Courtesy of JNS. Photo credit: Bgervais via Wikimedia Commons
The sundial on the McKeldin Mall at the campus of the University of Maryland, in College Park, Md
(JNS) — The University of Maryland public school system said on Wednesday that it and the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter on its campus had “mutually resolved” litigation in federal court through “a settlement agreement with no admission of liability by the university.”
In September 2024, the university attempted to ban the SJP chapter from holding a vigil for Gaza on Oct. 7, 2024 — the first anniversary of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel. It stated at the time that “only university-sponsored expressive events” would be allowed on campus that day due to “concerns of safety.”
Palestine Legal and the Council on American-Islamic Relations then filed a lawsuit against the university on the chapter’s behalf.
“UMD SJP is a registered university student organization in good standing, which has had more than 100 events on campus since Oct. 7, 2023, for which it consistently followed the university’s policies and procedures governing such events,” the university system stated on Wednesday.
It reiterated “its support for the First Amendment and particularly making campus space available for individuals and groups of all viewpoints to share their opinions pursuant to its guidelines for expressive activities and the First Amendment,” the system said. “The university takes very seriously its responsibilities for the safety and security of all university students and other members of its community.”
While the University of Maryland didn’t share the settlement amount, Palestine Legal and CAIR, which blamed Israel for being attacked on Oct. 7, said they had reached a “historic $100,000 settlement” with the university.
“To Palestine Legal’s knowledge, this settlement likely marks the highest financial penalty ever imposed on a U.S. university for violating pro-Palestinian students’ free speech rights,” it stated.
The University of Maryland’s settlement with Students for Justice in Palestine “does nothing to protect the safety of Jewish students,” according to Eric Fusfield, a rabbi and director of legislative affairs for B’nai B’rith International and deputy director of its center for human rights.
“SJP events routinely feature placards and banners proclaiming, ‘from the river to the sea,’ a call for the eradication of the Jewish state,” Fusfield told JNS. “Declarations that Israel is an ‘apartheid state’ or is guilty of ‘genocide’ further attempt to cast the Jewish state as a pariah and its supporters on campus as villains and accomplices.”
SJP’s chapters “have endorsed terrorism, campus vandalism and threats against Jewish students,” according to Fusfield. School administrators must protect Jewish students better from “threats and violence and must condemn unequivocally the antisemitic and anti-Zionist messages SJP spreads,” he said.
David Litman, a senior analyst at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, told JNS that “SJP stands for many things, but certainly not for justice, as illustrated by UMD SJP’s intentional mockery of the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre carried out by Palestinian terrorists inside Israel.”
The university’s decision is “an unforced error,” according to Litman.
“Administrators continue to fail to provide sound and effective responses to the anti-American, anti-academic and bigoted extremism proliferating on campuses through radical faculty members and organizations like SJP,” he told JNS.
The Anti-Defamation League stated that Students for Justice in Palestine, which repeatedly calls for “intifada” and accuses the Jewish state of “genocide,” is an antisemitic group.
“Individual SJP chapters and National SJP have justified and/or glorified the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel,” the ADL said. “They were also a central organizer of the 2024 student encampments across U.S. universities and colleges.”
“National SJP and many SJP chapters have called for ‘Zionists’ — those who believe in the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland and have connections to Israel — to be removed from campus spaces or from universities altogether,” the ADL said. “Some SJP chapters have called to ban Hillel (the premier Jewish student group in the United States) and Chabad, and some activists have gone so far as to call for harassing or intimidating Zionists and vandalizing Zionist institutions.”
It added that many chapters of the antisemitic group “have shared explicit pro-Hamas or other foreign terrorist organizations rhetoric on social media, including through the promotion of foreign terrorist organizations’ statements and images featuring members of foreign terrorist organizations, at times with weapons.”
