Northeastern University
has been criticized for several years for harboring deeply antisemitic professors
and enabling anti-Israel student groups on campus.
Last week the school
administration finally had enough and suspended the school’s chapter of
Students for Justice in Palestine. This group, one of the most aggressive in
its hostility towards and intimidation of pro-Israel students and events on
campuses, has met with some setbacks over the past year.
The final straw at Northeastern
– after a long list of previous out of bounds acts – was the distribution to
students of mock eviction notices, pretending to mimic what Arabs receive from
Israelis. The same tactic has been tried and received reprimand on many
campuses, including at Pitzer College in California, Yale University, Ohio
State University and Florida Atlantic University.
The eviction notices
distributed at Northeastern on February 24 stated that the recipients’ dorm
rooms would be demolished in three days and that “eviction notices are routinely
given to Palestinian families living under oppressive Israeli occupation
for no reason other than their ethnic background…to cleanse the region of its
Arab population, and create space for settlements.”
In reality, both Arabs and
Israelis receive Israeli eviction notices if their homes were built without the
requisite permits or if an imminent security threat exists, such as when
terrorism smuggling tunnels are positioned below the homes. Security, not
ethnicity, is the driving force behind Israeli eviction notices.
Northeastern’s SJP organization
received a letter from the school’s Director of the Center for Student
Involvement, Jason Campbell-Foster. The letter referred
to prior inappropriate acts by the groups, including vandalization of
university property and a repeated “disregard for university policies over an
extended period of time.”
“You have not shown a concerted
effort to improve your practices and educate your members on how to properly
operate your organization within the boundaries of university policy,”
Northeastern’s Campbell-Foster wrote.
According to Campbell-Foster’s
letter, all current members of Northeastern SJP’s current executive board are
permanently banned from serving on any future board in the organization and the
organization itself is disbanded until December, 2014. Further, SJP members
must undergo a strict regimen of trainings led by university administrators as
a condition for reinstatement.
Dima Khalidi, director of
Palestine Solidarity Legal Support and legal advisor to to SJP since last
spring, when the administration put SJP on probation, said that two female members
are being investigated by the Northeastern University Public Safety Division
(NUPD) in addition to the suspension. They were summoned to the Office of
Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution (OSCCR), according to a school newspaper.
The president of the SJP is a
third year law student at Northeastern, Max Geller. He claimed that the SJP
eviction notices were singled out because of their content, and not because the
SJP failed to observe some minor rules regarding appropriate leafletting
procedures. In this way he is attempting to make out a claim for a violation of
the SJP’s Free Speech rights, where the content of a protest may not be
restricted, but only the time, the place or the manner of protest.
“The issue here is not one of
free speech or the exchange of disparate ideas,” the university asserted.
“Instead, it is about holding every member of our community to the same
standards, and addressing SJP’s non-compliance with longstanding policies to
which all student organizations at Northeastern are required to adhere.”
Geller claimed that he and the
members of SJP are hurt by the response from Northeastern.
“Being a part of the
Northeastern community is really important to us and being told as an
organization that we’re no longer welcome hurts our feelings and is
disappointing,” Geller told a student newspaper. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
