Rutgers University on Wednesday lifted its suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine, the pro-Palestinian student group responsible for many recent antisemitic campus protests.
In December, Associate Dean of Students Michelle Jefferson announced the chapter’s suspension.
“There is a reasonable basis to conclude that the continued activities by the student organization pose a substantial and immediate threat to the safety and well-being of others, or the suspension of organizational activities is needed to maintain preservation of the University,” Jefferson wrote.
One day before the suspension, the Department of Education opened an ethnic-discrimination investigation at Rutgers concerning alleged incidents on campus in October and November.
Asked for comment, Rutgers said SJP is an active student organization again as its misconduct case has been settled, but it’s been put on probation with educational sanctions.
“Rutgers typically issues an interim suspension of organizational activity when a student organization is facing multiple conduct complaints,” the school said. “The conduct case involving the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Rutgers-New Brunswick has been resolved and the interim suspension of organizational activity is over.”
SJP’s violations of university policy concerned the way the chapter chose to protest rather than the substance of the protest.
“Decisions were based on the fact that the students were protesting in nonpublic forums, causing disruption to classes and university functioning, which are violations of university policy,” Rutgers added. “None of the actions taken were based on speech.”
SJP’s Instagram page notes the many pro-Palestinian protests it has orchestrated since October 7, when Hamas brutally invaded Israel, perpetrating the most deadly attack against the Jews since the Holocaust. The group has staged demonstrations in a library for a study-in strike, in a courtyard, at the college’s board of governors meeting, and at an event to demand a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. SJP also endorses the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement on its social media.
In early January, a Jewish law student filed a lawsuit against Rutgers, alleging administrators violated his right to an educational climate free from hostility and discrimination by tacitly excusing campus antisemitism.
“Yoel Ackerman is being targeted by Rutgers for standing up to anti-semitism. This lawsuit is just one step in our quest to change the culture at Rutgers which has allowed antisemitism to fester,” David Mazie, his legal representative, told National Review.
Ackerman first got into hot water after he called out a Palestinian law student for sharing an Instagram video within a Student Bar Association (SBA) group chat purporting to expose “3 lies being told about Palestine.” The clip sought to debunk the claim that “people were raped” during the Hamas onslaught and that “250 people were killed at a concert.”
“There isn’t a single video or photo suggesting people were killed at a concert or that a mass shooting took place,” the video claims.
After calling out the student for circulating the misleading video, Ackerman said he was “taking receipts of the law school students who are publicly supporting Hamas.” Members of the SBA then turned against him and tried to oust him from the organization. Ackerman was temporarily booted until he brought in lawyers. SBA then backtracked on the move.
The president of Rutgers’ SJP chapter, according to Ackerman, had attended an SBA Zoom meeting to make a motion to impeach him from the group. In his legal filings, Ackerman argued Rutgers Law School failed to react appropriately and protect him from an antagonistic school environment even though it had knowledge of the student’s inflammatory video.
“Instead, they shockingly targeted – or permitted the targeting of – Mr. Ackerman, an Orthodox Jewish Rutgers Law Student, who was the victim of the antisemitic speech, and created a victim-blaming narrative in which he became the purported bully,” the filing said, naming senior Rutgers leaders including several law school deans.