Latest pro-Hamas faculty group formed at George Washington University

FJP members fostered unrest to coerce university officials into accepting their demands, and attempted, in some instances, to prevent police from dispersing unauthorized demonstrations and detaining lawbreakers.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

Anti-Israel faculty at George Washington University have founded a Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapter, according to an op-ed written by several professors who initiated the endeavor.

“As we pass one year of a genocide funded by the United States and US universities that has expanded to bombing campaigns in Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen, we and other conscientious members of GW’s faculty and staff have recently established a chapter of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine,” professors Peter Calloway, Helen DeVinney, Amr Madkour, Sara Matthiesen, and Dara Orenstein wrote in the piece, which was published on Monday by The GW Hatchet.

“Though our chapter includes many more faculty in solidarity with the students who are unable to be named publicly for fear of retaliation, we want students, community members, and the administration to know that there are faculty at GW who are aligned with the movement for a free Palestine.”

A 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 massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.

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

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, in May, Harvard University’s FJP chapter published 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 university officials into accepting their demands, and attempted, in some instances, to prevent police from dispersing unauthorized demonstrations and detaining lawbreakers.

According to an AMCHA Initiative report published in September, titled “Academic Extremism: How a Faculty Network Fuels Campus Unrest,” the group’s 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 [boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement] resolutions on their campuses.”

The BDS movement seeks to isolate Israel on the international stage as a step toward the Jewish state’s destruction.

FJP, the report added, 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.

It also 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.

Additionally, professors at FJP schools also spent 9.5 more days protesting than those at non-FJP schools.

Monday’s op-ed discussed extensively the disciplinary charges the university has filed against pro-Hamas protesters who occupied school property for several weeks during spring semester and committed other severe violations of school rules prohibiting unauthorized demonstrations and vandalism.

“Indeed, as GW faculty and staff, we bear witness alongside brave and visionary students — who are committed to disclosure and divestment and who call for our administration to treat students with dignity and respect using their voices, bodies, and organizing skills to fight for a better world for all,” they continued.

“We urge the administration to drop the criminal disciplinary charges against students … and agree to students’ demands for disclosure of GW’s investments and divestments from entities enabling Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and beyond.”

The op-ed did not mention any antisemitism emanating from the anti-Zionist movement, nor the racist behavior and rhetoric of pro-Hamas students — a subject which The Algemeiner has covered since it began last semester, when US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield visited George Washington’s campus to discuss the benefits of a career in foreign policy with African American students.

In a pamphlet distributed to everyone who showed up to Thomas-Greenfield’s event, the GW Student Coalition for Palestine (GWSCP) accused the ambassador of being a “puppet,” alluding to the fact that she is a Black woman holding a distinguished presidential appointment.

GWSCP, in addition to comparing Thomas-Greenfield to enslaved overseers, appeared to suggest that the color of Greenfield’s skin excluded the possibility that she is an agent of her own destiny.

Later, GWSCP encircled GW Dean of Student Affairs Colette Coleman while a member of the group began “clapping in her face” and others screamed that she should resign.

AntisemitismFJPGeorge Washington University