Groundbreaking Civil Rights Lawsuit Against San Francisco State University

San Francisco State University has been hit with a lawsuit, alleging systemic patterns of discrimination and harassment directed towards Jewish students.

The lawsuit  filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California  names the Board of Trustees of the California State University System, SFSU President Leslie Wong and others as defendants. The plaintiffs, including students, alumni and community members are represented by attorneys from The Lawfare Project and the global law firm Winston & Strawn LLP.

From a press release, filed by Amanda Berman, Lawfare Project Director of Legal Affairs
and Brooke Goldstein, Lawfare Project Director

The lawsuit was triggered following the alleged complicity of senior university administrators and police officers in the disruption of an April, 2016, speech by the Mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat. At that event organized by SF Hillel, Jewish students and audience members were subjected to genocidal and offensive chants and expletives by a raging mob that used bullhorns to intimidate and drown out the Mayor’s speech and physically threaten and intimidate members of the mostly-Jewish audience. At the same time, campus police – including the chief – stood by, on order from senior university administrators who instructed the police to “stand down” despite direct and implicit threats and violations of university codes governing campus conduct.

The lawsuit states that “SFSU has not merely fostered and embraced anti-Jewish hostility -it has systematically supported … student groups as they have doggedly organized their efforts to target, threaten, and intimidate Jewish students on campus and deprive them of their civil rights and their ability to feel safe and secure as they pursue their education at SFSU.” SFSU continues to affirm its preference for those targeting the Jewish community, according to the lawsuit, by claiming to handle such incidents successfully by removing the Jewish students from their lawful assembly without allowing them the opportunity to exercise their free speech rights.”

Making matters worse, no actions were ever taken by SFSU against the disruptive students, no disciplinary charges were ever filed, and no sanctions were ever imposed against the groups or students responsible for committing these acknowledged violations.

“Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the underpinning of the modern American ethos of equal protection and anti-discrimination. This case isn’t about Jews, it’s about equal protection under the law,” says Brooke Goldstein, Lawfare Project Director. “If the courts fail to apply Title VI in this context, we are creating a massive loophole that will ultimately be exploited to target other marginalized minority communities. If we refuse to enforce anti-discrimination law for Jews, if we say Jews don’t deserve equal protection, it will erode constitutional protections for everyone. Jews must be protected the same as any other minority group, or the bedrock of civil rights law will crumble.”

In addition to the disruption of the speech by Nir Barkat, the lawsuit describes a long list of discrimination, intimidation and mistreatment of Jewish students at SFSU.  Following are just a few examples:

In 1994, a ten-foot mural was erected on SFSU’s student union building that portrayed yellow Stars of David intertwined with dollar signs, skulls and crossbones, and the words “African Blood.”

In 1997, a banner depicting an Israeli flag with a swastika next to an American flag with a dollar sign was hung over the same wall where the 1994 mural had been painted.

In April of 2002, posters appeared around campus advertising an event called “Genocide in the 21st Century,” featuring a dead baby on the label of a soup can, surrounded on either side by Israeli flags.

In May of 2002, following a Peace rally, a small group of Jewish students were targeted by a large group of students who shouted bigoted and offensive remarks, including “Hitler didn’t finish the job,” “Get out or we’ll kill you,” and “Go back to Russia.”

In 2009, SFSU hosted on-campus events that advocated for the elimination of the Jewish state of Israel.

In 2016, President Wong complained that in all his years, he had never seen a university donor withhold a pledge because of a “political issue.” A Jewish Studies faculty member told him, “the physical safety of Jewish students is never a political issue.” President Wong replied, “on this, we will have to agree to disagree.”

In 2017, when specifically asked whether Zionists are welcome at SFSU, President Wong refused to provide the only proper answer: “Yes.” Instead, President Wong demurred, stating “That’s one of those categorical statements I can’t get close to. . . . Am I comfortable opening up the gates to everyone?  Gosh, of course not.”

"Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the underpinning of the modern American ethos of equal protection and anti-discrimination. This case isn’t about Jews, it’s about equal protection under the law,” says Brooke Goldstein, Lawfare Project Director. “If the courts fail to apply Title VI in this context, we are creating a massive loophole that will ultimately be exploited to target other marginalized minority communities. If we refuse to enforce anti-discrimination law for Jews, if we say Jews don’t deserve equal protection, it will erode constitutional protections for everyone. Jews must be protected the same as any other minority group, or the bedrock of civil rights law will crumble."

