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After calm conversations between students at the front of the line and students tabling, and after being turned away from the registration table because they were not of the “right” religious or ethnic identity, the Palestinian and Arab students lined up for a photo some distance away with signs identifying their village of origin and exposing their exclusion from the program. Immediately after the group photo was taken, students dispersed. The entire interaction lasted no more than fifteen minutes.
As photos, video, and other security footage will show, no activities during this action can be characterized as threatening or as harassment. There was no obstruction of the Birthright table or anyone’s movement in or around the tabling location. SJP members, some of whom did not participate in the action, have also been subject to questioning and intimidation by the administration, and asked to name the students who were part of the tabling activities.
Although no charges have yet been filed and no findings of wrongdoing made, the administration has already created an intimidating environment for students engaged in peaceful campus speech, interrogating students and taking an extreme measure against SJP by temporarily suspending the organization.
At the moment, the investigation of the action raises two potential concerns: sanctions against individual students and sanctions against SJP. Student group regulations imply that student groups are responsible for any actions taken by individual members that reflect on the group. Although we believe that the students participating in the registration attempt did so with the best intentions to engage in open dialogue about an injustice they feel strongly about, SJP Loyola is being associated with all Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and pro-Palestinian speech on campus. It is false to assume that any and all students who advocate for Palestinian rights are doing so in SJP’s name, and it is inappropriate to punish SJP for the independent actions of some of its individual members.
Moreover, students have also been accused of various forms of harassment and intimidation, allegations which are inaccurate and rely on racist and Islamophobic portrayals of Palestinian and Muslim students as threatening and aggressive, and which do not have any documentary evidence.
SJP Loyola’s temporary suspension and the ongoing investigation of students fits in with a wider trend of attempts to silence and repress any type of speech on US college campuses that criticizes Israel’s racist policies against the Palestinian people. Over the past few years, students and faculty across the nation have been targeted and intimidated
for speaking out in support of Palestinian human rights, civil rights, and equality. Students at Loyola have also felt the weight of these restrictions, particularly since divestment debates began in the spring of 2014. The pressure placed on Loyola to investigate, punish and even ban SJP comes from students who actively promote Israel on campus, and from off-campus organizations that intervened in democratic student processes in favor of divestment last year. Actively pro-Israel students themselves have made clear their intention to ban SJP from campus by continuing to complain about its activities. These same types of complaints are being made on campuses across the country, attempting to misrepresent political speech that criticizes a country’s well-documented violations of international law as anti-Semitic and threatening to Jewish students.
SJP Loyola is committed to resisting this intimidation. We believe that our university should protect students’ rights and allow us to engage in important and critical discussions freely, without fear of being falsely accused and punished for our views, and without draconian restrictions that prohibit reasonable and peaceful forms of public engagement and political speech.