U among schools nationwide getting racist fliers

Several colleges across the country are investigating after a rash of anti-Semitic fliers began printing from their network-connected printers or fax machines.

The fliers began appearing Thursday at the University of Minnesota and many other schools, including New Jersey's Princeton University, Rhode Island's Brown University, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

The director of the New England office of the Anti-Defamation League said a white power group appears to have hacked into school printers. Office director Robert Trestan said sending the fliers remotely appears to be a new tactic for the group.

The fliers are addressed to "white men." They disparage Jewish people and include links to a neo-Nazi website.

Trestan said the founder of the website previously urged supporters to troll perceived enemies, including a Jewish member of the British Parliament, Luciana Berger, on Twitter.

"Princeton attaches great importance to mutual respect, and we deplore expressions of hatred directed against any individual or group," the university's vice provost for institutional equity and inclusion, Michele Minter, said in a statement.

The chancellor of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Kumble Subbaswamy, called the fliers "cowardly" in an email to students and faculty members.

On Friday, the University of Minnesota sent out this notice:

Dear Colleagues,

The newly formed Bias Response Team recently received notice about a graphic, anti-Semitic and racially charged flyer that was discovered on a printer in one of our University departments. Since that initial notice, we have learned that the same flyer has appeared on a number of other printers throughout the Twin Cities campus and on printers at other universities across the U.S.

University Information Security has determined that the messages are coming from an external source and is working with the Office of Information Technology to reconfigure printers and related equipment in order to rectify the situation as quickly as possible.

The University condemns racial, ethnic and religious bigotry. In moments like this, we must reaffirm our community's commitment to a safe working and learning environment for all.

We would like to thank the Bias Response Team for their swift attention to this issue.

Sincerely,

Katrice Albert, Vice President for Equity and Diversity

Bernard Gulachek, Interim Vice-President and Chief Information Officer