Police are investigating a group of masked vandals who spray-painted pro-Palestinian slogans on the home of University of Washington president Ana Mari Cauce overnight on Wednesday.
The university leader’s car and home were daubed with messages including “Free Palestine,” “Blood on your hands,” and a red triangle symbol that’s been variously interpreted as a symbol of general Palestinian independence or a specific endorsement of Hamas.
“Making threats against a public official in an attempt to intimidate them is a crime,” university spokesperson Victor Balta said in a statement Thursday to The Seattle Times, adding that the vandalism would “not influence University policy.”
Unverified video, submitted anonymously to a Seattle-area activist page on Instagram, purportedly shows the masked figures painting Cauce’s home and car with red and black paint, along with the attached message, “Our movement will continue to escalate until the demands for cutting ties with war-profiteer Boeing and divestment from zionism are met.”
Local Jewish leaders were dismayed by the incident.
“The despicable vandalism of President Cauce’s home and car is a sickening extension of the antisemitic rhetoric, vandalism, and violence that has engulfed UW,” the American Jewish Committee of Seattle said in a statement. “This heinous act went beyond the damage we have come to expect from anti-Israel protesters on campus. The intent clearly was to intimidate and threaten President Cauce.”
The vandalism came ahead of a planned University of Washington Board of Regents meeting on Thursday.
The university was one of numerous schools across the country that was home to a multi-week, pro-Palestinian protest encampment this spring.
Demonstrators called for the school to divest its financial ties to Israel, including through aerospace contractor Boeing, and end study abroad programs in the country, among other demands.
President Cauce said in May she supported calls for human rights and a ceasefire in the Gaza war, which many observers argue has turned into a genocide against Palestinians. The university leader also condemned some rhetoric coming from the students, arguing it had grown “vile and anti-Semitic.”
That month, the school and protests reached an agreement to dismantle the protest camp, with UW committing to fund scholarships for displaced Palestinian students from Gaza and increase transparency over its investments, though it declined to cut ties with Boeing.
Students accepted the deal but argued in the bigger picture UW would “rather maintain the status quo than stand against genocide.”
Cauce announced this year she’s leaving her position in June 2025.
Congress is considering a campus antisemitism bill that would enshrine a new definition of antisemitism to be used in Department of Education investigations of federally funded universities. It has wide bipartisan support and has already passed the House.
Free speech advocates like the American Civil Liberties Union argued in a letter to the Senate this week that the bill could chill legitimate criticisms of Israel, by equating forms of criticism against the country with antisemitism.
