University of Wisconsin launches investigation into pro-Hamas group

SJP maintains its innocence. Spokeswoman Dahlia Saba said that the university is guilty of suppressing free expression and subjecting its students to police brutality.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has opened an investigation into whether its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter (SJP) — one part of an inter-campus network of anti-Zionists with ties to jihadist terror organizations — violated school rules when it disrupted a regents board meeting on Dec. 5, according to reporting published by The Daily Cardinal.

“A source familiar with SJP shared documents with The Daily Cardinal that said the organization may have violated the rules in the [registered student organization] Code of Conduct through the ‘use of university facilities and grounds,’ ‘obstructing orderly conduct,’ and failing to comply with administration when around 50 protesters disrupted the board of regents meeting … demanding the university financially and socially divest from Israel,” said the Cardinal, the official campus newspaper of UW-Madison.

According to another source who spoke to the paper, SJP’s alleged misconduct, which resulted in the arrests of some 19 students, could lead to “sanctions up to and including termination of [recognized student organization] status.”

The university already disciplined the group in October, however, placing it on probation for 10 months as punishment for its commandeering of a section of campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” during spring semester.

The university, according to documents cited by the Cardinal, noted the group’s cooperation with administrative officials in May as a “mitigating factor” which saved it from a full suspension.

The university is gearing up a second time to determine whether SJP should be held accountable for its members’ alleged transgressions, and, according to the Cardinal, it has asked the group to respond to a request for an “investigatory interview” by Dec. 15 and make other arrangements for a formal hearing in the case against it.

SJP maintains its innocence, and on Friday its spokeswoman, Dahlia Saba told the paper that the university is guilty of suppressing free expression and subjecting its students to police brutality.

“SJP protested the business and finance meeting of the board of regents to demand that they disclose their investments and, in accordance with Wisconsin law, divest from companies complicit in Israeli apartheid,” Saba proclaimed.

“Now, the university is again putting SJP through a disciplinary process to punish us for calling out the university’s unethical and illegal investment practices.”

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), as well as its spinoff groups, are responsible for the lion’s share of pro-Hamas agitation on college campuses since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war last October.

Last month, a mob of its members took over the Westlands administrative building at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and vowed not to surrender it unless school officials adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

The action, the first of its kinds since the spring “uprising” of encampments on colleges across the US, was reportedly precipitated by the college’s declining to accept SJP’s divestment recommendations — which aim to compromise Israel’s national security and leave the world’s lone Jewish state vulnerable to jihadist extremists.

“Westlands is occupied,” SJP said in a series of statements published on Instagram during the occupation.

“Students have occupied Westlands to demand immediate action on the genocide of Palestinians. Administration has failed to meet our disclosure deadline. Westland residents are safe: they can come and go at will. We need your support: Walkout to the south lawn, bring food donations, sign divestment proposal.”

SJP also called on students to obstruct justice, imploring them to amass “as many bodies blocking doors as possible” and instructing them to wear “mask [sic] and indiscernible clothing, hats, scarves, etc to support the student intifada.”

Since then, National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), which coordinates activities at individual colleges, has cheered the insurrectionist behavior, using the same incendiary language as the students.

“ALL OUT TO SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE! DEFEND THE STUDENT INTIFADA! For over 400 days our institutions have ignored the genocide for our people in Gaza, we demand that they disclose their financial investments and they DIVEST FROM DEATH ,” the group tweeted.

NSJP further urged the students to “bring keffiyehs, noise makers, and flags.”

In October, when Jews around the world mourned on the anniversary of Hamas’s invasion of Israel last Oct. 7, a Harvard University student group called on pro-Hamas activists to “Bring the war home” and proceeded to vandalize a campus administrative building.

The group members, who described themselves as “anonymous,” later said in a statement, “We are committed to bringing the war home and answering the call to open up a new front here in the belly of the beast.”

Some universities, such as the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, are at their wits end. Earlier this month, school officials there reportedly suspended and demanded financial restitution from seven pro-Hamas activists who were arrested for commandeering the Morrill Hall administrative building on Oct. 21.

According to a statement from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and other anti-Israel campus groups posted on social media, seven of eight students charged with rules violations on that day have been “found guilty” by a university disciplinary tribunal.

Each has been fined about $5,500, the statement further alleged, and suspended for periods ranging from one to five semesters. Following the action, SJP claimed that the university is cynically quelling dissent.

“Alongside arbitrary suspensions, the university intends to withhold the transcripts of those arrested,” it said.

“This means for the duration of the suspension the students are unable to transfer to a different institution without forfeiting the credits they have rightfully earned and paid for. To even be readmitted after suspensions, the students have to do 20 hours of community service and write a 5-10 page essay about the ‘difference between vandalism and protest.'”

American college campusesAntisemitismSJPUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison