The GW Socialist Action Initiative, a student group that seeks the “total eradication of the capitalist-imperialist system,” is spearheading the campaign.

By Jessica Costescu and Jessica Schwalb, The Washington Free Beacon

Dozens of George Washington University (GW) student groups signed a petition calling on the school to become a “sanctuary campus” by banning from campus all law enforcement, including ICE and the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department.

They did so in opposition to a Department of Justice determination that GW violated civil rights law by acting “deliberately indifferent” toward campus anti-Semitism.

The petition, endorsed by over 45 organizations, also calls on the Washington, D.C., university to refuse to cooperate with “government efforts to surveil, monitor, deport, or otherwise punish or harm students, workers, faculty, and staff” and to bankroll legal support for any students facing deportation or prosecution.

GW Socialist Action Initiative demands/Instagram

The GW Socialist Action Initiative, a student group that seeks the “total eradication of the capitalist-imperialist system,” is spearheading the campaign.

It announced the list of demands in a Monday Instagram post alongside local and university chapters of several notorious anti-Israel groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the Student Coalition for Palestine, and the Palestinian Youth Movement.

The call to ban law enforcement from GW’s campus comes as the Trump administration federalizes D.C.’s police department. Part of that move includes adding ICE officers and expanding deportations.

The Justice Department determined that GW’s failure to respond to anti-Semitic incidents created a hostile environment for Jewish, American-Israeli, and Israeli students and faculty.

It plans to take enforcement action unless GW enters into a voluntary resolution.

But an agreement is exactly what GW Socialist Action Initiative fears. In a caption alongside the petition, the group wrote, “Any deal that GW could reach with the Trump Administration will harm student life and wellbeing.”

“With the Trump Administration’s recent letter to GW no sector of our community is safe,” it said. “From activism, to DEI, to healthcare, no policy or student protection is safe in the wake of this administration’s attack on education.”

“Now more than ever it is essential to stand together and protect our community,” the caption continued.

“GW has a responsibility to take a stand for its students, workers, and community; and it is our responsibility as students to pressure GW to take this stand!”

GW’s Jewish community, however, hasn’t enjoyed safety or protection since Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack.

The Justice Department’s letter pointed to a number of anti-Semitic incidents, including several examples of Jewish students being surrounded by agitators who “yelled antisemitic slurs in their faces, and forced them to flee.”

A group of Jewish students also sued GW in May, accusing it of failing to address the “pervasive and severe anti-semitic harassment” that surged following Hamas’s massacre.

In one instance, the suit alleges that GW SJP president Lance Lokas spat on one of the unnamed Jewish plaintiffs.

And at an anti-Israel encampment erected on campus in spring 2024, an SJP member followed a Jewish student and her friends as they tried to walk away and loudly called out, “Imagine being a Zionist, they’re so ugly, fat, and stupid,” the complaint alleges.

GW’s SJP chapter first demanded that GW become a “sanctuary campus” in May when a group of students, faculty, and staff marched to GW president Ellen Granberg’s residence.

In an Instagram post, the group declared, “As students and faculty nationwide continue facing fascist repression and threats of deportation, it is critical that GW concede to our demands and truly stand by its community.”

Columbia University’s graduate student union pushed a similar effort in March to make the Ivy League school a sanctuary campus.

In a Zoom meeting the Washington Free Beacon attended, members of the Student Workers of Columbia demanded the university bar public safety officers from patrolling “organizing spaces, including classrooms,” destroy “all records” related to campus protest participants, and sue the Trump administration “and other anti-immigrant actors.”

GW did not respond to a request for comment.

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The private university in Washington, D.C., was one of dozens of schools to have a student anti-Israel encampment in the spring of 2024.

By Grace Gilson, JTA

The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it had found George Washington University in violation of federal civil rights law for acting “deliberately indifferent to the hostile educational environment for Jewish, American-Israeli, and Israeli students and faculty.”

The announcement marks the latest salvo in the Trump administration’s campaign against colleges it says have fostered antisemitism, most recently resulting in multi-million dollar settlements with Brown University and Columbia University.

In a letter sent to GWU President Ellen Granberg on Tuesday, the Justice Department said it had found the school acted “deliberately indifferent to the complaints it received, the misconduct that occurred, and the harms that were suffered by its students and faculty,” citing the “antisemitic, disruptive protests” that occurred on its campus in April and May 2024.

The private university in Washington, D.C., was one of dozens of schools to have a student anti-Israel encampment in the spring of 2024.

It became an early symbol of student protests against Israel in the weeks after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, when students projected messages including “Glory to Our Martyrs” and “Divestment from Zionist Genocide Now” on the outside wall of a campus building.

The school soon suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and, several months later, Jewish Voice for Peace in an attempt to quell tensions.

This past May, the school banned a student who called for divestment from Israel in her graduation speech.

As a result of the Civil Rights Division’s investigation’s conclusion, the Justice Department said it would offer the school a “voluntary resolution agreement to ensure immediate remediation” but did not stipulate what that would entail.

In a statement responding to the investigation’s findings, George Washington University said that the school had “worked diligently” with its Jewish community as well as city and federal authorities to “protect the GW community from antisemitism” and would remain committed to working with them.

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SJP will be placed on probation for one year after its suspension is lifted, during which it must request and acquire prior approval for any expressive activity.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

George Washington University (GW) has suspended the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter operating on its campus until Spring 2026, punishing the group for a series of unauthorized demonstrations it held on school property last month, according to a recent report in The GW Hatchet.

The move marks one of the severest disciplinary sanctions SJP has provoked from the GW administration since it began violating rules on peaceful expression and assembly, as well as targeting school officials for harassment, following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

Until next May, SJP is barred from advertising and may only convene to “complete sanctions or consult with their advisor,” according to report.

A number of SJP chapters around the country have been disbanded or suspended by university administrators over the past two years.

The gatherings in question occurred during GW’s so-called “Palestine Liberation Week,” the Hatchet added.

Administrators repeatedly told SJP to “cease” the activity, but it the ignored their directives, choosing instead to charge ahead with a “teach in” and another event to which it denied an administrator access.

By the time the group’s leaders were hauled before the disciplinary panel which shut it down for an entire academic year, it had racked up a bundle of additional misconduct charges for, the Hatchet said, “disorderly conduct, discrimination, and non compliance” — of which it was ultimately found not guilty.

SJP will be placed on probation for one year after its suspension is lifted, the paper continued, during which it must request and acquire prior approval for any expressive activity.

Additionally, members will be required to attend “teach-ins on university policy” for “ten consecutive semesters.”

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, George Washington University has been a hub of extreme anti-Zionist activity that school officials have struggled to quell.

A major source of the troubling conduct is SJP, which recently escalated its behavior by issuing an ominous warning to a professor who was involved in crafting a proposal to relocate Palestinians in Gaza.

“This notice is to inform you that you are hereby evicted from the premises of the George Washington University,” SJP wrote in a missive it taped to the office door of international affairs professor Joseph Pelzman, who first shared the resettlement plan with Trump’s presidential campaign in July 2024, according to an account of events he described to the podcast “America, Baby!” the following month.

Denouncing Pelzman as the “architect of genocide,” SJP added, “Pelzman’s tenure is only one pernicious symptom of the bloodthirsty Zionism permeating our campus … The proprietors of this eviction notice demand your immediate removal.”

SJP’s threat to Pelzman, an accomplished academic who has focused heavily on the Middle East region, came as the group served probation for breaking a slew of school rules during the 2023-2024 academic year — a term which saw it heap abuse on school officials, visitors to campus representing former US President Joe Biden’s administration, and African Americans.

Earlier this year, SJP held a “teach-in” that commemorated the First Intifada, an outbreak of Palestinian terrorism which began in Dec. 1987 and, lasting for nearly six years, claimed the lives of scores of Israelis.

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The group also accused GW of obstructing investigations of antisemitism, issuing “evasive” statements which falsely implied it was committed to addressing antisemitism and launching “sham” investigations of people who reported experiencing antisemitism.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

George Washington University must address the campus antisemitism crisis before soliciting donations from community members who feel that more is needed to stem the tide of anti-Jewish hatred sweeping across the Washington, DC-based school, a concerned parent and co-founder of the advocacy group GWU Jewish Pulse wrote to the school in a blistering letter shared with The Algemeiner on Monday.

On April 3, the university held its fifth “Giving Day” campaign, through which it raised over $2 million from 3,500 parents who were implored to support “GW faculty and its cutting edge research.”

The 24-hour event featured “matches & challenges,” with some parents agreeing to write checks totaling as much as $100,000 or to match donations when certain criteria were met. It was a resounding success, according to the university.

“We are blown away by your commitment to providing a world-class education to our students,” said a mass email sent on Friday. “Your passion and dedication on Giving Day and throughout the year strengthen every aspect of the student experience, from academic programs and athletic teams and student support resources.”

“Giving Day” may have scored GW a cash windfall, but it was offensive to GWU Jewish Pulse co-founder Lea Wolf. Writing to university president Ellen M. Granberg, she accused Granberg of being derelict in her duty to protect Jewish students from pro-Hamas extremists among the student body and faculty.

“Before asking parents and alumni to contribute financially, perhaps it is time to confront the environment the university has actively cultivated — and what, if any, meaningful measures have been offered to Jewish students amid rising hostility, blatant hatred, and a stream of empty institutional platitudes,” said the letter, which will be released to the public later this week.

“For many families, George Washington University has indeed been transformational — but due to the intense and painful realization that GW is tolerant of Hamas propaganda and is willing to sacrifice its Jewish community in pursuit of financial gain, shielding liability, and a dangerous political agenda.”

