Pro-Hamas faculty group fueling antisemitism on college campuses, new study finds

Faculty for Justice in Palestine fueling antisemitic hate crimes, study by watchdog group reveals.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

The anti-Zionist campus group Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) is fueling antisemitic hate crimes, efforts to impose divestment on endowments, and the collapse of discipline and order on college campuses, according to a “groundbreaking” new study that antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative published on Thursday.

A faculty spinoff of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group with numerous links to Islamist terror organizations, FJP chapters have been opening on colleges since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

Throughout the 2023-2024 academic year, its members, which include faculty employed by the most elite US colleges, have fostered campus unrest, circulated antisemitic cartoons, and advocated severing ties with Israeli companies and institutions of higher education.

According to AMCHA Initiative’s report, titled “Academic Extremism: How a Faculty Network Fuels Campus Unrest,” its presence throughout academia is insidious and should be scrutinized by lawmakers.

“Our investigation alarmingly reveals that campuses with FJP chapters are seeing assaults and death threats against Jewish students at rates multiple times higher than those without FJP groups, providing compelling evidence of the dangerous intersection between faculty activism and violent antisemitic behavior,” AMCHA said in a press release.

“The presence of FJP chapters also correlates with the extended duration of protests and encampments, as well as with the passage of BDS resolutions on their campuses.”

Unlike many studies on campus antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative researchers drew their conclusions from quantitative rather than qualitative, data, which tend to rely on anecdotes and self-reported responses. Using data analysis, they said they were able to establish a correlation between a school’s hosting an FJP chapter and anti-Zionist and antisemitic activity.

For example, the researchers found that the presence of FJP on a college campuses increased by seven times “the likelihood of physical assaults and Jewish students” and increased by three times the chance that a Jewish student would be subject to threats of violence and death.

FJP also “prolonged” the duration of “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” protests on college campuses, in which students occupied a section of campus illegally and refused to leave unless administrators capitulated to demands for a boycott of Israel.

The report said that such demonstrations lasted over four and a half times longer where FJP faculty were free to influence and provide logistic and material support to students. Professors at FJP schools also spent 9.5 more days protesting than those at non-FJP schools.

The report added that FJP facilitated the proposal and success of student government resolutions demanding adoption of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement — which aims to isolate Israel culturally, financially, and diplomatically as the first steps towards its destruction.

Wherever FJP was, BDS was “4.9 times likely to pass” and “nearly 11 times more likely to be included in student demands,” showing, AMCHA said, that FJP plays a role in radicalizing university students at the 103 schools — including Harvard University, Brown University, Princeton University, the University of Michigan, and Yale University — where it is active.

“These faculty led-groups are inciting anti-Zionist activism among students, propelling academic boycotts and actively fostering an environment where Jewish students are physically attacked and threatened,” AMCHA executive director and co-founder Tammi Rossman-Benjamin said on Thursday in a press release announcing the report’s publication.

“Without immediate intervention from university administrations and policymakers, the situation will only worsen, leaving Jewish students and faculty vulnerable to escalating violence.”

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, in May, Harvard University’s FJP chapter followed in this vein, publishing an antisemitic cartoon depicting a left-hand tattooed with a Star of David, and containing a dollar sign at its center, dangling a black man and an Arab man from a noose. FJP members have also fostered unrest to coerce policymakers into accepting their demands, and attempted, in some instances, to prevent police from dispersing unauthorized demonstrations and detaining lawbreakers.

American antisemitismAntisemitismantisemitism on campusHamas