have been targeted because they are members of our Jewish community. We view this as antisemitism, which will not be tolerated at our University. This isn’t who we are. This goes against everything we stand for and we have an obligation to reject it.
The Department of Public Safety is leading an ongoing investigation and exhausting all available resources to collect evidence and hold those involved accountable for their actions. As DPS Chief Quchee Collins said in his message yesterday, our priority as a University is to maintain a respectful and safe community for everyone.
Where is the Civil Rights Division of the Biden Justice Department?
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
‘ While we always hope to address student misconduct from an educational perspective,’
You can’t: their education was non existent and it wasn’t as simple as misconduct. Bunch of freaks following the latest trend of being a terrorist fanboi.
How about posting their pictures all over the campus and surrounding areas with the red circle / ?
I disagree. I think being expelled and going to jail would be very educational for the snowflakes.
Even with felony charges, I doubt they see jail in a state like New York.
The crime is intimidation, not antisemitism. Antisemitism is protected speech.
Incitement isnt protected speech. And you better believe these posters are all about incitement against Jews!
No, they are not incitement. Incitement is speech that is both (1) subjectively intended and (2) objectively likely to cause someone to (3) immediately commit a crime. All three of those elements must be present; in this case none are.
Intimidation sounds about right, but proving it might be difficult.
Crying out “will no one rid me of this pestilent priest?!” knowing that violence will follow, or is likely to follow, is incitement. Inciting hostility and violence against a class of people – based not on their actions but on lies and propaganda is incitement to war crimes. Doing the same to individuals you dox with pictures, names, and how to find them is incitement to assault and murder.
Weird that calling out Hamas and Hamas supporters for actual war crimes like using your own civilians as shields and deliberately massacring an opponent’s civilians because it’s safer than attacking soldiers is a “hate crime” instead of free speech, isn’t it?
Yes, yes, in a war civilians will die. In any war. But there’s a bit of legal difference between unarmed civilians being rounded up for torture and murder and civilians dying because armed fighters masquerading as unarmed civilians launch attacks from hospitals and mosques and children’s schools, hoping their own civilians will die for the propaganda lols.
Hamas and its running dogs flat out proclaim a Juden Frei Israel is their goal. From the river to the sea. The idiot college age supporters often can’t even name the river and the sea in that slogan. But don’t believe any lies that it doesn’t entail actual genocide. At the least, can you point out the Middle East Islamic ruled nations that used to have sizable Jewish populations that still do?
Where as Israel has a sizable Muslim minority with full citizenship rights, including voting and in its government. So which side practices genocide, again? And before you claim it’s against the west bank and gazan non citizen Muslims, explain to the class how the Islamic populations in the “occupied territories” have the highest population growth in the area since modern Israel’s founding. The IDF must be the crapiest most incompetant genociders in the history of genocide.
Correction: the Hamas charter proudly proclaims that a Judean Frei world is their goal, along with an Israel-free Middle East.
None of this is true. Incitement is very narrowly defined, and that is the only thing that keeps the law against it from being unconstitutional. Broaden the definition, or analogize from it to other situations, and the entire law disappears.
Milhouse, violence or threats of violence against Jews for being Jews is happening as I type right now in Europe and likely today on a campus somewhere here in the US.
Given that context, doxing campus students or employees for the “crime” of being Jews is sinister activity. No analogy needed, I fear. It’s already a stretch, no an outright lie, to assume Israelis as a people of being guilty of War Crimes. Unlike Hamas and its allies, Israel actually indicts for criminal war actions, instead of making trophy GoPro videos to share on the internets and giving their children candies to celebrate the death of other children.
To claim that Jews as a people who aren’t even Israelis are responsible for imaginary Israeli War Crimes is preposterous on top of preposterous. To defend such claims is horrendous both on its face and in fact.
If you know Jews are being assaulted and threatened to be assaulted just because they are Jews, claiming ignorence of the possible consequences of doxing for being a Jew is no Defence. The one analogy I WILL make is that every TDS folk who publicly and loudly claimed Trump was literally Hitler bears at least some guilt when some fellow nutcase believes them and tries to kill Trump.
Bob, it is not incitement and it is not a threat. Those are very carefully defined terms, and this simply does not meet the definitions. Your “argument” consists of nothing but “This is terrible, so I can call it anything I like”. That’s stupid. A cobra is terrible, but it is not a tiger. Rape is terrible but it’s not murder. If you want to charge someone with a specific crime they have to have done something that fulfills all the elements of that crime. If it doesn’t they are not guilty of that crime, and you cannot charge them with it, no matter how bad what they have done might be.
“Bob”, you are an idiot. Milhouse attempts to teach you, but you seem too thick to understand.
Milhouse, and sudden,
disagreeing with Milhouse on a subjective matter does not idiocy make. Those posters are, arguably and subjectively, a threat. If it were your face or the face of a loved one on there, you might be less inclined to shrug it off as a prank. Free Speech does, actually and technically, include the right to yell “fire” in a crowded theatre. However, if that prank results in the injury or death of members of the crowd, it is an indictable crime. Just as driving several of your friends to and from a bank is actually and technically not a crime, but….. if they rob that bank – guess what?