Wolf went on to enumerate a litany of antisemitic incidents that occurred on GW’s campus since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel — from Jewish students being “demonized” to their being “subjected to predatory faculty practices.”

She also accused GW of obstructing investigations of antisemitism, issuing “evasive” statements which falsely implied it was committed to addressing antisemitism and launching “sham” investigations of people who reported experiencing antisemitism.

“The administration’s political games and refusal to lead in moments of rising terrorism speaks volumes,” Wolf continued. “When leaders fail to name antisemitism as a form of misconduct or treat Jewish concerns as politically inconvenient, that silence becomes complicity.”

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, George Washington University has become a hub of extreme anti-Zionist activity that school officials have struggled to quell.

A major source of the troubling conduct is Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which recently escalated its behavior by issuing an ominous warning to a professor who was involved in crafting a proposal to relocate Palestinians in Gaza.

“This notice is to inform you that you are hereby evicted from the premises of the George Washington University,” SJP wrote in a missive it taped to the office door of international affairs professor Joseph Pelzman, who first shared the resettlement plan with Trump’s presidential campaign in July 2024, according to an account of events he described to the podcast “America, Baby!” the following month.

Denouncing Pelzman as the “architect of genocide,” SJP added, “Pelzman’s tenure is only one pernicious symptom of the bloodthirsty Zionism permeating our campus … The proprietors of this eviction notice demand your immediate removal.”

SJP’s threat to Pelzman, an accomplished academic who has focused heavily on the Middle East region, came as the group served probation for breaking a slew of school rules during the 2023-2024 academic year — a term which saw it heap abuse on school officials, visitors to campus representing former US President Joe Biden’s administration, and African Americans.

Earlier this year, SJP held a “teach-in” that commemorated the First Intifada, an outbreak of Palestinian terrorism which began in Dec. 1987 and, lasting for nearly six years, claimed the lives of scores of Israelis.

The group is currently suspended, according to The GW Hatchet, as the university has decided it is “a threat to the stability and continuance of normal university functions.”

GW faculty have also proved problematic. In 2023, former psychology professor Lara Sheehi was accused of verbally abusing and discriminating against her Jewish graduate students.

As recounted by a civil rights complaint filed by StandWithUs, Sheehi expressed contempt for Jews when, on the first day of term in Aug. 2022, she asked every student to share information about their backgrounds and cultures.

Replying to a student who revealed that she was Israeli, Sheehi said, “It’s not your fault you were born in Israel.” Jewish students said they made several attempts to persuade the university to correct Sheehi’s behavior or arrange an alternative option for fulfilling the requirements of her course. Each time, StandWithUs alleged, administrators said nothing could be done.

Later, the complaint added, Sheehi spread rumors that her Jewish students were “combative” racists and filed misconduct charges against them. One student told The Algemeiner at the time that she never learned what university policies Sheehi accused her and her classmates of violating.

In Monday’s letter, Lea Wolf complained that these issues, and more, remain uncorrected.

“Giving is a two-way relationship,” she concluded. “Trust is earned, not assumed. If you want the Jewish community to give, then demonstrate genuine leadership and meaningful accountability to restore the integrity and mission of this educational institution. Honor the values and principles this institution claims to uphold — through decisive action, honest words, and the courage to lead when it matters most.”

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George Washington University spokeswoman Julia Garbitt said the university is taking the situation ‘very seriously’ and deplores ‘any acts that deface university property or threaten any members of our community.’

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

The Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at George Washington University on Monday issued an ominous warning to a professor who created a proposal to resettle residents of Gaza outside of the Palestinian enclave and remake it into a hub for tourism and economic dynamism, a policy rolled out by US President Donald Trump earlier this month.

“This notice is to inform you that you are hereby evicted from the premises of the George Washington University,” SJP wrote in a missive it taped to the office door of international affairs professor Joseph Pelzman, who first shared the resettlement plan with Trump’s presidential campaign in July 2024, according to an account of events he described to the podcast “America, Baby!” the following month.

“The reason for the eviction is: your active role in incepting the genocide and planned ethnic cleansing of Gaza,” SJP’s message continued. “Your disgusting plan for the complete destruction and foreign occupation of Gaza and the colonial ‘re-education’ of Palestinians.”

Denouncing Pelzman as the “architect of genocide,” SJP added, “Pelzman’s tenure is only one pernicious symptom of the bloodthirsty Zionism permeating our campus … The proprietors of this eviction notice demand your immediate removal.”

On Tuesday, Pelzman told The Algemeiner in a statement that the university’s police department and its president, Ellen Granberg, have been notified of the letter.

He also shared background on his controversial proposal, which was outlined in a paper titled “An Economic Plan for Rebuilding Gaza,” a work published by the Center of Excellence for the Economic Study of the Middle East and North Africa (CEESMENA).

