All colleges should be banning Students for Justice in Palestine

Since Hamas’s barbaric Oct. 7 slaughter of 1,400 Israelis and 23 Americans, pro-Hamas demonstrations at many of our prominent universities have shocked the American people.

The sudden campus protests followed the announcement by the national “Students for Justice in Palestine” that Oct. 12 be “a day of resistance” on campuses nationwide. SJP national called Hamas’s attack “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance,” and many of SJP’s 200 chapter organizations praised Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack, condemned Israel, called for its destruction and organized protests of U.S. support for Israel.

SJP’s University of Minnesota chapter declared on Instagram that “the events of resistance that transpired on Saturday, Oct. 7, are a result of the brutal settler-colonial ethno-state [Israel].” On Oct. 12, it held a bake sale “in loving memory of Palestine’s martyrs.” On Oct. 21, it led a march of 8,000 pro-Hamas protesters at the state capitol. Joined by the university’s Campus Marxists (Students for Socialist Revolution), the SJP UMN organized an “urgent public meeting” on campus.

It explicitly called for a “communist movement here…to overthrow U.S. imperialism. Intifada until victory!” In a Nov. 1 post, SJP UMN boasted that “[o]ver 4,000 people marched through downtown…as war criminal Joe Biden visited the state.”

Despite its clear promotion of violence and overthrow of the U.S. government, SJP UMN remains an officially recognized, university-supported student organization.

Hamas’s initial attack against Israel was still underway when, on Oct. 7, SJP’s Columbia University chapter called for students to meet on campus before proceeding to the “All Out For Palestine” demonstration in Times Square on Oct. 8. On Oct. 11, a 24-year-old Israeli student was physically attacked by a 19-year-old while handling out fliers on campus, prompting Columbia to close its campus on Oct. 12 – SJP’s self-proclaimed nationwide “day of resistance.”

Harvard’s “Palestine Solidarity Groups” organized masked student demonstrations chanting “Intifada! Intifada! Intifada! From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free!” and held a “die-in” while holding signs that read “Hold Harvard Accountable for Supporting Genocide.” After the physical assault of an Israeli Harvard Business School student, Harvard’s president spoke of its embrace of free expression but noted that Harvard rejects terrorism, hate of Jews and Muslims and of any group of people based on their faith or national origin.

Stanford’s SJP chapter led students chanting, “Two, four, six, eight! Smash the Zionist settler state!” This prompted the school’s president to issue a letter acknowledging “expressions of concern” for Jewish student safety. Stanford’s chancellor wrote that she was “heartbroken by the terrible violence and suffering in Israel and Gaza” and of Stanford’s resolute commitment to ensuring “freedom of expression.”

On Oct. 9, Binghamton University’s SJP chapter accused Israel of declaring war through its atrocities against the Palestinian people in the world’s “largest open air prison” and called Israel’s existence “more than 75 years of ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism, pogroms of Palestinian towns and villages.”

George Washington University’s SJP chapter declared that “[a] settler is an aggressor, a soldier, and an occupier even if they are lounging on our occupied beaches” and posted an image with the words “GLORY TO OUR MARTYRS” projected onto the side of GWU’s Gelman Library. It then issued a statement supporting “the liberation of our homeland and our people’s right to resist the violent…colonialization of our homeland by any means necessary.”

CUNY Law School’s SJP chapter likewise threatened that “if you support Palestine, understand that necessitates supporting our right to defend ourselves and liberate our homeland by any means necessary.”

In response, few universities have acted with appropriate clarity in the face of SJP’s campus-based intimidation of Jewish students and calls for the destruction of Israel and threats to the U.S. government.

On Oct. 24, citing SJP’s “harmful support for terrorist groups,” the Chancellor of the State University System of Florida directed all public universities in Florida to “deactivate” SJP chapters on Florida campuses. On Nov. 6, Brandeis University banned SJP’s Brandeis chapter from operating on its campus, after its calls for violence against Jews and advocacy of the destruction of Israel. Fordham University has long barred SJP from operating on its campus. Columbia banned SJP from campus last Thursday.

University administrators are obligated to protect academic freedom and the free expression of controversial viewpoints, but that obligation must end when student groups openly engage in intimidation, physical violence, and advocate the destruction of a nation.

In response to the violence openly advocated by SJP and its chapters, why would our great universities not unequivocally protect the rights of all its students and faculty to be free from the fear of violence and intimidation? Financial interests may be a factor.

In 2020, the Education Department reported that “[b]eginning in 2009, the flow of foreign money [to universities], especially from instrumentalities of the governments of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and China, rose massively” while financial and operational partnerships between universities and those governments expanded exponentially. Qatari money also funds the operations of Hamas, which was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government in 1997.

Americans may wonder if university administrators are reluctant to offend an important financial backer, even if that backer also funds Hamas.

All university administrators now face a critical choice. Will they protect the safety and fundamental freedoms of all students and faculty by banning the campus operations of SJP, which has repeatedly called for violence in furtherance of its goals? The defense of free speech and free expression on America’s campuses requires nothing less.

Paul R. Moore is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who served as chief investigative counsel at the U.S. Department of Education.