Officials aim to “to identify the individual or individuals responsible for the graffiti on campus this weekend so that they can be held accountable for these outrageous acts of vandalism, targeting and threats of violence,” the spokesperson said.
On social media, activists also circulated a video soundtracked to chants of “Death to the IDF,” showing the graffitied doors, and displaying a photograph of MIT professor Daniela Rus’s face under her name and the text “your hands are red!”
Rus, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.
The MIT Coalition for Palestine has accused Rus’s lab of conducting research funded by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, “with direct applications to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
MIT has defended the work, done in collaboration with the University of Haifa, under a contracting partnership between the Israeli Military of Defense and the US government, explaining that it “focused on a coreset compression algorithm that can improve robotics in a wide array of fields.”
Compared to Harvard, MIT has largely avoided the same level of scrutiny from the Trump administration over alleged antisemitism on campus, but the university has navigated its own deep rifts since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023. In May, Megha Vemuri, then MIT’s student president, was banned from commencement after giving a pro-Palestinian speech.
Last month, the Brandeis Center filed a federal complaint against MIT on behalf of a Jewish former PhD student and Jewish Israeli mathematics instructor, over alleged campus antisemitism.
Talia Khan, a PhD student in mechanical engineering and founder of the MIT Israel Alliance, is among those now calling out university administrators for not doing enough to address antisemitism on campus.
“This violent threat was enabled by MIT’s support of terrorist-sympathizing rhetoric. Now, researchers fear being *murdered* if they go into work to do science,” Khan wrote in a post on X Sunday, tagging accounts for New York Representative Elise Stefanik. “Bring Pres. Sally Kornbluth and Corporation Chair Mark Gorenberg before Congress. They’ve failed to protect us.”
The video features an excerpt of an op-ed titled “Daniela Rus, The People Demand: No More Research for Genocide,” which was retracted by the MIT student newspaper “The Tech” noting corrections to factual errors about her research.
The phrase “Death to the IDF” gained attention following a concert last month at Glastonbury Festival in England where punk rapper Bobby Vylan led crowds in chants of “free, free Palestine” and “death, death to the IDF.”
Serving in the Israel Defense Forces is mandatory for Israeli citizens over the age of 18, with some exceptions. The graffiti, therefore, is “calling for the death of all Israelis,” said Khan.
After the events Sunday, said Khan, she expected MIT leadership would send out an email condemning the act of vandalism and video, and ensuring the safety of MIT students and larger community.
“But nothing like that happened,” said Khan, 27, who founded the MIT Israel Alliance after Oct. 7, 2023.
The MIT spokesperson said the university is “focused on action, specifically identifying those responsible so that they can be held accountable.”
Khan said she is concerned about safety.
“This is just about people being physically safe on campus and not being targeted, and the MIT administration is completely failing,” she said on X.
The MIT spokesperson said that while the university does not publicly discuss the specifics of internal safety plans, “we are taking steps beyond the investigation to further increase security on campus.”
Brooke Hauser can be reached at brooke.hauser@globe.com. Follow her @brookehauser.