“The flyer, titled ‘Notice of Eviction,’ falsely accuses me of genocide, racism, and other inflammatory claims,” Pelzman said. “While it does not contain an explicit, direct threat, the language used is highly aggressive and appears to incite collective action against me.”

He added, “The SJP complaint refers to a paper that I recently published in an academic journal. Nothing in my formal economics paper suggests anything remotely resembling the SJP complaint. They accuse me of writing the Trump plan. The reality is that my paper was sent to the Trump people in July. It was not written for him, nor was it requested by him. Clearly, these people did not read the paper.”

Pelzman had said during an interview in August that his paper, which was later published in the Global World Journal and put online in October, “went to the Trump people because they were the ones who initially had an interest in it — not the Biden people. I was asked [by Trump’s team] to think outside the box on what do we do after [the Gaza war], as nobody was really talking about it.”

Responding to The Algemeiner’s request for comment on SJP’s conduct, spokeswoman Julia Garbitt said the university is taking the situation “very seriously” and deplores “any acts that deface university property or threaten any members of our community.”

Garbitt also noted that an investigation to identify the culprits, whom she said will be subject to “all applicable local laws and university polices,” is underway.

She continued, “We also want to stress that faculty members are entitled to academic freedom in their teaching and research, even when it is controversial. We also want to be clear that scholarly work produced by faculty does not reflect a university position. These commitments are the hallmark of an academic community that respects differing points of view.”

SJP’s threat to Pelzman, an accomplished academic who has focused heavily on the Middle East region, comes as the group serves probation for breaking a slew of school rules during the 2023-2024 academic year — a term which saw it heap abuse on school officials, visitors to campus representing former US President Joe Biden’s administration, and African Americans.

The university suspended the group over its behavior in Feb. 2024 but is now active again.

Recently, SJP announced that it will hold a “teach-in” to commemorate the First Intifada, an outbreak of Palestinian terrorism which began in Dec. 1987 and, lasting for nearly six years, claimed the lives of scores of Israelis.

The group’s targeting of Pelzman came after Trump earlier this month proposed an amalgam of Pelzman’s concepts and his own, which notably involved the US occupying Gaza in perpetuity to oversee its reconstruction and recovery from the Israel-Hamas war prompted by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.

As part of the proposal, Trump suggested relocating Gazans in countries such as Jordan and Egypt. However, both nations rejected the plan for being unworkable.

“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Trump said on Feb. 5 during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site — level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings — level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.”

Pelzman explained his own thinking on the topic in August, noting that the Biden administration was not interested in his counsel.

“You have to destroy the whole place, you have to start from scratch,” he said.

“And then you have an economy which actually has three sectors. You have tourism potential, you have agriculture potential, and then you have — because a lot of them are smart — high tech … This is a triangular sector model, but its implementation requires the area to be completely vacated so that the destroyed concrete can be recycled — ensuring that nothing remains of the vertical construction extending deep underground.”

Trump recently somewhat retreated from the idea, saying he would not impose the plan but instead recommend it. Nonetheless, the controversial and seismic proposed policy change has set off a maelstrom of anti-Zionist sentiment at George Washington University.

In Monday’s letter to Pelzman, SJP implied that it is prepared to harm the professor over his role in advancing Trump’s plan for Gaza.

“If you choose to remain on the premises, and if GWU continues to harbor your malignant presence on this campus, every sector of this community will be mobilized against you,” the group said. “The students of GWU will hold you and this university accountable for your crimes.”

Speaking to The Algemeiner on Tuesday, George Washington University senior Sabrina Soffer said SJP’s note to Pelzman violates norms which protect the unfettered exchange of ideas in higher education and constitutes harassment.

“They are targeting Professor Pelzman for doing his job — producing creative scholarship in a field of academia that is littered with mines that explode with the slightest sense of movement or touch,” Soffer said.

“SJP’s slandering him as a ‘bloodthirsty Zionist” and threatening to ‘mobilize’ against him amounts not only to a violation of our discrimination policy but also a brazen act of intimidation which discourages academic freedom and the discovery of new knowledge.”

She continued, “The university must enhance their disciplinary policies and hold SJP accountable for its actions by once again suspending its permission to operate on campus.”

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In the complaint, Jewish students said that Sheehi, the GW psychology professor, targeted them for their religion and Israeli nationality.

By Alana Goodman, The Washington Free Beacon

A federal civil rights investigation uncovered evidence that the George Washington University faculty retaliated against Jewish students based on “shared ancestry-related advocacy” by placing them in a remediation program after the students lodged an anti-Semitism complaint against an anti-Israel professor.

The Department of Education also ordered the school to conduct a review of former GW psychology professor Lara Sheehi’s social media posts—which included calls to “destroy Zionism” and described Israelis as “genocidal fucks”—to determine if the comments created a “hostile environment” for Jewish and Israeli students.

