Nooses and Nazi swastikas on U.S. campuses: an anti-racist call for a rhetorical reframing of hate symbols as violent technologies

ABSTRACT

The terrorizing placement of nooses and Nazi swastikas on U.S. college and university campuses has sustained a climate of fear, trauma, and intimidation. University administration responses often invoke protest from targeted communities over their approach. Examining news reports and university statements between 2010 and 2023, we critique universities’ use of the rhetorical framework of “symbols” (e.g., “heinous symbols of hate,” “racist symbols”). We argue that the “symbolism” framework reflects and reinforces a problem of minimization, if not dismissal, when responding to the impact of these events. Drawing on works by rhetorical studies scholars like Matsuda, Altman, Butler, and Ore, we argue that nooses and swastikas must be understood and treated in relation to their material, violent, spatial, and agential oppressive power and viewed through the relationship between the academic environment of white Christian spaces and anti-Black and anti-Jewish violence and exclusion. Coining the term, “technologies of violence,” we invite a rhetorical shift from hate speech and symbols to acts of violent doing and doing to within the context of historical and contemporary phenomena of systemic racism and antisemitism in academia and society. We offer an anti-racist approach to responding to and studying terroristic objects and acts on campuses.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-Black racism
• antisemitism
• symbolism
• technology
• university campus

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to recognize the work of Shelby Crow, Mason Ratzer, and Yael Wallen for their assistance in collecting and organizing data materials. The authors also express their sincere appreciation to journal editor, Stacey Sowards, and the two anonymous peer reviewers for their invaluable feedback and enlightening suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Hereafter “swastika(s).”

2 See, for example, Jack Shuler, The Thirteenth Turn: A History of the Noose (New York: Public Affairs, 2014); Steven Heller, The Swastika and Symbols of Hate: Extremist Iconography Today (New York: Allworth Press, 2019).

3 See, for instance, ABC News, “Torch-Wielding White Nationalists March on University of Virginia Ahead of Massive Rally,” ABC News, August 12, 2017, https://abcnews.go.com/US/torch-wielding-white-nationalists-march-university-virginia-ahead/story?id=49172793 (accessed January 5, 2023); WCIA.COM, “Hateful, Anti-Semitic Flyers Appear on U of I Campus,” WCIA.COM, February 21, 2022, https://www.wcia.com/news/hateful-anti-semitic-flyers-appear-on-u-of-i-campus/ (accessed January 5, 2023); Public Affairs, UC Berkeley, “‘Disturbing, Disgusting’ Poster Prompts Message from the Chancellor,” Berkeley News, October 10, 2018, https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/10/10/disturbing-disgusting-poster-prompts-message-from-the-chancellor/ (accessed January 5, 2023); Quinlan Bentley, “Black Lives Matter Flag Vandalized, White Supremacist Signs Placed around Xavier’s Campus,” The Enquirer, January 31, 2021, https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2021/01/31/xavier-university-black-lives-matter-flag-vandalized-white-supremacist-signs-found/4331840001/ (accessed January 5, 2023).

4 Examples of cases are included in our data. See news items in the section, “Contemporary perpetrator practices on university campuses and their impacts,” and notes 5 and 8–11. 

5 See, for instance, Dion J. Pierre, “‘Disgusted and Numb’: University of California San Diego Bathroom Vandalized with Swastikas,” The Algemeiner, May 10, 2023, https://www.algemeiner.com/2023/05/10/disgusted-and-numb-university-of-california-san-diego-bathroom-vandalized-with-swastika/ (accessed October 12, 2023); Liliana M. Garces et al., “Hate Speech on Campus: How Student Leaders of Color Respond,” The Review of Higher Education 45, no. 3 (2022): 275–306.

6 Online searches for nooses and swastikas incidents were conducted to cover the most recent decade and provide an overview of the phenomenon. We used the keywords, “noose” / “swastika,” “university,” and/or “campus.” For the swastika we also used the Amcha Initiative website, which tracks antisemitic incidents on campuses, using in the search engine the keyword “swastika” alone: https://amchainitiative.org/search-by-incident#incident/display-by-date/?view_279_page=1&view_279_filters=%5B%7B%22ignore_operators%22%3Afalse%2C%22operator%22%3A%22contains%22%2C%22operator_default%22%3A%22contains%22%2C%22multi_type%22%3A%22one%22%2C%22multi_input%22%3A%22chosen%22%2C%22multi_match%22%3A%22or%22%2C%22field%22%3A%22keyword_search%22%2C%22name%22%3A%22Keywords%22%2C%22value%22%3A%22swastika%22%7D%5D. Our goal was not to provide an exhaustive list of published cases in the media, nor to assess the published data, but to locate a robust collection of news media exemplars to illustrate noted experiences and incidents as well as university officials’ responses in this essay, which aims to develop a theoretical inquiry regarding our argument to shift from symbols to violent technologies as a productive way of thinking through these incidents. We are aware that there are cases that are not reported, or if reported do not find their way into the media. To assemble a collection of exemplar news articles for study, a first round of collection (from 2010 to 2019) was conducted by a research assistant in 2018/19. A second round of exemplar collection took place in August 2022, and another one through finalizing the manuscript and its revisions during the first half of 2023.

