{"id":256358,"date":"2026-06-05T13:53:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T13:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/256358\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T13:53:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T13:53:15","slug":"fairfield-man-charged-with-hate-crime-over-swastika-flag-at-nyu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/256358\/","title":{"rendered":"Fairfield man charged with hate crime over swastika flag at NYU"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Fairfield man<\/a> was arrested in New York City this week after police connected him with an incident in which a flag bearing two swastikas was raised over a New York University building last month.<\/p>\n

Alexander Stepnowsky, 23, was arrested around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a New York Police Department spokesperson confirmed.<\/p>\n

He is\u00a0charged with burglary as a hate crime, first-degree aggravated harassment, and criminal trespass as a hate crime, police said Thursday. A police official familiar with the investigation said Stepnowsky had turned himself in to authorities.<\/p>\n

At his arraignment in a Manhattan courtroom Wednesday morning,\u00a0Stepnowsky pleaded not guilty to all three charges and was released, court records show. He is due back in court\u00a0Aug. 4.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The arrest comes nearly three weeks after the May 13 incident<\/a>, in which police say\u00a0Stepnowsky hoisted a flag bearing two swastikas, a Star of David\u00a0 and an NYU logo over the\u00a0Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development in the midst of graduation festivities.<\/p>\n

The building is named after billionaire Jewish philanthropists Michael and Judy\u00a0Steinhardt, who donated $10 million to the university in 2001. Michael Steinhardt is one of the founders of Birthright Israel, which offers free trips to the country for Jewish young adults.<\/p>\n

This is Stepnowsky’s first arrest by the NYPD, a spokesperson confirmed, and he appears to have no criminal history in Connecticut, according to judicial records.\u00a0A spokesperson for NYU told the New York Times<\/a> that Stepnowsky was a student at the school at the time of the incident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Fairfield man was arrested in New York City this week after police connected him with an incident…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[30498,12485,99831,75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-256358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-connecticut-post","tag-ct-insider","tag-fairfield-citizen","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}