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Two swastikas and an anti-Semitic slur were spray-painted Wednesday on the walls of a Jewish professor’s office at Columbia University, the latest in a surge of anti-Semitic incidents in New York this year.

The office belongs to Elizabeth Midlarsky, 77, who has written about the Holocaust and has been a repeated target of anti-Semitic vitriol while working as a psychology and education professor at the university’s Teachers College in Manhattan.

The Police Department said it was investigating the vandalism — the swastikas and the word “Yid” were scrawled in bright red in the entryway to the office — as a hate crime.

Ms. Midlarsky, who could not be reached for comment on Thursday, found the graffiti Wednesday afternoon, officials said.