7 Mari J. Matsuda, “Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim’s Story,” in Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment, ed. Mari J. Matsuda et al. (New York: Routledge, 1993/2019), 17–51; Garces et al., “Hate Speech on Campus.”

8 See the Swastika Monitor website: https://ccdigitalpress.org/book/makingfuturematters/gries-part-3.html (accessed January 5, 2023). It is also important to note that the Jewish population in the USA includes 15% Jews of Color. See background about Jews in the USA in the 2020 summary of the Pew Research: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/#fn-34764-1, and in E. Gaskin, “Jews of Color and the Changing Demographics of Jews,” Jewish Boston, February 14, 2022, https://www.jewishboston.com/read/jews-of-color-and-the-changing-demographics-of-jews/ (accessed January 5, 2023).

9 Lauren Lantry, “Noose Found in Building Owned by Elite University,” ABC News, July 4, 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/US/noose-found-building-owned-elite-university/story?id=71608741 (accessed October 18, 2020).

10 McKenna Corson, “OU Hillel Paints Messages of Love over Anti-Semitic, Racist Graffiti,” Cleveland Jewish News, April 29, 2020, https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/news/local_news/ou-hillel-paints-messages-of-love-over-anti-semitic-racist-graffiti/article_45b1f168-8a51-11ea-a7e8-2fa81db4504d.html (accessed October 18, 2020). Swastikas drawn on Jewish students’ doors accompanied by “All Heil” at the University of Georgia were Mentioned in a University Statement as “Offensive Symbols.” Grady Newsource, “UGA Confirms Reports of Swastikas Drawn on Jewish Students’ Doors,” Grady Newsource, November 20, 2019, https://gradynewsource.uga.edu/uga-confirms-reports-of-swastikas-drawn-on-jewish-students-doors/ (accessed November 20, 2023).

11 Oceana Christopher and Bryan Harris, “Hate Image Found at OCC: A Swastika Was Drawn into a Wall Near the Student Success Center,” Coast Report, March 3, 2020, https://www.coastreportonline.com/campus_news/campus/article_c3d17510-5d9b-11ea-9b92-ff450a49539d.html (accessed October 18, 2020).

12 See, for instance, Shuler, The Thirteenth Turn; Heller, The Swastika and Symbols of Hate; Malcolm Quinn, The Swastika: Constructing the Symbol (London: Routledge, 1994); Joanne Mundorf and Guo-Ming Chen, “Transculturation of Visual Signs: A Case Analysis of the Swastika,” Intercultural Communication Studies 15, no. 2 (2006): 33–48; Mara Lee Grayson, Antisemitism and the White Supremacist Imaginary: Conflations and Contradictions in Composition and Rhetoric (New York: Peter Lang, 2023); Mari J. Matsuda et al., eds., Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment (New York: Routledge, 1993/2019). See also the Anti-Defamation League’s accounts on the Noose and the Swastika in “Hate on Display™ Hate Symbols Database,” adl.org.

13 See also Garces et al., “Hate Speech on Campus,” for students of color’s complaints about universities not recognizing institutional, historical, and systemic racism.

14 Matsuda, “Public Response to Racist Speech”; Andrew Altman, “Liberalism and Campus Hate Speech,” in Campus Wars: Multiculturalism and the Politics of Difference, ed. John Arthur (New York: Routledge, 1995/2021), 121–34; Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (London: Routledge, 2021), 43–69; Ersula J. Ore, Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2019), 7–26.

15 Janvieve Williams Comrie et al., “Anti-Blackness/Colorism,” in Moving toward Antibigotry, ed. BU Center for Antiracist Research (Boston: Center for Antiracist Research, Boston University, 2022); Walter Laqueur, The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Zillah Eisenstein, Hatreds: Racialized and Sexualized Conflicts in the 21st Century (New York: Routledge, 2014); Deborah Lipstadt, Antisemitism: Here and Now (New York: Schocken, 2019); Robert S. Wistrich, “The Devil, the Jews, and Hatred of the ‘Other,’” in Demonizing the Other: Antisemitism, Racism and Xenophobia, ed. Robert S. Wistrich (London: Routledge, 1999/2013), 1–15.

