ACLU urges universities to reject calls to investigate Students for Justice in Palestine

The American Civil Liberties Union is fine with schools barring teachers from using the wrong pronouns, but muzzling the free-speech rights of student groups cheering the deadly Hamas attack on Israeli civilians is another matter.

The ACLU sent an open letter Wednesday to more than 650 university leaders expressing “strong opposition to any efforts to stifle free speech and association on college campuses,” responding to a plea by Jewish groups for universities to investigate Students for Justice in Palestine.

“The devastating conflict in Israel and Palestine has embroiled campuses here at home, sometimes resulting in speech that includes terms we vehemently disagree with or even find offensive and repugnant,” said Anthony Romero, ACLU executive director. “Yet it’s precisely in times of crisis and fear that university leaders must remain firm in their commitment to free speech, open debate, and peaceful dissent on campus.”

The Anti-Defamation League and Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law urged universities last week to probe their SJP chapters for possible violations of federal law against providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations.

The State Department has recognized Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization since 1997. The group’s founding charter calls killing all Jews a religious duty.

“SJP chapters are not advocating for Palestinian rights; they are celebrating terrorism,” said the two Jewish groups in their Oct. 26 letter to nearly 200 universities.

They cited the national SJP’s toolkit for its Oct. 12 “Day of Resistance” that included a template of a paraglider, a reference to the Hamas attackers who invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing more than 1,400 Israeli civilians.

“The toolkit refers to the Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel as ‘the resistance,’” the letter said. “This was followed by statements at campus events where students proudly declared ‘We are Hamas,’ and ‘We echo Hamas.’”

The groups asked universities to investigate their SJP chapters to determine their funding sources as well as determine whether they have violated school codes of conduct or federal anti-terrorism law.

“If universities do not check the activities of their SJP chapters, they may be violating their Jewish students’ legal rights to be free of harassment and discrimination on campus,” the letter said.

Mr. Romero blasted the Jewish groups’ requests, saying that a “blanket call to investigate every chapter of a pro-Palestinian student group for ‘material support to terrorists’ — without even an attempt to cite evidence — is unwarranted, wrong and dangerous.”

“It echoes America’s mistakes during the McCarthy era and is counterproductive,” he said. “We urge college and university leaders to hold fast to our nation’s best traditions and reject proposals to restrict constitutionally protected speech.”

The ACLU, a longtime free-speech defender, has been accused of hypocrisy in recent years for, among other things, backing speech codes that require staffers to use the preferred pronouns of transgender people that run counter to their biological sex.

In September, the ACLU applauded the Michigan Supreme Court for adopting a rule requiring judges, staff and attorneys who appear before them to use preferred names and pronouns in both oral communications and written documents.

The ACLU also filed a 2021 amicus brief in support of a Loudoun County, Virginia, public school policy requiring teachers to use students’ preferred names and pronouns, a rule challenged by teacher Tanner Cross.

The district lifted his suspension and reinstated him as part of a settlement after he won a preliminary injunction in court.

“The policy protects trans and gender-expansive students from discrimination, and necessitates equal treatment of all students in Loudoun County,” the ACLU said in a 2021 statement.