The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights raised the concerns in a confidential settlement letter with GW on Jan. 16, which followed a two-year investigation, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

As part of the settlement, GW agreed to “review and revise” its anti-discrimination policies and train professors against “unlawful discrimination.” The school also agreed to expunge any disciplinary action from the students’ records.

A group of Jewish and Israeli psychology students at GW filed the civil rights complaint in 2023, saying the school failed to protect them after they were “singled out for repeated and persistent harassment” by anti-Israel professors and classmates in the program and later subjected to retaliation when they complained.

In the letter, the civil rights office said it had “concern that the students may have been placed on remediation plans in retaliation for asserting their rights” under the Civil Rights Act’s Title VI anti-discrimination clause.

It added that the decisions to place those students into a remediation program “appear to encompass [the students’] shared ancestry-related advocacy.”

“Evidence provided to OCR indicated that the students made in-class statements during the course that constituted protected activity,” the letter stated.

StandWithUs, the group that brought the complaint on behalf of the students, told the Free Beacon that the settlement letter was a positive step.

“StandWithUs welcomes this result, as well as the requirement that GW must also remove all vestiges of the retaliatory disciplinary process to which Sheehi and fellow Program faculty subjected some of those students when they displayed the courage to speak up about the antisemitism they were experiencing,” said Carly Gammill, the group’s director of legal policy.

In the complaint, Jewish students said that Sheehi, the GW psychology professor, targeted them for their religion and Israeli nationality. When one of the students introduced herself to the class as an Israeli, Sheehi responded, “It’s not your fault you were born in Israel,” according to the complaint.

Sheehi also invited a guest lecturer who reportedly assailed “white Israeli racism” and praised a Palestinian terrorist who stabbed an Israeli child, according to the complaint.

When some Jewish students pushed back on Sheehi’s anti-Israel rhetoric in class, the professor allegedly argued that Zionism was racist and anti-Semitic.

Sheehi reportedly complained about the students to other professors in the psychology program, and “faculty voted to initiate disciplinary proceedings against [the students],” according to the complaint.

Sheehi—who attacked Israel on social media as “racist” and “genocidal”—has since left GW for Hamas-friendly Qatar.

The university hired a law firm to investigate the allegations against her, which found “no evidence substantiating the allegations of discriminatory and retaliatory conduct,” according to a statement from the firm.

But the OCR settlement letter indicates that the case still remains a concern.

The office ordered the school to “evaluate and determine whether a hostile environment based on national origin, including shared ancestry, was created for students on campus as a result of [Sheehi’s] social media activity,” including anything she posted before resigning. GW must submit its findings to OCR by later this spring, according to the settlement.

“Far from exonerating Sheehi or GW, OCR made clear that what happened to these students was wholly unacceptable under Title VI, and it imposes concrete obligations on GW to best ensure that such mistreatment does not recur,” said Gammill.

A GW spokeswoman declined to comment. She directed the Free Beacon to a statement on the school’s website that said the “investigation concluded without any finding that GW was in violation of Title VI nor any other law” and that the settlement was a “voluntary agreement, which is similar to agreements recently adopted by a wide variety of other universities.”

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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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‘It still feels like Oct. 8, because we’re still missing our loved ones,’ GW Chabad president Sabrina Soffer said during an interview on Monday.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

Jewish students at George Washington University in Washington, DC came together on Saturday to commemorate the lives of the kidnapped and deceased ahead of the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, a tragedy which claimed more Jewish lives in one day than any since the Holocaust.

Organized by Chabad GW, the event — titled “Remember, Resolve, Rededicate” — was held at Kogan Plaza, a section of campus that has seen both memorials to the victims of Hamas’s barbarism and celebrations of their afflictions led by pro-Hamas activists.

On Saturday, however, a generation of Jewish students whose lives and conceptions of self have been upended by the events of the past year claimed the space as exclusively theirs, transforming it into a realm of healing and perseverance.

Speaking to The Algemeiner on Monday, several students who attended the gathering remarked on the swiftness of the passage of time and why, one year removed from Oct. 7, it still feels like only the day after.

“It still feels like Oct. 8, because we’re still missing our loves ones,” GW Chabad president Sabrina Soffer said during an interview on Monday.

“Israel is such a small country, and there, everyone is like family. We’re still missing over 100 people; we’ve lost so many, people are displaced from their homes — and the war is still ongoing and only escalating from here. I just hope that Israel will achieve victory. I want the war to end, but Israel must win.”

The presence at the vigil of those seemingly hostile to those gathered in support of Israel and the Jewish community also shrunk the distance between one year ago and now.

At one point, a young woman wearing a keffiyeh roamed through the crowd, taking pictures of the students as they listened to speeches and comforted one another. She did not disclose what the pictures were for nor which media outlet she represented.