16 Comrie et al. define Anti-Blackness as “the beliefs, attitudes, actions, practices, and behaviors of individuals and institutions that devalue, minimize, and marginalize the full participation of Black people—visibly (or perceived to be) of African descent. It is the systematic denial of Black humanity and dignity, which makes Black people effectively ineligible for full citizenship. The Anti-Blackness paradigm positions Blackness as inherently problematic, rather than recognizing the long, rich, and diverse history of Black people throughout the African diaspora and acknowledging that Black communities across the United States (and the world) have been severely disadvantaged as a result of historical and contemporary systemic racism.” Comrie et al., “Anti-Blackness/Colorism,” 74. Antisemitism, and its more historical form of Judeophobia, is a religious and/or ethnic, and at times racial hatred toward Jews, for their perceived both inferiority and superiority and their assumed intended malicious harm to society. It manifests as discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and violent and deadly attacks against Jewish (and perceived Jewish) individuals, communities, facilities, and institutions. Historically, racism and antisemitism have been interlinked in their beliefs, practices, and consequences. Some scholars view antisemitism as a type of racism, or even as its predecessor, while others consider antisemitism as holding somewhat different operative practices than racism, though they overlap. Our approach in this essay is embedded in the broader and systemic practice of post-colonial racism and hate in the United States and its evolvement in Europe and Africa, as based on white domination, often Christian-based, resulting in prejudice, hatred, oppression, discrimination, and violent—including deadly—practices, and actions toward Black, Jewish, and other marginalized communities based on racial ideology. See note 15, as well as George M. Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

17 Ersula Ore and Matthew Houdek, “Lynching in Times of Suffocation: Toward a Spatiotemporal Politics of Breathing,” Women’s Studies in Communication 43, no. 4 (2020): 443–58. See also Ore, Lynching, 128–9.

18 Lisa A. Flores, “Between Abundance and Marginalization: The Imperative of Racial Rhetorical Criticism,” Review of Communication 16, no. 1 (2016): 5.

19 Ore, Lynching; Ore and Houdek, “Lynching in Times of Suffocation”; David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism (Malden: Blackwell, 2009), 1–31; Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, “Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation,” American Sociological Review 62, no. 3 (1997): 465–80; Garces et al., “Hate Speech on Campus.”

20 Shuler, The Thirteenth Turn, 17–18.

21 Shuler explains that the turns around the rope might have developed to better position the neck so that it might break. Shuler, The Thirteenth Turn, 20.

22 See Kismet Beckman in Encyclopedia of Black Studies, ed. Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publication, 2004), 312. See also lynches by states, https://web.archive.org/web/20100629081241/; http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingsstate.html.

23 Estimations note that more than 4,700 people were lynched in the USA between 1882 and 1968, and almost 73 percent of them were Black, although this number is probably much higher. See Alaa Elassar who writes about the estimation of the NAACP. Alaa Elassar, “Why the Noose Is Such a Potent Symbol of Hate,” CNN, June 23, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/us/noose-hate-symbol-racism-trnd/index.html; see also Shuler, The Thirteenth Turn. The constancy of targeted violence associated with nooses and lynchings against Black Americans should also be seen as part of a broader practice in U.S. history of “an execution without due process of law” (Beckman, Encyclopedia of Black Studies, 312) against Indigenous people, Latinx, Jews, and other ethnic groups, usually by hanging. For instance, Cecily Hilleary, “Remembering Native American Lynching Victims,” VOA News, April 25, 2018, https://www.voanews.com/a/remembering-native-american-lynching-victims/4362911.html. The noose and its connection to lynching is also contextualized within global executions. See, for instance, Shuler, The Thirteenth Turn, for descriptions of incidents in Europe and the Middle East. See also DeNeen L. Brown, “‘Lynch him!’: New Lynching Memorial Confronts the Nation’s Brutal History of Racial Terrorism,” The Washington Post, April 24, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/24/lynch-him-new-lynching-memorial-forces-nation-confront-its-brutal-history-of-racial-terrorism/.

24 Lonnie G. Bunch III, “A Noose at the Smithsonian Brings History Back to Life,” The New York Times, June 23, 2017, 1–2, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/opinion/noose-smithsonian-african-american-museum.html.

25 See also Anti-Defamation League, “Hate Symbol: Noose,” Anti-Defamation League website, https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/noose and Southern Poverty Law Center, https://www.splcenter.org/ (accessed June 4, 2024).

