A Victory for Campus Freedom ~ June 9, 2021 ~ by Diane B. Kunz

The decision is now final. After a five-year battle, the New York courts have upheld Fordham University’s ability to deny Students for Justice in Palestine (“SJP”) the right to register as a recognized student organization (Matter of Awad v. Fordham Univ., 2020 NY Slip Op. 07695, December 22, 2020).  This decision demonstrates that universities can stand up for academic freedom and fight against the “long march through the institutions” that SJP has launched.  That phrase, coined by German Communist Rudi Dutschke in the nineteen sixties, has inspired students and faculty in the United States to launch their own long march to substitute an anti-Semitic narrative for objective debate on Israeli-Palestinian issues and grievously erode the right of Zionist students to live and study in peace and safety on American campuses.

Fordham had based its denial of accreditation on the grounds that SJP was “affiliated with a national organization reported to have engaged in disruptive and coercive actions on other campuses.”   Fordham’s decision  is well buttressed  by the evidence.  In the last two decades, SJP has disrupted numerous academic classes, public meetings, and invited-speaker presentations at campuses from coast to coast.   Rather than promote dialogue, SJP has created a network of campus chapters dedicated to using obstructive and intimidating tactics to promulgate the Big Lie—that Israel is an apartheid state, that Jews have no right to be in their indigenous home, and that the Jewish state alone, of all the world’s nations, is illegitimate, notwithstanding all evidence or facts to the contrary. As the National SJP umbrella organization puts it, ”the fight for justice for the Palestinian people cannot “be attained within a Zionist framework.” (https://www.nationalsjp.org/2019).  In other words from the river to the sea, the state of Israel will be purged from existence.  

Moreover, as testimony before Congress in 2016 disclosed, SJP has “strong ties to American Muslims for Palestine (AMP)…,” some of whose most important members have been also responsible for funding the Hamas terrorist organization (https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA18/20160419/104817/HHRG-114-FA18-Wstate-SchanzerJ-20160419.pdf).

What stands out from the New York Appellate Court’s decision is the Court’s firm statement that “on the merits of the case, Fordham’s conclusion that SJP “’would work against, rather than enhance [Fordham’s] commitment to open dialogue and mutual learning and understanding’ was not ‘without sound basis in reason’ or ‘taken without regard to the facts.’”  (The actual decision turned on standing). For too long universities have allowed themselves to be intimidated into allowing SJP, an anti-Semitic hate group, to hide behind legitimate free speech concerns.  As a result,  SJP has weaponized academic freedom to  spread hate and prejudice,  and to frighten students into passive acquiescence of SJP’s eliminationist platform. 

As the Court made clear, Fordham’s administration had the right to distinguish SJP from existing registered student groups on its campus and deny it recognition.  SJP is not the same as the Muslim Student Association, the Black Student Alliance, the Korean Student Alliance, or the Jewish Student Alliance, all of which are registered campus cultural organizations.  Nor is it akin to the Humanitarian Club or the Environmental Club, both of which are recognized campus special interest organizations.  Indeed Fordham has no recognized student organizations that advocate for political causes.  On those grounds alone, Fordham’s decision was justified.  But more importantly, the Appellate Court recognized that a university administration has the right to refuse accreditation to an organization that specializes in intimidation in the service of propaganda or worse.  As LDB’s chairman Kenneth L. Marcus explained, “This is a huge loss for SJP.”   And it is a larger win for campus freedom.

Diane Bernstein Kunz is an American author, historian, lawyer and executive director of a not-for-profit adoption advocacy group, the Center for Adoption Policy. She is the author of Butter and Guns (1997), an overview of America’s Cold War economic diplomacy.