https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/11/how_fordham_university_lost_to_radical_palestinians_in_court.html
Coinciding with the 2019 National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) conference held in Minnesota this past weekend, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) released an alarming report that exposes the toxic ideology that characterizes this radical campus group. The ISGAP report confirms what observers of radicalism in higher education have documented for years: that while SJP purports to be a group whose mission is to achieve a peaceful and just resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by supporting Palestinian self-determination, in fact, as the report put it, “SJP is steeped in an ideology that has roots in racist and antisemitic extremism.”
That toxic campus radicalism has meant that administrators, supporters of Israel, pro-Israel speakers, and Jewish students and organizations have experienced the caustic side-effect of SJP’s presence on campus. As SJP grew more aggressive in its demonstrations and behavior, it occasionally, though rarely, has been sanctioned or restrained.
Finally, in 2016, one university, Fordham University in New York, cognizant of SJP’s history of poisoning dialogue on campuses and promoting a campaign of libels, defamation, and lies against Israel and Jewish students, reversed the decision of the student government to allow SJP to become a recognized student organization and decided that SJP, based on its sorry record at other universities, had no place at Fordham. Dean Keith Eldridge, aware of SJP’s methods and ideology, bravely decided that “while students are encouraged to promote diverse political points of view, and we encourage conversation and debate on all topics, I cannot support an organization whose sole purpose is advocating political goals of a specific group, and against a specific country [emphasis added], when these goals clearly conflict with and run contrary to the mission and values of the University[.] … The purpose of the organization as stated in the proposed club constitution points toward … polarization.”
SJP immediately sued Fordham, in Awad v. Fordham University, 2019 WL 3550713, asserting that the decision to block it from becoming a recognized student organization was, as the judge ultimately found in reversing the dean’s decision in 2019, “arbitrary and capricious,” and “it must be concluded that [Dean Eldridge’s] disapproval of SJP was made in large part because the subject of SJP’s criticism is the State of Israel, rather than some other nation,” and that “his only articulated concern was that SJP singled out one particular country for criticism and boycott.”
In fact, Fordham’s instincts were well founded in that the dean knew, based in SJP’s record elsewhere, of its pattern of radicalism, misbehavior, toxic speech, and overtly anti-Semitic behavior. That radicalism has been problematic, particularly since research by the AMCHA Initiative, an organization that tracks anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism at universities, “indicate[s] a significant increase in actions which directly harm or threaten Jewish students, including physical and verbal assaults, destruction of property, harassment discrimination and suppression of speech, at schools with an SJP or similar anti-Zionist chapter.” Equally serious is the report’s findings that SJP’s presence resulted in “incidents of Israel-related anti-Semitic harassment increase[ing] 70%.”
