Classes began at most American colleges and universities last week. Will a sense of normalcy return, or will students be forced to endure a third year of double-masked keffiyeh-clad hipsters, shouting “Free Free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea”? On each campus, it will depend on how the administration deals with its SJP problems.
After years of enduring the anti-Zionist, antisemitic Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), many administrations decided after October 7 that its toxic campus presence could no longer be tolerated. But SJP will not go away as long as there is a Jewish state, so each school must devise a plan for dealing with its recalcitrant Hamas supporters.
The various approaches to protests, riots, building takeovers, and encampments range from conciliatory to combative, from acquiescing to banning.
Conciliation
As in all campaigns physical and rhetorical, weakness invites aggression. The University of Maryland (UMD) took the weakest, and arguably the worst, approach of all to an SJP problem by settling a lawsuit and agreeing to pay its SJP chapter. The university did not disclose details of the settlement to the suit brought by Palestine Legal and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Palestine Legal claimed that the university paid SJP $100,000.
The University announced in a groveling statement that “UMD SJP is a registered student organization in good standing, which has had more than 100 events on campus since Oct. 7, 2023, for which it consistently followed the university’s policies and procedures governing such events.”
At least the public now knows that calling for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state complies with University of Maryland policy.
Suspensions and Bans
Thankfully, UMD is an outlier. Far more schools decided to suspend their SJP chapters. Adelphi University recently joined their ranks when it announced in August that it had put its SJP chapter “on disciplinary probation for a year.” Many other schools had already done so in 2024, among them: Columbia University, George Washington University, Rutgers University, Temple University, Tufts University, Case Western Reserve University, the University of Vermont, the University of Pittsburg, the University of Michigan, the University of Georgia, Brown University, and Swarthmore College.
Some schools specified longer suspension terms. The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign banned its SJP chapter for 3 years, and UCLA banned its for 4 years.
The 1-year suspensions issued in the Spring 2024 semester of encampments have expired. We will soon learn what, if anything, they have accomplished. We may also discover the mechanisms for reinstatement. An important question will have to be answered by each administration: what does it mean to be an SJP chapter “in good standing”?
Some schools, not content with temporary suspensions, went for permanent bans. Brandeis University and The University of Pennsylvania permanently banned their SJP chapters. So did Yale University, which called its version of the permanent ban a “de-recognition.”
Denial – The Strangest Approach of All
Of all the ways that schools have attempted to address their SJP problems, the University of Rochester in upstate New York has taken the most unique approach – I think it qualifies as quixotic. Contrary to a mountain of evidence, it denies that it has an SJP problem. After I mentioned the university’s SJP chapter in an article, the University of Rochester asked me to change what I wrote.
I declined.
Tomorrow, “Addressing Campus SJP Problems, Part 2: Denial at the University of Rochester”
Chief IPT Political Correspondent A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is also a Milstein fellow. This article has been cross-posted with the author’s permission from IPT News.
Kosh's Shadow says
DOE and any US government agency that sends money to these schools should ask colleges with SJP chapters:
“Would you allow a KKK chapter? Or even “Sons of the Confederacy”?
And the response would be something like “No, that would make Blacks on campus feel unsafe”
The US should then say “change Blacks to Jews in your argument, and explain why you have no problem with an organization that makes Jews feel unsafe”
Ban SJP or be considered antisemitic and lose ALL government funding, including student loans.
James Lincoln says
Kosh’s Shadow,
You made some excellent points.
OLD GUY says
Perhaps the difference is that Islamic countries donate heavier than the Jewish people do to these schools endowment funds. Most of these schools have Muslim student unions and teach Islamic studies on their campuses. They also have a big islamic foreign student population that is totally paid for up front by these islamic countries. These administrators don’t want to hurt the cash cow from muslim/islamic countries. Once again it is about the MONEY.
Walter Sieruk says
About those, sincere by ignorant, sincerely ignorant college and university youth who hate the State of Israel with a deluded malice. Only one example, is that young woman wearing who holding that sign that has the two words “Free Palestine” is a sad thing for her showing that she is ignorant by showing nonsensical sign. The reason why this is so because that is because there is no real “Palestine” to free in the first place.
For there is not nor was there ever a genuine land that is “Palestine.” That is a modern myth.
As the following reveals …
“The land of Israel was renamed Syria Palestrina by Hadrian, the Roman Emperor. Following the second revolt against Rome in AD 132- 135. The Philistines had always been the enemy of the Jews .and as such it was an insult to the Jewish people.” [1]
It should also be added, that Hadrian had deliberately intended the renaming of Israel to be an insult and offence to the Jews.
Furthermore, about the origin of that word “Palestine, history reveals that the ancient Philistines recorded in the Bible and history reveals the people who came from the Greek Islands and some parts of the mainland Greece and the Island of Crete They have no connection, at all, the to the Arab /Muslim of modern times who called themselves the “Palestinians.”
From those ancient people, the Philistines, the word “Palestine” .came into being.
There is no genuine ethic group or race who are the “Palestinians.”
Early in the last century a anyone living in that land, Arab or Jew, who lived in that land was called a” Palestinian.”
Only after 1964 did the Arab/Muslims start to refer to themselves, exclusively, by the word “Palestinian.”
The reason for that is that they felt that by giving themselves that title they would appear to have some kind of valid claim on that land.
Indeed, never in history was there a “Palestinian state.” Any claim to the land is an invalid and false claim.
[1] Miracle of Israel by Gary Frazier and Jim Fletcher, page 65.
somehistory says
OT and no surprise….so now send him to Hungary where he can be prosecuted if they won’t do so here.
“Soros Caught Funneling Nearly $4 Million to Support Terror-Linked Palestinian Orgs Before Oct. 7”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/soros-caught-funneling-nearly-4-million-to-support-terror-linked-palestinian-orgs-before-oct-7/ar-AA1M3V0i?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=68bdcdcc92334036b32d5422598a0f2c&ei=23
Walter Sieruk says
In reality, there is no race or ethnic group of people who are the “ Palestinians.”
The is no genuine, real, “Palestine” to “free’ in the first place.
For even the word “Palestine” is a fabricated term that was a made up for the land by the Roman Emperor Hadrian as an insult to the Jews because the Jews and the Philistines, many times, fought each other. For a long time after that “renaming ‘of that land, Both Arabs and Jews living in that land were both referred to as “Palestinians.” Then in 1964, many Arabs started to refer only to themselves as ‘The Palestinians” hoping that would give them some kind of valid claim to that land in the eyes of the different nations of the world. In addition, Yasser Arafat in 1969 further spread the myth of a specific ethnic group or race of people called “the Palestinians”
gravenimage says
Addressing Campus SJP Problems, Part 1: Some Approaches
………………………………….
Many of these thugs are takig the positon that terrorizing Jews on campus is “academic freedom”.