Northwestern Hillel building. Photo: Hillel.

A lecturer at Northwestern University was shown the Nazi salute last month by a passerby, student newspaper The Daily Northwestern reported on Sunday. 

According to the report, the Jewish Studies teacher was walking near the school’s Hillel Center on the evening of November 23, when a passenger in a black SUV asked him for directions to the Jewish campus group’s onsite location.

The man then asked the educator if he was Jewish. When he responded in the affirmative, the perpetrator leaned out the window, proclaimed “Heil Hitler,” and performed the salute. 

Michael Simon, executive director of Northwestern’s Hillel, called the incident an act of “blatant antisemitism,” and told the paper that he has been in touch with University Police (UP) to request an increase in security patrols near Jewish buildings, including the campus Chabad House and Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity house.

UP Deputy Chief Gloria Graham said that though the salute was caught on security camera, the footage was too dark to identify the person who performed it.

The incident is the latest in an “unprecedented” spike in antisemitism on American campuses in the aftermath of last month’s presidential elections. 

According to campus watchdog group AMCHA Initiative, the three weeks following the election saw some 40 antisemitic incidents — mostly involving swastika graffiti and the scrawling of anti-Jewish slurs — with many Jewish students left feeling “vulnerable.”

Responding to mounting Jew-hatred on college campuses, US lawmakers recently presented a congressional bill aimed at curbing antisemitism. The motion — entitled the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2016 — was unanimously passed in the Senate last week and was recently introduced in the House.