26 Fredrickson, Racism, 1.

27 Shuler, The Thirteenth Turn, 7.

28 Ore, Lynching, 21.

29 Elassar, “Why the Noose Is Such a Potent Symbol of Hate”; see also Eric McDaniel and Elena Moore, “Lynching Is Now a Federal Hate Crime after a Century of Blocked Efforts,” NPR.org, March 29, 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1086720579/lynching-is-now-a-federal-hate-crime-after-a-century-of-blocked-efforts.

30 Anti-Defamation League, “Hate Symbol: Noose.”

31 Shuler, The Thirteenth Turn, 19.

32 Hatewatch Staff, “Frequency of Noose Hate Crime Incidents Surges,” Southern Poverty Law Center, June 5, 2017, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/06/05/frequency-noose-hate-crime-incidents-surges. The Southern Poverty Law Center staff writes: “Nooses evoke feelings of subjugation, discrimination and fear targeting mainly Black members of society. The history and imagery are too intimately bound to consider these actions a simple expression of one’s viewpoint.”

33 The swastika originated 7,000 years ago in Eurasia and was long used as a symbol of well-being in ancient societies, including those in India, China, Africa, Native America, and Europe. It remains a sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Odinism, and is commonly seen in temples or houses in India or Indonesia. The word “Swastika” is derived from the Sanskrit word svastika, meaning “good fortune” or “well-being.” In the nineteenth century, European interest in the ancient civilizations of the Near East increased its popularity and it gained new usage. Archeological findings led to speculations that this symbol belonged to the remote ancestors of a shared Aryan culture that spanned Europe and Asia. See United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, “Misuse of Holocaust Imagery Today: When Is It Antisemitism?,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/misuse-of-holocaust-imagery-today-when-is-it-antisemitism (accessed 2024) and Heller, The Swastika and Symbols of Hate.

34 See United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, “The History of the Swastika,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/history-of-the-swastika and Anti-Defamation League, “Hate Symbol: Swastika,” Anti-Defamation League website, https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/swastika (accessed May 30, 2021).

35 See Fredrickson, Racism, 2.

36 See Jewish Virtual Library, “The Holocaust: The Nuremberg Laws,” Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-nuremberg-laws; and more specifically, “The Nuremberg Laws: Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor (September 15, 1935),” https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/law-for-the-protection-of-german-blood-and-german-honor; “The Nuremberg Laws: The Reich Citizenship Law (September 15, 1935),” The Reich Citizenship Law, jewishvirtuallibrary.org.

37 See Fredrickson, Racism, 1–2; Wistrich, “The Devil, the Jews, and Hatred of the ‘Other.’”

38 Heller, The Swastika and Symbols of Hate. See also Quinn, The Swastika; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, “The History of the Swastika.”

39 See Anti-Defamation League, “Hate Symbol: Swastika.” See also Southern Poverty Law Center, “The White Power Movement Hits the Streets,” Southern Poverty Law Center website, https://www.splcenter.org/year-hate-extremism-2023/white-power-movement.

40 Quinn, The Swastika.

41 Heller, The Swastika and Symbols of Hate.

42 Heller, The Swastika and Symbols of Hate.

43 See also Anti-Defamation League, “Hate Symbol: Swastika.”

44 See also Anti-Defamation League, “Hate Symbol: Swastika”; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, “The History of the Swastika.”

45 See also Anti-Defamation League, “Hate Symbol: Swastika”; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, “The History of the Swastika.”

46 See Pierre-André Taguieff in Fredrickson, Racism, 9–12.

47 See Pierre-André Taguieff in Fredrickson, Racism, 9–12.

48 See Jennifer Daryl Slack and J. Macgregor Wise, Culture and Technology: A Primer (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2015), 109–12.

49 See Slack and Wise, Culture and Technology, 109–12; Marita Sturken, Douglas Thomas, and Sandra Ball-Rokeach, eds., Technological Visions: The Hopes and Fears That Shape New Technologies (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004); Sarah Sharma, In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014); Robert Rosenberg, Callous Objects (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018); Ruha Benjamin, Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life (Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2019).

50 Benjamin, Captivating Technology.

51 Jerry Mitchell, “Ole Miss Student Charged for Defacing Meredith Statue,” USA Today, March 27, 2015, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/03/27/ole-miss-meredith-statue-vandalism/70562446/ (accessed October 16, 2020).

52 Saja Hindi, “CSU Says It’s Reinforcing Values after Noose Incident,” The Coloradoan, September 1, 2017, https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2017/09/01/csu-says-its-reinforcing-values-after-noose-incident/621717001/ (accessed September 20, 2021).

