Students for Justice in Palestine vows to persist in fight for divestment despite ongoing external investigation
Brown University has suspended an anti-Israel student group, citing harassment and intimidation during a protest, while administrators conduct an external investigation.
“Given the severity of alleged threatening, intimidating and harassing actions during an event on campus, Brown University has initiated a review of the event and required the Brown chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine to cease all organization activities pending full review of the matter,” University Spokesperson Brian Clark told The Brown Daily Herald.
He also said that the school’s decision last week was “based on the severity of the alleged behavior and does not prejudge whether the organization violated policy.”
The student group pushed back and accused the school of a “politically-motivated ploy.”
Brown’s policy stipulates that a suspended group loses official campus recognition.
Students for Justice in Palestine led a protest Oct. 18 against “Brown Corporation’s recent decision not to divest from 10 companies with ties to the Israeli military,” the Herald reported.
Following the protest, Executive Vice President for Planning and Policy Russell Carey sent an email to the school, calling the students’ behavior “deeply concerning” and “entirely unacceptable.”
The school said students were “banging on vehicles,” “screaming profanity at individuals at close and personal range,” and yelling “a racial epithet directed toward a person of color,” according to NBC News.
The Brown Divest Coalition, a collective of pro-divestment activist groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine, called the decision “outrageous” in an Instagram post Sunday.
“By debilitating the main organization committed to organizing for Palestinian liberation on this campus, the administration has made clear their commitment to the dehumanization and erasure of Palestinian life,” the students wrote.
“However, we know that the administration’s campaign of bureaucratic violence will not silence or stifle our efforts to hold the institution accountable,” the group wrote.
The students vowed to “persist” as long as the university “maintains its support of the Zionist regime’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian and Lebanese people.”
They also called the school’s decision a “politically-motivated ploy to defame protestors, fracture the student movement and detract from their complicity in the extermination of the Palestinian people.”
In a contrasting stance, Brown trustee Joseph Edelman recently resigned in protest of Brown’s decision to hold a vote on divesting from Israel, The College Fix previously reported.
“I find it morally reprehensible that holding a divestment vote was even considered, much less that it will be held—especially in the wake of the deadliest assault on the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” he wrote in a letter published by The Wall Street Journal.
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