We have laws against making threats for a reason. You can probably make a free speech / opinion argument for being able to make ludicrous accusations of someone being a war criminal. Putting up wanted posters all over a campus of individuals from that campus after a year of nutjob campus violence? Next level.
in reply to SuddenlyHappyToBeHere:
in reply to SuddenlyHappyToBeHere: as a reader and sometime commenter I’d like you to be aware that Ad hominems are not appreciated on this site
Go away
AntiSemitism is only protected speech when it remains speech; this paper “speech” is clearly and blatently incitement to violence against a discrete selection of people who share the group characteristic of being Jews.
Had these been posters of black faculty with nooses around their necks, (and although actual deadly violence against Jews outnumbers black lynchings by many orders of magnitude) would you find it to be mere intimidation divorced from any racial intent?
Speech on paper is still speech; that’s why it’s the freedom of speech and of the press, to make clear that the exact medium of communication doesn’t matter.
And no, this does not fit the definition of incitement. Intimidation, maybe. It may be a tough case to make, but it can be made. But not incitement.
Gave you an upvote because you’re correct. Your post isn’t wrong, it’s just not comprehensive, as mailman points out below. I’d go so far as to say the posters are communicating a terroristic threat. I’m sure others may come up with more creativity. A throwing of the book is in order.
No, it is not a threat. Threats are just as narrowly defined as incitement, again in order to pass constitutional muster; a broader definition would make the entire law against it unconstitutional.
Students went too far last spring. Nothing was done. Escalation is now occurring. Immediate suspension. Then prosecution. How many are non-US citizens?
This is what happens when institutions use political policies to decide who is hired. Cut all govt funding, now.
The Biden DOJ probably did the printing for the “students”.
“It is positively stunning that this is happening on an American college campus.”
Not particularly. It wrong but not stunning, shocking or surprising. It has been floating under the radar for years. It has been becoming more acceptable on the left for the last 20+ years as they push harder to blame all issues in the world in general and the middle east specifically on the US and Israel.
It is positively stunning that these creeps are actually being prosecuted. Kol hakavod to whoever is responsible for bringing these well deserved felony charges. It is a sad comment that things have deteriorated to such a point that this executive of prosecutorial diligence and responsibility is considered noteworthy.
People charged with a crime should be identified publicly. That serves as a protection against the police making secret arrests, or arresting people and then denying that they’ve arrested people.
An arrest is a public event. The public should know. Release their identities.
And these are not children. They are all of legal age, unless they’re Doogie Houser.
If you import 3rd world people into the US, they do not magically stop having 3rd world biases. If they advocate violence where they come from, th
I learned this as “you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.”
In this case, the definition country is equal to that of nation, or perhaps cultural background,
Expel them all and then, if they are not citizens, deport them back to their countries of origin–we have enough problems without importing this kind of nonsense.
America’s college campus’ are way too often doing Germany 1934 all over again. This will get worse and cause more crimes off campus..
For those who might need a punk kick this AM – “Criminal Mischief” by the Anti-Heros
https://youtu.be/AclrdIPkCgY?si=Pq-TvbmLYXNeLWdm
Stop saying stupid things like:
“This isn’t who we are.”
It is apparently who at least some of you are or you wouldn’t need to say that. It’s up to you to decide if those are people you want to associate with.
I’ll take the university’s condemnation of the perpetrators and its endorsement of the felony charges as saying “This is not who we want to be or what we want to be identified with.”
Agreed. And that’s a phrase 0bama would use all too frequently as well. Time to retire it.
I spent my freshman year at the U of R. I would estimate that a quarter of my dorm mates were Jewish, as was my roommate and a lot of my social circle. (BTW, my experience was that NY Jews did not have the parochial contempt of rural folk or flyover country that NY transplants like David Letterman have.) It is a sad statement that this anti-Semitic garbage now occurs at the U of R.
If some of the perpetrators are not US citizens, let us hope the U of R has the guts to follow through on suspension or expulsion , even if deportation is a consequence of losing their student status.
The perpetrators should have to watch videos of the atrocities Hamas committed on October 7, in addition to legal consequences and suspension or expulsion from the U of R.
I contacted the President’s office, and the University responded by saying they weren’t releasing names but that the students would be referred through the student conduct process which they intended to initiate once the criminal justice process was complete–no response to my comment about deporting them if they’re not students. They did say that the Department of Public Safety provided documentation of their thorough investigation so that the conduct officer can provide an appropriate outcome, whatever that means
15 years ago, it might have been “stunning” that such a thing happened on a campus in America. Today, what’s astonishing is that the students have been charged by the “real” police with an actual crime, and a felony at that. Sadly, they haven’t included the “hate crime” language as of yet.
While I feel that the whole concept of “hate crime” is equivalent to “thought crime,” as long as it is on the books, cases like these are where it needs to be applied.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/11/20/university-of-rochester-posters-students-charged/76462991007/
“The students were all charged with second-degree criminal mischief — a felony, court records state. The charges stem from the alleged damage to the walls on campus…
“The defendant and others participating in this crime were observed on CCTV intentionally spraying chalkboards and whiteboards with an unknown substance in spray bottles, affixing these ‘Wanted’ posters to these boards, then spraying overtop of the posters with an unknown aerosolized substance,” the felony complaint states…
The complaint alleges that the posters were later found to be stuck with superglue or a “similarly strong and durable adhesive…”
So the charges are for intentionally damaging property.
This is indeed disgusting behavior by half-wits but whatever you do ‘please don’t suspend these angels’ (sarc)
“Now your REAL education begins.”