Anti-Israel students at Bowdoin College to protest suspensions over ‘Gaza encampment’

Bowdoin College has previously said that it will not tolerate unlawful occupations of its buildings.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

Bowdoin College’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter will hold on Tuesday a mass rally to protest disciplinary charges brought against an estimated 50 student-members who received interim suspensions and other sanctions for illegally occupying an administrative building earlier this month.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, SJP installed an encampment inside Smith Union to demand a boycott of Israel and signal its opposition to US President Donald Trump’s proposal that Gazans who were displaced by the Israel-Hamas war be resettled elsewhere while the Palestinian enclave is transformed into a hub for tourism and job creation.

Bowdoin, moving quickly to quell the disruption, persuaded its students to abandon the effort after just four days by levying interim suspensions on several dozen of them and notifying their families.

The consequences so far have stuck, SJP decried in a statement which alleged that some students are now ineligible to dwell in their dormitories and attend class.

This week, the group continued, eight of them will participate in hearings that will determine whether they receive full suspensions. SJP is calling for them to be amnestied and restored to good standing.

“Our peers who bravely remained in the encampment have been evicted from campus, unable to attend class (virtually or in person), and are now being subject to a flawed and non-transparent disciplinary process, all for continuing Bowdoin’s long history of student activism,” SJP posted on Instagram on Sunday. “We will not be silent as our friends face retaliation for standing against a genocide.”

It continued, “Walk out of class with us at 4:30 pm on Tuesday, Feb. 18 and join us for a rally outside Moulton Union to demand amnesty for the Bowdoin Eight.”

Bowdoin College has previously said that it will not tolerate unlawful occupations of its buildings.

“We heard from some members of the our community that these events have left them feeling vulnerable,” college president Safa Zaki said in a statement to the campus community, explaining that SJP transgressed “policies governing building use and student behavior.”

She continued, “These rules are not symbolic. They are designed to ensure that members of the community can feel welcome and safe in every space on campus and have fair access to those spaces.”

The college — located in Brunswick, Maine and once the subject of a landmark study which accused it of promoting the excesses of left-wing ideology — is not the only higher education institution that has been convulsed by anti-Israel activity this semester.

Columbia University was a victim of infrastructural sabotage last month, when an extremist anti-Zionist group flooded the toilets of an academic building with concrete to mark the anniversary of an alleged killing of a Palestinian child.

The targeted facilities were located on several floors of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), according to Keren Yarhi-Milo, dean of the school, who addressed the matter, calling the behavior “deplorable, disruptive, and deeply unsettling, as our campus is a space we cherish for learning teaching, and working, and it will not be tolerated.”

Numerous reports indicate the attack may have been the premeditated result of planning sessions which took place many months ago at an event held by Alpha Delta Phi (ADP) — a literary society, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

During the event, the Free Beacon reported, ADP distributed literature dedicated to “aspiring revolutionaries” who wish to commit seditious acts. Additionally, a presentation was given in which complete instructions for the exact kind of attack which struck Columbia were shared with students.

In a separate incident on Feb. 5, roughly 50 members of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, along with the group Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) amassed on the property of UC Regent Jay Sures and threatened that he must “divest now or pay.”

As part of the demonstration, the students imprinted their hands, which had been submerged in red paint to symbolize the spilling of blood, all over Sures’ garage door and cordoned the area with caution tape.

UCLA responded to their vandalism and intimidation by imposing interim suspensions on both groups.

Republicans in Washington, DC have said that anti-Zionist extremism on college campuses “will no longer be tolerated in the Trump administration.” Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has enacted a slew of policies aimed at reining in their disruptive and discriminatory behavior.

Continuing work started during his first administration — when Trump issued Executive Order 13899 to ensure that civil rights law apply equally Jews — Trump’s recent “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism” calls for “using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.”

The order also requires each government agency to write a report explaining how it can be of help in carrying out its enforcement.

Another major provision of the order calls for the deportation of extremist “alien” student activists, whose support for terrorist organizations, intellectual and material, such as Hamas contributed to fostering antisemitism, violence, and property destruction.

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