“It was an amazing visualization, the more I think about it,” freshman Nate Neutstadt told The Algemeiner. “We’re here together as a community celebrating life, celebrating love, and on the other hand, there were people coming up to us trying to fuel the fire and spread hate.”

A native of San Diego, California, Neutstadt chose to attend GW — which he described as his “dream school” for its highly reputed school of international affairs — fully aware that every day on campus would see his Jewish identity scrutinized and maligned.

Resisting any notion that Jewish identity can be driven underground, he accepted the challenge. The unknown woman was one of many obstacles against which he, as well as other first-year Jewish students, had steeled themselves long ago.

Soon, she became an afterthought. No one photographed her in return.

“We were all just here in the moment, celebrating. And I think all of our mindsets at this point is that they’re going to do what they’re going to do and we’re going to be here celebrating life and love,” he added, explaining that he intends to fight hatred with Jewish pride.

“There’s so much hate going around towards Jews just over our existing, and I think the best way to fight against it is to be a proud Jew, to live Jewish life in the face of hate. Because no matter what these antisemites try to do, chanting in the streets ‘intifada, intifada,’ they can never defeat us.”

Others, such as senior Ari Shapiro, have experienced an awakening of Jewish identity in the post-Oct 7. world.

Throughout most of his life, Shapiro explained, Jewishness was an overlooked component of his identity, a detail of his biography which entitled him to a bar mitzvah but was attenuated by the comfort and banality of suburbia.

“I’m in a different boat than some of the others Jewish students you’ll talk to,” he said.

“Before Oct. 7, 2023, I had never really considered what it meant to be Jewish. I never really felt an attachment to the identity or had even considered it to be a barrier between me and anyone else who wasn’t Jewish. That’s ironic, I know, given my name, which doesn’t get more Jewish than that. But seeing how Hamas butchered and slaughtered thousands of people, many of whom were part of the kibbutzim, which is usually the farther left group in Israel; and then seeing people on this campus demonstrate in support of their killers — that forced me to realize that no matter how much I made being Jewish as part of my identity, I would still share in the fate of others whose Judaism and Jewishness is the basis of how they are perceived by the world.”

For Natasha Halbfinger, who lived in Israel for four years during adolescence, Oct. 7 affirmed values in which she has always believed.

“We, as the Jewish people, will continue to be proud of our identities,” she proclaimed during a speech delivered on Saturday night. “We will not be Jews with trembling knees. We will continue to turn horror into beautiful celebrations of life — because Am Israel Chai.

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Anti-Israel radicals at George Washington University’s pro-Hamas encampment call for the beheading of senior school administrators.

By World Israel News Staff

A group of radical pro-Hamas demonstrators gathered at a protest encampment on the George Washington University campus last week and called for the beheading of senior school administrators over their refusal to back anti-Israel protests.

Video footage published to social media this week shows demonstrators last Friday chanting “Guillotine, guillotine, guillotine, guillotine,” in reference to university President Ellen Granberg and other top college officials.

“As you already know where I am sending her [to the guillotine], her and her f**k*ss bob.”

Some other school administrators, including provost Christopher Alan Bracey, were threatened by name.

“Bracey, Bracey, we see you,” protesters chanted. “You assault students too. Off to the motherf**king gallows with you.”

Demonstrators held a mock trial to sentence the school’s administrators, and livestreamed the faux hearing via Instagram.

“On the accusations that [the Board of Trustees] have a vested interest in the genocide of the Palestinian people because they benefit from Zionist weapons and purchases that you refuse to divest apartheid while they fill pockets,” one protester leading the mock trial asked fellow demonstrators, “People find you.”

“Guilty!” the protesters responded.

“The the guillotine,” the faux judge shouted in return.

Written materials published by the radical left-wing Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) were posted around the area of the protest encampment at the school’s U-Yard.

School president Ellen Granberg issued a statement Sunday condemning the protesters and urging local police to intervene, saying the school was unable to restore order on its own.

“The demonstration, like many around the country, has grown into what can only be classified as an illegal and potentially dangerous occupation of GW property,” Gransberg said.

“It is also essential to highlight that at no point was this encampment lawful.”

As a university, we are not equipped to single-handedly manage an unprecedented situation such as this.”

Since the weekend, police have arrested at least 35 people, Washington police told Fox News, as the campus protests at GWU enter their 14th day.

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The professor stated that the presence of Jewish students can inflict ‘violence.’

By Alec Schemmel, The Washington Free Beacon

George Washington University professor Lara Sheehi, who endorsed Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on Israel as “armed resistance” and allegedly discriminated against Jewish students, is leaving the school to teach at a college in Hamas-friendly Qatar.

Sheehi announced her impending departure in an email to fellow members of George Washington University’s psychology program, calling the move to the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies “an aligned professional and personal choice,” according to the Algemeiner. Hamas keeps an office in the city, where the terror group’s leaders are known to live in luxury. That doesn’t appear to bother Sheehi, who in the wake of Oct. 7 shared posts to her Instagram account describing Hamas terrorists as “martyrs” and endorsing their “armed resistance.”