53 Mariah Bohanon, “Three Incidents Involving Nooses on College Campuses Are Being Investigated as Hate Crimes,” Insight into Diversity (2017), https://www.insightintodiversity.com/three-incidents-involving-nooses-on-college-campuses-are-being-investigated-as-hate-crimes.

54 Carma Hassan and Tat Bellamy-Walker, “University of Michigan Investigating after Noose Found at Employee’s Desk,” CNN, September 29, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/22/us/university-of-michigan-noose-investigation/index.html.

55 NBC Palm Springs, “Stanford Investigating a Noose Spotted on Campus,” NBC, July 17, 2020, https://nbcpalmsprings.com/2019/07/17/stanford-investigating-a-noose-spotted-on-campus/.

56 Sanaé Wolfe, “The Inside Story of the Noose Found on Campus,” San Fransisco FogHorn, April 5, 2021, http://sffoghorn.com/the-inside-story-of-the-noose-found-on-campus/.

57 KCBS Radio, “Sonoma State Community Shaken by Discovery of Nooses on Campus,” KCBS Radio: On-Demand, May 17, 2022, https://omny.fm/shows/kcbsam-on-demand/sonoma-state-university-react-to-recent-finding-of.

58 CBS News, “Report Gives New Details on U. of Missouri Swastika Story,” CBS News, November 12, 2015, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/university-of-missouri-swastika-campus-police-report/ (accessed October 16, 2020).

59 ABC7 News, “Swastikas Discovered in San Jose State University Campus Dorms,” ABC7 News, September 22, 2016, https://abc7news.com/san-jose-state-university-sjsu-hate-crime-swastikas-at/1521968/ (accessed December 12, 2021).

60 Conor Morris, “OU Leaders Condemn Graffiti of Swastikas on Campus,” The Athens News, October 1, 2017, https://www.athensnews.com/news/campus/ou-leaders-condemn-graffiti-of-swastikas-on-campus/article_482ee43e-a6cc-11e7-b8d1-87d5c5a9e780.html.

61 Daniel J. Munoz, “Swastika Found Painted Outside Rutgers Dining Hall,” TapInto, October 31, 2017, https://www.tapinto.net/towns/fair-lawn-slash-glen-rock/sections/other-nj-news/articles/swastika-found-painted-outside-rutgers-dining-hal-3.

62 Nick Aresco, “Homophobic Slurs, Swastika Found on UMass Amherst Student’s Door,” 22News, November 14, 2018, https://www.wwlp.com/news/local-news/hampshire-county/homophobic-slurs-swastika-found-on-umass-amherst-students-door/.

63 Asher Wildman, “Residents Turn Message of Hate into Message of Love on Christmas,” Spectrum News, December 25, 2018, https://www.mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2018/12/25/swastikas-spray-painted-along-alafaya-trail-near-ucf-campus.

64 Carol Kuruvilla, “Swastika Found Painted over Pittsburgh Memorial at Duke University,” Huffpost, November 20, 2018, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/swastika-pittsburgh-memorial-duke-university_n_5bf42068e4b01909c809acb8.

65 Serena Bettis, “Swastika Drawing Found on Wall in Aggie Village,” Collegian, September 19, 2019, https://collegian.com/articles/news/2019/09/category-news-swastika-drawing-found-on-wall-in-aggie-village/ (*Original article was taken down).

66 Grady Newsource, “UGA Confirms Reports of Swastikas Drawn on Jewish Students’ Doors,” Grady Newsource, November 20, 2019, http://gradynewsource.uga.edu/uga-confirms-reports-of-swastikas-drawn-on-jewish-students-doors/; Aaron Bandler, “University of Georgia President Denounces Multiple Swastika Incidents,” Jewish Journal, November 22, 2019, https://jewishjournal.com/news/nation/307524/university-of-georgia-president-denounces-multiple-swastika-incidents/.

67 Isabel Hughes, “University of Delaware Investigating Swastika Drawn on Poster on Jewish Professor’s Door,” Delaware News Journal, May 9, 2023, https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/crime/2023/05/09/university-of-delaware-investigating-swastika-drawn-on-poster-english-professor/70198908007/.

68 Jonathan Franklin, “Stanford University Investigates Swastikas and Hitler Image Left on Student’s Door,” NPR, March 13, 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/03/13/1163010995/stanford-university-investigates-swastikas-hitler-image-students-door.

69 StopAntisemitism on X, “UCSD—Feces Swastikas Were Found in a Residential Dorm Bathroom. We Have No Words for This Vile Hate @UCSanDiego,” StopAntisemitism, May 9, 2023, https://twitter.com/StopAntisemites/status/1655941468274712583 (accessed November 18, 2023). 

