The suit’s primary complainant, Penn professor Huda Fakhreddine argued that Penn’s cooperating with Congress would inexorably lead to violations of professors’ privacy and other harms, such as doxxing and harassment.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

A US federal judge has dismissed an amended lawsuit which attempted to halt the University of Pennsylvania’s cooperation with a congressional investigation of campus antisemitism by arguing that it was suppressing the anti-Zionist movement and fostering racial bias.

“Plaintiffs once again fail adequately to allege any injury rising above speculative harm,” wrote US District Court Judge Mitchell Goldberg, dismissing the complaint, filed by members of the Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) group, for the second time.

“This is not enough to make out standing … Because I cannot describe plaintiffs’ potential injuries without using the word ‘if,’ I must dismiss for want of standing.”

Goldberg, who was appointed to the bench in 2008 by former US President George W. Bush, continued, “The dismissal is with prejudice.”

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, FJP’s lawsuit dismissed concerns about rising antisemitism at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), describing efforts to eradicate it as a conspiracy by “billionaire donors, pro-Israel groups, other litigants, and segments of the media” to squelch criticism of Israel and harm Arab students and academics.

It also castigated the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, calling it a tool of a “militant minority which believes that Israel can do no wrong.”

The IHRA definition and its use by the US House Education and Workforce Committee in its investigation into antisemitism at Penn, the lawsuit continued, is “unconstitutional” and part of a larger plan of a “social engineering movement to repeal the First Amendment.”

The suit’s primary complainant, Penn professor Huda Fakhreddine, played an outsized role in inviting to Penn anti-Zionists who have spread blood libels as well as conspiracies of Jewish control to a 2023 “Palestine Writes Festival” and praised Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 massacre across southern Israel as a “new way of life.”

She argued in the suit that Penn’s cooperating with Congress would inexorably lead to violations of professors’ privacy and other harms, such as doxxing and harassment.

Additionally, Fakhreddine charged that a “new form of McCarthyism” animated the inquiry and that she is a victim of “a conspiracy motivated by race discrimination,” claims which Goldberg rejected for being sensationalist.

Penn is still repairing its image after a slew of antisemitic outrages during the 2023-2024 academic year prompted a donor exodus as well as the resignation of a president whose tenure was the shortest in school history.

In Fall 2023, it held the “Palestine Writes Literature Festival,” which featured prominent anti-Zionists who have weaponized classic antisemitic tropes to undermine support for Israel.

Speakers listed on the event’s initial itinerary included University of Gaza professor Refaat Alareer, who said in 2018, “Are most Jews evil? Of course they are,” and Salman Abu Sitta, who once said in an interview that “Jews were hated in Europe because they played a role in the destruction of the economy in some of the countries, so they would hate them.”

Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd frontman, was also a scheduled speaker, despite that his antisemitism was previously exposed in a documentary which detailed Waters’ long record of anti-Jewish barbs.

In one instance, a former colleague recalled Waters at a restaurant yelling at the wait staff to “take away the Jew food.”

By the time former Penn president Elizabeth Magill, who resigned in December 2023, appeared before the House Education and Workforce Committee on Dec. 5 to testify about her handling of the literature event — which included refusing to cancel it — anti-Zionist protests at the university set off by the Israel-Hamas war had descended into demagoguery and intimidation of Jewish students, as activists flooded the campus to celebrate the Oct. 7 massacre.

At one point, during a gathering of the protesters in front of the Van Pelt Dietrich Library, a high school senior — referred to as “MJ,” who attended the Specialized Science Academy in Philadelphia — was invited to speak. He accused Israel of genocide and harassed others in the area, according to students who witnessed his remarks.

“The Israeli Jew has bastardized Judaism! Bastardized it! Trampled on it! How could you let this genocidal regime crap all over your God and your religion like this?” the speaker bellowed, as seen in footage posted by the anti-Zionist student group Penn Against the Occupation (POA) and reviewed by The Algemeiner.

“How can you, as a people who have seen the same amount of oppression in the past, stand by the same genocidal tactics, and lies, and methods that they use on our people? How could you stand for that? Look at you — you’re not even looking at this direction. You’re scared. You’re scared of being wrong.”

Donors and alumni quickly lost their tolerance for such outrages. In October 2023, venture capitalist David Magerman stopped giving money to the university and donated to Israeli universities instead.

So too did Stephen Levin — who graduated from the institution in 1967, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian — while billionaire Marc Rowan threatened disgorgement of a $100 million dollar gift he gave to the university.