Sheehi’s decision to leave George Washington University at the end of the year comes as the school faces an ongoing federal investigation into the professor’s behavior. Sheehi’s Jewish students last year filed a Title VI complaint against the professor, alleging that Sheehi harassed them, encouraged others to demean them, and disciplined them for speaking out.

“It’s not your fault you were born in Israel,” Sheehi told one student, according to a witness.

George Washington University tapped an outside law firm to conduct an investigation into Sheehi’s behavior. That investigation, the school said in March 2023, found “no evidence substantiating the allegations.” George Washington University refused to release the full report, and just days later, the Department of Education opened an investigation into the allegations leveled against Sheehi.

In addition to the report, George Washington University last year said that social media posts from Sheehi—one of which told supporters of Israel to “get fucked, you and your racist ass”—did not violate school policies. Sheehi has declared all Israelis “fucking racist,” argued that the presence of Jewish students can inflict “violence,” accused Zionists of suffering from a “settler psychosis,” and denied that Hamas is a terrorist group.

“FUCK ZIONISM, ZIONISTS AND SETTLER COLONIALISM using Palestinian lives as examples of their boundless cruelty and power,” Sheehi said in October 2020. “If you see this and STILL entertain for even a split second that Hamas is the terrorist entity, there is literally zero hope for you, your soul, or your general existence as an ethical human being in this world.”

During her time at George Washington University, Sheehi focused on “decolonial and anti-oppressive approaches to psychoanalysis, with a focus on liberation struggles in the Global South,” according to her Doha Institute for Graduate Studies faculty bio. Her future colleagues have also defended Hamas. Doha Institute professor Omar Ashour claimed during a November appearance on Al-Jazeera, Qatar’s state-owned news network, that Hamas did not mean to take as many hostages as it did on Oct. 7.

“Monitoring [the hostages], providing security for them, even feeding them is probably an issue, so the lesser [Hamas captors] have, the more … they will have control over them,” he said.

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George Washington University Students for Justice in Palestine has been battling the school’s administration to push the boundaries of its campus activities since Hamas’ terror invasion of Israel on Oct. 7.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

George Washington University in Washington DC on Tuesday became the third private university in the United States to suspend its Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter, citing the group’s unauthorized projection of pro-Hamas messages on a library named after deceased Jewish supporters of the school as cause.

The news was first reported by The GW Hatchet, a campus newspaper, which added that the suspension has two phases, first a 90-day period in which SJP is banned from sponsoring and holding events on campus, and a second, beginning on Feb. 12, 2024 and lasting for the remainder of the academic year, in which the university will “continue to restrict” its activities.

“GW is continuously proving, as they have proven time and time again for many, many years, that they will always align with the Zionist lobby and against the right to free speech and the right to assembly of their own students,” a representative for SJP, whom the paper granted anonymity, told the Hatchet, accusing the school of “repressive tactics” and vowing that the group will seek ways to circumvent its suspension.

Two other universities have suspended their SJP chapters. On Friday, Columbia announced that it had suspended SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) as official student groups on campus through the end of the fall semester. Days earlier, Brandeis University in Massachusetts revoked recognition of its chapter of SJP over its support for Hamas, saying that its decision “was not made lightly, as Brandeis is dedicated to upholding free speech principles.”

George Washington University Students for Justice in Palestine has been battling the school’s administration to push the boundaries of its campus activities since Hamas’ terror invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, an attack that resulted in over 1,200 deaths of mostly civilians including incidents of rape and torture.

Five days after the attack, President Ellen Granberg censured in strong terms any support on campus for the war crimes Hamas committed, acts that SJP had cheered during numerous demonstrations.

“I not only condemn terrorism, but I also abhor the celebration of terrorism and attempts to perpetuate rhetoric or imagery that glorifies acts of violence,” Granberg wrote in an open letter. “Such messages do not speak on behalf of me, our administrators, or GW.” Granberg also expressed concern for all affected by the week’s events in the Middle East, calling on the campus community to “reach out to a friend, colleague, or classmate and show your support.”

Later that month, on the evening of Oct. 22, students walking through the campus’ Kogan Plaza and down H Street stopped to behold a projection of messages on the eastern perimeter of the Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library.

The messages said: “Free Palestine from the river to the sea,” “GW the blood of Palestinians is in your hands,” “Divest from Zionist genocide now,” and “Glory to our martyrs.” The scene attracted dozens of students, Jewish and Muslim, who spectated while the GW Police Department and a campus official negotiated terms for an end to the demonstration, which had not been authorized by the university.

The conversation, observed by The Algemeiner, was tense. In hushed tones, SJP members accused Granberg of bias against Muslims.