70 Mari J. Matsuda and Charles R. Lawrence III, “Epilogue, Burning Crosses and the R.A.V. Case,” in Matsuda et al., Words That Wound, 134.

71 Matsuda and Lawrence III, “Epilogue, Burning Crosses and the R.A.V. Case,” 133–4.

72 Matsuda and Lawrence III, “Epilogue, Burning Crosses and the R.A.V. Case,” 133–4.

73 NBC Palm Springs, “Stanford Investigating a Noose.”

74 Megan Schellong and Dana Whyte, “Students Report Noose Found Outside of MSU Dorm Room,” WLNS.com, October 21, 2019, https://www.wlns.com/news/student-claims-noose-found-outside-of-msu-dorm-room/.

75 KCBS Radio, “Sonoma State Community Shaken.”

76 13WJZ, “Students Shocked after Swastika Scribbled on Bowie State Building,” CBS Baltimore, November 13, 2015, https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2015/11/13/suspect-scribbles-swastika-on-campus-building-amidst-protests/.

77 Kuruvilla, “Swastika Found Painted over Pittsburgh Memorial.”

78 Augusta Anthony, “Jewish Professor Finds Swastikas Spray-Painted on Her Office Walls at Columbia’s Teachers College,” CNN, November 29, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/29/us/swastika-vandalism-columbia-university (accessed October 10, 2022).

79 Issac Stanley-Becker, “‘They Got Me. I’m Afraid’: Swastikas Spray-Painted on a Jewish Professor’s Office at Columbia,” Washington Post, November 29, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/29/they-got-me-im-afraid-swastikas-spray-painted-jewish-professors-office-columbia/ (accessed October 10, 2022).

80 John Annese, “Holocaust Scholar at Teachers College, Columbia University Finds Swastikas Spray-Painted on Her Office Wall,” NYDailyNews, November 28, 2018, https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-metro-teacher-college-professor-office-wall-defaced-swastikas-20181128-story.html. Earlier, in 2007, a swastika was spray-painted on her office door and her name was purposefully written on it and crossed out.

81 WDRB, “REPORT: Swastika Found Inside Dorm Room at Univ. of Indianapolis,” WDRB.COM, August 7, 2019, https://www.wdrb.com/news/report-swastika-found-inside-dorm-room-at-univ-of-indianapolis/article_4dda0f08-b93f-11e9-b595-034ffd8d5ae0.html.

82 See Matsuda and Lawrence III, “Epilogue, Burning Crosses and the R.A.V. Case,” 134; Matsuda in Altman, “Liberalism and Campus Hate Speech”; and Matsuda, “Public Response to Racist Speech,” 39.

83 Matsuda, “Public Response to Racist Speech,” 17.

84 See Matsuda and Lawrence III, “Epilogue, Burning Crosses and the R.A.V. Case,” 134 and 133–6. For scholarship that discusses the difference between hate speech and hate crime see, for instance, Garces et al., “Hate Speech on Campus.” They explain the difference between the two following Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012): hate speech is the “use of words [that] are deliberately abusive and/or insulting and/or threatening and/or demeaning directed at members of vulnerable minorities, calculated to stir up hatred against them,” 8. Based on the U.S. Department of Justice, “at the federal level, hate crime laws include crimes committed on the basis of the victim's perceived or actual race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability.” These differ from bias or hate incidents which are acts of prejudice, but “are not crimes and do not involve violence, threats, or property damage (U.S. Department of Justice, ”Learn About Hate Crimes," U.S. Department of Justice (website). https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/learn-about-hate-crimes). See also Jennifer Schweppe and Kar-wai Tong, “What Is a Hate Crime?” Cogent Social Sciences 7, no. 1 (2021): 1902643.

85 See, for instance, Garces et al., “Hate Speech on Campus,” about Robert J. Boeckmann and Jeffrey Liew, “Hate Speech: Asian American Students' Justice Judgments and Psychological Responses,” Journal of Social Issues 58, no. 2 (2002): 363–81; Dorainne J. Levy et al., “Psychological and Biological Responses to Race-Based Social Stress as Pathways to Disparities in Educational Outcomes,” American Psychologist 71, no. 6 (2016): 455–73; Laura Beth Nielsen, “Subtle, Pervasive, Harmful: Racist and Sexist Remarks in Public as Hate Speech,” Journal of Social Issues 58, no. 2 (2002): 265–80; Kimberly T. Schneider et al., “An Examination of the Nature and Correlates of Ethnic Harassment Experiences in Multiple Contexts,” Journal of Applied Psychology 85, no. 1 (2000): 3–12; Christina W. Yao et al., “In the Aftermath of a Racialized Incident: Exploring International Students of Color's Perceptions of Campus Racial Climate,” Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 14, no. 3 (2021): 386–97.

