Masked assailants injured two Jewish students in a targeted attack Wednesday afternoon on the campus of DePaul University in Chicago, according to an official.
“I’m appalled to share that the attack targeted two Jewish students at DePaul who were visibly showing their support for Israel,” DePaul University President Robert L. Manuel wrote to the university community. “Masked attackers punched our students, who sustained physical injuries but declined medical treatment.”
The “completely unacceptable” public safety incident occurred at about 3:20 p.m. just outside the Student Center on the Lincoln Park Campus, Manuel added. It was “a violation of DePaul’s values to uphold and care for the dignity of every individual” and left the university community “outraged,” according to the president.
The private Catholic university has involved the Chicago Police Department (CPD) in the matter “so that they can determine whether to classify it as a hate crime that targeted our students because of their Jewish identity,” he said. “We will do all we can to hold those responsible accountable for this outrageous incident.”
DePaul would not condone hate or violence against any of its students, Manuel continued. The president pointed the university community back to its “shared expectations.” (RELATED: ‘Significant Disturbance’: Temple University Suspends Anti-Israel Group Over Disrupting Event)
Tensions flared on the Lincoln Park campus’s quad earlier this year as the CPD cleared out an over two-week-old encampment May 16 that protesters had set up while calling for the university’s divestment from Israel, ABC 7 Chicago reported. Manuel wrote in a letter at the time that there had been “physical altercations,” threats from people not affiliated with the university, lack of ability to carry on university activities and threats to the protesters themselves.
Manuel and the rest of the university management released guiding principles for university regarding the Israel-Hamas war less than three weeks after the terror group’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. They also condemned the murder of the six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume. He was fatally stabbed in Plainfield, a township 37-odd miles southwest of Chicago, according to the Will County Sheriff’s Office.
The Lincoln Park neighborhood has witnessed 15 recorded hate crimes in general in 2024 — the second-highest number in Chicago and up from 10 in 2023 and seven in 2022, according to data from the CPD.
Chicago has seen a rise in recorded hate crimes since 2017, with a slight drop in 2020, according to the CPD’s data. (RELATED: Dem Mayor’s Hand-Picked School Board President Resigns After Just A Week Over Antisemitic Social Media Posts)
Race/ethnicity/ancestry-related bias motivates nearly half — 49.4% — of the hate crimes recorded in the city since 2012, the data showed. There have been 85 such reported crimes in the city in 2024. There were 170 such reported crimes in 2023, up from 115 in 2022 and 46 in 2021.
This article was originally published at dailycaller.com
