The suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine is a temporary punishment while the university investigates reports of threats, intimidation, and harassing behavior during an Oct. 18 campus protest.
The suspension of the SJP chapter was first reported by Campus Reform, the education watchdog group.
Zachary Marschall, Campus Reform’s editor in chief, tells AFN he was encouraged to hear the group's suspension happened quickly after university officials learned of the incident.
“As frustrating and infuriating as the whole situation is across the country,” Marschall observes, “we have to look at what's working here.”
Marschall credits a new anti-discrimination at Brown, which is being implemented right now, after Campus Reform investigated the famous university for civil rights violations.
In an email to Campus Reform, an executive vice president at Brown said the allegations include "screaming profanities at individuals," "banging on a vehicle," and using a "racial epithet directed toward a person of color.”
After campuses experienced a year of violent and crazed protests, Marschall says colleges and universities have recognized their lack of action was “reprehensible and inexcusable,” and there was no accountability for groups that crossed the line.
“So I think this is going in the right direction,” he tells AFN, “even though SJP continues to pursue its hateful and violent tactics."
After the suspension, in fact, a left-wing group on campus called the punishment a “politically-motivated ploy to defame protestors, fracture the student movement and detract from their complicity in the extermination of the Palestinian people.”