Students told The Algemeiner that night that the act was laden with symbolism. Before her death in 2009, Estelle Gelman was a GW board of trustees member and board member of the United States Holocaust Museum and other Jewish nonprofits. Her husband, Melvin, was an endowed chair in GW’s Judaic Studies Program.

Last month, Florida’s state university system, in consultation with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, directed colleges to “deactivate” SJP chapters for defending Hamas following the terrorist group’s invasion of Israel and massacre of civilians.

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‘Every Palestinian is a civilian even if they hold arms,’ while every Israeli ‘is an aggressor, a soldier, and an occupier even if they are lounging on our occupied beaches.’

By Jessica Costescu, The Washington Free Beacon

The president of the student group that projected pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic messages onto a George Washington University library gave a speech in May glorifying Palestinian terrorist “martyrs” for making the “ultimate sacrifice” and called for violent “resistance” against Israelis, according to a video of the event.

Lance Lokas—a junior at the Washington, D.C., university—as of February served as president of the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, which took credit for the Tuesday evening library stunt. Lokas made his “martyr” speech during a May “Nakba Day” rally held near the Washington Monument. Lokas during his speech glorified Palestinian “martyrs,” calling their “ultimate sacrifice” a “compass guiding our work towards liberation,” a video obtained by the Middle East Media Research Institute shows. Lokas also defended Palestinian “resistance” in “all its forms” and criticized those who condemn terrorism against Israel.

“The more the Zionists try to extinguish the fire of resistance, the brighter it will grow. For every martyr that Palestine gains, another rises to take their place,” Lokas said. “To condemn Palestinian resistance is to demand that the Palestinian people submit passively to the daily violence of colonialism. It is a call to lie down and accept death.”

Lokas’s anti-Semitic speech came months before the activist’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter projected pro-Hamas images onto the George Washington University library. The images included messages such as “Glory to our martyrs,” “Divestment from Zionist genocide now,” and “Free Palestine from the river to the sea,” a phrase that calls for the Jewish state’s eradication.

Students for Justice in Palestine took credit for the Tuesday evening demonstration in anonymous comments made to the GW Hatchet. University students told the Washington Free Beacon that Lokas was one of the four demonstrators who projected the messages.

Neither Lokas nor George Washington University returned requests for comment. While George Washington University police eventually shut down Students for Justice in Palestine’s anti-Semitic library demonstration, it took more than two hours to do so. The university on Wednesday released a statement that called the display “unauthorized” and said it “in no way reflects the views of the university.”

Seven members of Congress who attended George Washington University, however, did not find that response convincing. Those members, including Reps. Andrew Garbarino (R., N.Y.) and Jared Moskowitz (D., Fla.), sent a letter to university president Ellen Granberg calling on the school to “make clear to its student body that this despicable behavior won’t be tolerated.”

As of Wednesday morning, a profile photo on Lokas’s Instagram showed the activist wearing the same hat he sported during the “Nakba Day” rally. Later in the day, Lokas removed that photo from his profile. By Wednesday afternoon, Lokas removed his account from the platform altogether.

Lokas in a December 2022 statement identified himself as a “mixed-race and Arab student at [George Washington University] majoring in Photojournalism” who has “been involved in organizing against all forms of imperialism and colonialism” through Students for Justice in Palestine.

“The ongoing colonization of Palestine is a matter of great importance to me,” Lokas said. Seventy-four “years of exile from the homeland, the ethnic cleansing of our people, the continued violent campaign of indigenous land theft, the endlessly and unforgivably long and growing list of our martyrs: these issues and the suffering of our people weigh heavily on my mind and my heart each and every day.”

“It is because of this that I joined [Students for Justice in Palestine] and this year I took on the role of [the group’s] president, which is a position I hold with pride,” Lokas went on.

Following Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist rampage against Israel, Lokas’s group issued a statement standing “in full support of the liberation of our homeland and our people’s right to resist the violent 75-year-long colonization of our homeland by any means necessary.” The statement went on to argue that “every Palestinian is a civilian even if they hold arms,” while every Israeli “is an aggressor, a soldier, and an occupier even if they are lounging on our occupied beaches.”

“GWU Students for Justice in Palestine maintains unwavering support for our people’s resistance, in all its forms,” the statement said, echoing Lokas’s May speech. “Every act of resistance moves us closer to the liberation of our homeland.”

The “Nakba Day” rally that featured Lokas as a speaker was organized by American Muslims for Palestine, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, among other anti-Israel and anti-Semitic groups. American Muslims for Palestine has ties to Hamas—board member Salah Sarsour in the late 1990s played a direct role in fundraising for the terror group, according to an FBI memorandum.

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Lance Lokas, the Students for Justice in Palestine president at George Washington University, calls for violence and praises Hamas terrorists during rally.

The post WATCH: Anti-Israel student group leader glorifies terrorist ‘martyrs,’ calls for violence against Israelis appeared first on World Israel News.