McGill, who then served as Penn’s president, ultimately resigned due to the mounting controversies, and since then the university’s handling of antisemitism has been mixed.

In May 2024, a task force it created to study antisemitism on the campus issued a report denouncing the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel — which aims to isolate the Jewish state as the first step toward destroying it — as “discriminatory” and “anti-intellectual,” but it opposed adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

Describing the widely accepted IHRA definition as “controversial,” the report’s authors explained that other definitions of antisemitism, such as the “Jerusalem Definition” and the “Nexus Document,” are in tension with IHRA’s, preventing them from reaching a consensus about which is best.

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The presence of FJP on a college campus increased by seven times ‘the likelihood of physical assaults and Jewish students’

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

Antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative has released a new “Anti-Zionist Faculty Barometer” which contains measurements of the severity of professors’ anti-Israel activism at over 700 US college campuses.

Last month, the organization launched a “National Campaign to Combat Faculty Antisemitism,” which aims to bring awareness to the correlation between increases in antisemitic incidents in higher education institutions and the presence of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) groups and other anti-Zionist professors who act as “foot-soldiers” for the anti-Israel movement.

The “faculty barometer” continues that work, ranking hundreds of colleges on a 0-5 scale, from “negligible” to “extreme,” which indicates a “critical level of anti-Zionist faculty presence/activity.”

America’s most prestigious colleges and universities were categorized in the latter category, including Georgetown University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and Stanford University.

Other highly regarded institutions registered in the runner up category — “severe”— such as Duke University, San Francisco State University, Brown University, and Dartmouth College.

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, FJP is a spinoff of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group with links to Islamist terrorist organizations.

FJP chapters have been cropping up at colleges since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, and 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.

These scholar-activists are too often ignored by the press and other watchdogs AMCHA Initiative executive director Tammi Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner during an interview on Wednesday in which she discussed the importance of her organization’s latest project.

“The barometer is a versatile tool that actually looks at anti-Zionist faculty in their different manifestations on campus, which is an under-explored factor contributing to campus antisemitism and the hostile climate in which Jewish students live and study,” Rossman-Benjamin said.

“And barometer is the right word for it as a metaphor for what we’re trying to do, which is to use information as a tool for quantifying what is in our estimation a determinative factor of campus antisemitism.”

She continued, “Measuring that factor, just like a barometer measures the barometric pressure and predicts the weather, has predictive value of what a campus climate might look or is likely to look like for a Jewish student, given the prominence, importance, and nature of contribution that anti-Zionist faculty make to campus antisemitism.”

AMCHA’s barometric measurements, Rossman-Benjamin explained, are based on four indicators: a campus’ having professors who publicly support boycotting Israel, academic departments that have issued anti-Zionist statements, an established FJP chapter, and FJP events and statements.

This is important, she stressed, because, as The Algemeiner has previously reported, a previous AMCHA study discovered a correlation between a school’s hosting an FJP chapter and anti-Zionist and antisemitic activity.

For example, it found that the presence of FJP on a college campus 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.

“It wasn’t surprising to us that the schools with the largest presence of anti-Zionist faculty according to our barometer have also been in the news for high rates of antisemitism,” Rossman-Benjamin continued, linking the “barometer” to the group’s previous work.

“What we see here is a confirmation of our studies discovery of faculty’s contribution — a mostly hidden contribution — to campus antisemitism.”

She added, “So much attention has been focused on, for example, Students for Justice in Palestine, the encampments, and all of the unrest. The primary face of that has been students and student groups, and they’ve occupied the attention of administrators, member of Congress, and the public, but if you look more deeply — behind closed classroom doors, at departmental events, and statements, or the activity of groups like [FJP], you find an even more important predictor and determinative factor precipitating antisemitism.”

AMCHA Initiative says that the this new information can help Jewish parents and prospective college students make smarter decisions about higher education. For Jewish students already enrolled in college, it will fully apprise them of what they have signed up for.

“We’re hoping that parents and students will get involved to stop this normalizing of hatred, to demand that universities and donors turn the situation around by reining in these out of control faculty,” Rossman-Benjamin concluded. “And we’re optimistic for knowing that there is growing recognition that the situation on the campus needs to change.”

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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.

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FJP dismissed concerns about rising antisemitism at Penn, describing efforts to eradicate it as a conspiracy by ‘billionaire donors, pro-Israel groups, other litigants, and segments of the media.’

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

A US federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging a congressional investigation of antisemitism at the University of Pennsylvania, delivering a blow to an anti-Zionist faculty group which hoped to prevent important documents from being shared with lawmakers while the matter was litigated.