86 Altman, “Liberalism and Campus Hate Speech.”

87 Matsuda, “Public Response to Racist Speech,” 23.

88 See Bonilla-Silva, “Rethinking Racism”; Darrel Wanzer-Serrano, “Rhetoric’s Rac(e/ist) Problems,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 105, no. 4 (2019): 465–76; Flores, “Between Abundance and Marginalization,” 5; Alexis McGee and J. David Cisneros, “Looking Back, Looking Forward: A Dialogue on ‘The Imperative of Racial Rhetorical Criticism,’” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 15, no. 4 (2018): 300–5.

89 See Susan Searls Giroux, “Introduction,” in David Theo Goldberg, Sites of Race (Cambridge: Polity, 2014), 3.

90 Goldberg, The Threat of Race; P. Khalil Saucier and Tryon P. Woods, “Introduction,” in Conceptual Aphasia in Black: Displacing Racial Formation, ed. P. Khalil Saucier and Tryon P. Woods (Lexington: Lanham, 2016), 1–33.

91 Bonilla-Silva, “Rethinking Racism.”

92 See Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1–31; Goldberg, Sites of Race, see specifically introduction by Susan Searls Giroux, “Introduction,” 1–13; see also Goldberg, “Racial Europeanization,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 29, no. 2 (2006): 331–64.

93 For quote see Searls Giroux, “Introduction,” 3.

94 Ore, Lynching, 22.

95 Ore and Houdek, “Lynching in Times of Suffocation,” 447.

96 Following Fanon, Ore and Houdek argue, Alia Al-Saji illuminates the practice of “a moment of temporal dislocation and disconnect […] in which racism displaces racialized bodies from history and relegates them to a ‘closed past.’” Ore and Houdek, “Lynching in Times of Suffocation,” 446.

97 Saucier and Woods, “Introduction,” 2, 3.

98 Jamie Moshin, “Hello Darkness: Antisemitism and Rhetorical Silence in the ‘Trump Era,’” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 8, no. 1/2 (2018): 26–43. This is also based on scholars like Hall, Jaworski, Huckin, Olson, Glenn, and Cloud.

99 See also Huckin’s term, “manipulative silence” in Moshin, “Hello Darkness.” Moshin adds another function of silence, which is employed “not from oppression, but from power,” pointing at how silences are used for achieving specific (strategically unstated) goals in which the rhetor intentionally/strategically conceals relevant information for their own advantage.

100 Lantry, “Noose Found in Building.”

101 Susie Brubaker-Cole et al., “Message Regarding Nazi Swastikas Found in a Student Residence,” StanfordReport, March 11, 2023, https://news.stanford.edu/report/2023/03/11/swastikas-found-student-residence/.

102 Sylvia M. Burwell, “Announcement: October 20, 2023,” American University Announcements, October 20, 2023, https://www.american.edu/president/announcements/october-20-2023.cfm.

103 Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies, 4th ed. (London: Sage, 2016), 106–46.

104 Italic emphasis added. Franklin, “Stanford University Investigates Swastikas”; Susie Brubaker-Cole and Patrick Dunkley, “Message to the Stanford Community Regarding a Noose Discovered on Campus,” StanfordReport, May 9, 2022, https://news.stanford.edu/report/2022/05/09/message-stanford-community-regarding-noose-discovered-campus/.

105 Emphasis added, also in the following quote. Danny Schwartz, “Police Investigating Antisemitic Vandalism at Ann Arbor Frat House,” The Detroit Jewish News, July 24, 2023, https://www.thejewishnews.com/news/local/police-investigating-antisemitic-vandalism-at-ann-arbor-frat-house/article_170337a0-2a49-11ee-830f-3b4bd0b8594d.html.

106 Schellong and Whyte, “Students Report Noose.”

107 Emily Guerrant, “Statement on Reported Racial Incident,” MSU.edu, October 21, 2019, https://msu.edu/issues-statements/2019-10-21-racial-incident.

108 Emily Guerrant, “Statement on Reported Racial Incident.”

109 13WMAZ Staff, “Georgia College President Condemns ‘Despicable Act’ of Swastikas Drawn on Dorm Room Doors,” 13WMAZ, November 25, 2019, https://www.13wmaz.com/article/news/local/anti-semitic-act-condemned-georgia-college/93-252b3cc5-3ecf-4b02-abc5-8318d209d5a9.

