Image of spray-painted swastikas at Columbia University is from 2018, not 2024 | Fact check

Joedy McCreary, USA TODAY
·3 min read

The claim: Post implies image shows swastikas found at Columbia University amid 2024 campus protests

A May 4 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows a room defaced with spray-painted swastikas.

“This is not Nazi Germany. This is Columbia university (sic), USA,” reads text in the image.

Some commenters took that to mean the image depicts acts of vandalism that occurred during campus protests of the Israel-Hamas war.

“I am Jewish and this is terrifying," wrote one. "Even worse .. if you ask many of the students about October 7th, they have no clue what that means."

Another wrote, “And the administration negotiated with the protesters. Ludicrous and disgraceful."

The post received more than 1,800 likes in nine days. Similar versions accumulated thousands of additional likes and were shared widely on X, formerly Twitter.

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Our rating: Missing context

The implied claim is wrong. The image is from 2018 and is unrelated to the 2024 campus protests.

Image of swastikas was published in 2018

Pro-Palestinian activists opposing the Israel-Hamas war set up an encampment at Columbia University on April 17. Many Jewish Zionist students at Columbia said they faced threats of violence and antisemitic language, with hundreds signing a letter describing those threats.

But the acts of vandalism shown in the Instagram image have nothing to do with the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests.

Fact check: Video shows rally in Norway, not response to Columbia University protest

The photo was taken in November 2018 by the Columbia Spectator, which reported a Jewish professor’s office was vandalized with swastikas and an antisemitic slur. It generated widespread media coverage and triggered a hate crime investigation from the New York Police Department, NBC News reported at the time.

The professor, Elizabeth Midlarsky, taught psychology and education and was a Holocaust scholar. She died in January 2023 at the age of 81.

The vandalism took place roughly a month after the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, in which a man shot and killed 11 and injured seven others in a Pittsburgh synagogue. The gunman, Robert Bowers, was sentenced to death in August 2023 after his conviction on 63 criminal counts.

The protests on college campuses have spawned significant misinformation on social media. USA TODAY has debunked false claims that protesters at the University of Mississippi held a pro-Donald Trump banner, that an image showed a paraglider installation at Columbia and that another image showed a “rape is resistance” flyer distributed at a Columbia protest.

USA TODAY reached out to the Instagram user who shared the post but did not immediately receive a response.

Snopes also debunked the claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Image of spray-painted swastikas at Columbia is from 2018 | Fact check