Since last year, the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce has been investigating the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) to determine whether it intentionally ignored dozens of antisemitic incidents perpetrated by students and faculty.

As part of its inquiry, the committee, led by US Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), subpoenaed the university for a trove of documents, including reports and correspondence, which would provide a window into how administrators discussed antisemitism on campus.

Accusing Congress of engaging in a “new form of McCarthyism” — a historical reference to the excessive efforts of lawmakers to purge Communist Party members from important public institutions in the 1950s — and violating constitutional protections of speech and privacy, a group calling itself Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) asked the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to grant a preliminary and permanent injunction to end the university’s cooperation with the investigation.

“I conclude Plaintiffs lack standing to bring this challenge,” Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg said in a ruling issued on Monday.

“They have not alleged what information Penn will disclose or how it will harm them … Plaintiffs have not alleged facts sufficient to give them a personal stake in the outcome of this litigation, and their complaint will be dismissed for lack of standing. Where a plaintiff lacks standing, a federal court has no authority to enter an injunction.”

According to court documents first shared by The Daily Pennsylvanian, the principal plaintiff of the suit, associate professor Huda Fakhreddine, engaged in actions that played an outsized role in prompting Congress to investigate Penn.

Last fall, Fakhreddine organized the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, which invited to campus several anti-Zionists who have spread blood libels as well as conspiracies of Jewish control.

He has also praised Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel as a “new way of life.”

In the complaint, FJP dismissed concerns about rising antisemitism at Penn, describing efforts to eradicate it as a conspiracy by “billionaire donors, pro-Israel groups, other litigants, and segments of the media” to squelch criticism of Israel and harm Arab students and academics.

It also castigated the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, calling it a tool of a “militant minority which believes that Israel can do no wrong.”

The group also alleged that the IHRA definition is “unconstitutional” and part of a larger plan of a “social engineering movement” to abolish the First Amendment.

“I wasn’t surprised by the ruling,” City University of New York history professor KC Johnson told The Algemeiner on Monday, responding to the news.

“The professors’ core complaint focused more on a policy dispute with Penn than the law. They wanted Penn to resist the House subpoena, despite the university having no real grounds for doing so, and seemed aggrieved that Penn leaders were unwilling to denounce the House committee as a latter-day version of McCarthyism or to deny that any of the professors’ actions or rhetoric could be deemed antisemitic.”

Johnson added, “Those sorts of issues might be relevant at a faculty Senate meeting, but it was hard to see how the professors could show any concrete harm that would give them standing in court.”

If FJP’s lawsuit had been successful in halting Congress’s investigation into Penn, it would have concealed from lawmakers — and thereby the public — demonstrative evidence that Fakhreddine and other officials involved in organizing the “Palestine Writes” festival intentionally invited speakers to campus who have been widely accused of antisemitism.

Speakers listed on the event’s initial itinerary included University of Gaza professor Refaat Alareer, who said in 2018, “Are most Jews evil? Of course they are,” and Salman Abu Sitta, who once said in an interview that “Jews were hated in Europe because they played a role in the destruction of the economy in some of the countries, so they would hate them.”

The event touched off a burst of antisemitic incidents at Penn. In the days leading up to it, swastikas were graffitied on campus and a student infiltrated the campus Hillel building, where he proceeded to vandalize the place while screaming antisemitic epithets.

Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd frontman, was a scheduled speaker. Last year, an explosive documentary showed fellow musicians detailing Waters’ long record of anti-Jewish barbs.

In one instance, a former colleague recalled Waters at a restaurant yelling at the wait staff to “take away the Jew food.”

By the time former Penn president Elizabeth M. Magill — who resigned in December — appeared before the House Education and Workforce Committee on Dec. 5 to testify about her handling of “Palestine Writes” — which included her refusing to cancel it — anti-Zionist protests at the university amid the Israel-Hamas war had descended into demagoguery and intimidation of Jewish students, as activists berated pro-Israel counter-protesters for condemning Hamas’ Oct. 7 onslaught.

The University of Pennsylvania’s response to rising antisemitism after the events of this academic year has been mixed.

At the end of May, its Task Force on Antisemitism issued a report denouncing the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel — which aims to isolate the Jewish state as the first step toward destroying it — as “discriminatory” and “anti-intellectual,” but it opposed adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

Describing the widely accepted IHRA definition as “controversial,” the report’s authors explained that other definitions of antisemitism, such as the “Jerusalem Definition” and the “Nexus Document,” are in tension with IHRA’s, preventing them from reaching a consensus about which is best.

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