110 13WMAZ Staff, “Georgia College President Condemns ‘Despicable Act’”; Pepper Baker, “Jewish Georgia College Students React to Swastika Drawings on Dorm Room Doors,” 13WMAZ, November 25, 2019, https://www.13wmaz.com/article/news/local/georgia-college-students-react-to-swastika-drawings/93-b5d5e61b-f186-4d44-af53-5d796063cdd7.

111 Ore and Houdek, “Lynching in Times of Suffocation.”

112 Ore and Houdek, “Lynching in Times of Suffocation,” 443–4.

113 Ore and Houdek, “Lynching in Times of Suffocation,” 443–4.

114 Emphasis added in both. Eric Stirgus, “UGA Investigating Swastikas Drawn in Campus Buildings,” The Atlanta Journal Constitution, November 22, 2019, https://www.ajc.com/news/local-education/uga-investigating-swastikas-drawn-campus-buildings/ijwNLsbGHa6p6549jVBMFJ/.

115 Emphasis added. Marc Tessier-Lavigne, “President's Statement on Discovery of Noose,” StanfordReport, May 9, 2022, https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2022/05/presidents-statement-discovery-noose.

116 Ore and Houdek, “Lynching in Times of Suffocation”; Ore, Lynching.

117 Searls Giroux, “Introduction,” 3. See also specifically about universities dismissing overt acts of antisemitism at Grayson, Antisemitism and the White Supremacist Imaginary, 128–9.

118 Karen Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,” Signs 28, no. 3 (2003): 801–31.

119 Flores, “Between Abundance and Marginalization.”

120 Emphasis added. Matsuda, “Public Response to Racist Speech,” 41.

121 Matsuda and Lawrence III, “Epilogue, Burning Crosses and the R.A.V. Case,” 133–4.

122 Altman, “Liberalism and Campus Hate Speech.”

123 Matsuda, “Public Response to Racist Speech,” 36.

124 Butler, Excitable Speech, 43–69.

125 J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975). We have used Austin’s work and the developed speech act theory in this section to lead our theorizing argument, but not in an exhaustive way that follows a detailed analysis of the system of speech act categorization as familiar in fields like pragmatics and linguistics.

126 Butler, Excitable Speech, 43–69.

127 Butler, Excitable Speech, 43–69.

128 Butler, Excitable Speech, 43–69.

129 Shuler, The Thirteenth Turn, 7.

130 Steven Heller, “The Ministry of Fear,” Social Research 71, no. 4 (2004): 849–62, 850.

131 Ore and Houdek, “Lynching in Times of Suffocation.”

132 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). See also Michel Callon and Bruno Latour, “Unscrewing the Big Levithan,” in Advances in Social Theory and Methodology, ed. Karin Knorr Cetina and A.V. Cicourel (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 277–303.

133 Slack and Wise, Culture and Technology.

134 Benjamin, Captivating Technology.

135 See Slack and Wise, Culture and Technology; Latour, Reassembling the Social; Callon and Latour, “Unscrewing the Big Levithan.”

136 This framework provides another way to understand the noose and the swastika also through Don Norman’s concept of affordances, pointing at the relationship between the properties of an object and the capabilities of the agent that determined how the object could be used. See Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things: Revised & Expanded Edition (New York: Basic Books, 2013).

137 Latour, Reassembling the Social.

138 See, for instance, explanations and examples provided by Slack and Wise, Culture and Technology, 159, 181. Among these, space is bent by a television that displaces other furniture or the couches that are arranged to turn toward it, showing how technology changes the space as it used to be before its installation.

139 Kenneth S. Zagacki and Victoria J. Gallagher, “Rhetoric and Materiality in the Museum Park at the North Carolina Museum of Art,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 95, no. 2 (2009): 171–91.

140 Zagacki and Gallagher, “Rhetoric and Materiality,” 180.

141 Benjamin, Captivating Technology.

142 See Lefebvre’s “Representational Space,” space as it is lived. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).

143 Bonilla-Silva, “Rethinking Racism.”

144 Grayson, Antisemitism and the White Supremacist Imaginary.

145 Matsuda, “Public Response to Racist Speech,” 17–51; Altman, “Liberalism and Campus Hate Speech”; Butler, Excitable Speech, 43–69.

146 Matsuda, “Public Response to Racist Speech,” 41.

147 Ore, Lynching, 26.

148 Ore, Lynching, 26.

149 Flores, “Between Abundance and Marginalization,” 4–24; McGee and Cisneros, “Looking Back, Looking Forward,” 300–5.

150 Flores, “Between Abundance and Marginalization,” 5.