Read the full complaint here

Read students and community members first hand accounts of the campus climate at SFSU  here

Read the full press release from the Lawfare Project here

Words of Wisdom from GUPS supporters

Its been nearly a month since GUPS  announced their strategy, (blaming the messenger) and launched their petition.

Its truly remarkable how few of the thousand or so signators are from San Francisco State.

Lets take another look at some of the comments, and see just what kind of people defend murder and incitement to violence.

Mikos Fabersunne is well known in anti-Israel circles. He hits a new low here, blaming the Jews for antisemitism on campus.

Rabab Abdulhadi  is deeply concerned with providing a safe environment for Palestinians on campus, but apparently is perfectly ok with Israeli students and supporters being threatened, harassed and vilified.
.

And there's always room for some classic antisemitism in any anti-Israel document. Note to John Barker and Rand Carter:  If the Zionists really dominated American academia, Mohammad G. Hammad would have been out on his ass  suspended from SFSU weeks ago.

Hashem  Kardevani from Aptos plays constitutional scholar, but neglects to notice the petition seeks to curtail the freedom of speech of those who support Israel's right to exist.

Clayton Plake from Concord seems unclear on the concept. By signing this petition, does that mean he supports threats and intimidation directed towards Jews, and Israelis?

Caroline Lato from Milton, Ma presents her impassioned  plea to find the cuckoos and expose them.  I think we just did.

Israel Thrives: "Canned Palestinian Children Meat"

From a former student at San Francisco State University. Originally published at the Israel Thrives Blog, this article chronicles a school marred by reports of "academic discourse" belying a dark core of antisemitism.  Clearly things have not changed too dramatically.

"Canned Palestinian Children Meat"

I arrived at San Francisco State University in the fall of 1996.

It is getting to be a rather long time, now, but in those days the school just bubbled with politics in a way that I thought was exceedingly positive.  The Caesar Chavez Student Center was always abuzz with students yammering at one another concerning issues of social justice and Malcolm X Plaza would often find students behind tables handing out flyers and discussing significant issues of the day.

Although I have not been on campus for awhile, I assume it is probably much the same today.

I will never forget the afternoon in which I was strolling across campus on a beautiful day, heading to a class, when I found myself confronted by a poster put up by a student organization and a bunch of those students milling around and yelling.  It showed a hand-painted American flag, but instead of fifty little five-pointed stars in the upper-left corner, it had fifty little Stars of David.

{Oh, joy.}

It was surreal to stand there looking at impassioned students "of color" screeching to the heavens that Zionists (i.e., "the Jews") are evil and are committing atrocities in "Palestine."  It was like some alternative universe from the Twilight Zone in which Nazis were replaced by urban students of Middle Eastern and African descent screeching to the heavens for Jewish blood and doing so for reasons of social justice and human rights.

It has to be understood that the Nazis were also idealists and that it is no coincidence that among Hitler's greatest fans were German college students who believed in their souls in the rightness of the cause.  When students of Arab descent go onto American campuses, today, and rally against the Jews of the Middle East they are continuing a tradition of blood libel and hate they goes not only to the history of Nazi Germany, but to Muhammad, himself, in the 7th century.

Apparently, however, I am not the only one who felt that way.  Shortly after I departed SFSU, Laurie Zoloth, Professor of Ethics and Director of Jewish Studies at San Francisco State at the time, had a similar experience.  As noted in a New York Post article by John Podhoretz, dated May 14, 2002:

"I cannot fully express what it feels like to have to walk across campus daily, past posters of cans of soup with labels on them of drops of blood and dead babies, labeled ‘canned Palestinian children meat, slaughtered according to Jewish rites.’ "

Canned Palestinian Children Meat, Slaughtered According to Jewish Rites Under American License.

If what I saw at SFSU was bad, what Professor Zoloth saw was considerably worse.

As Podhoretz writes:

In an account confirmed by other witnesses, Laurie Zoloth described the disgusting denouement following a “Peace in the Middle East” rally sponsored by the SFSU Hillel. 

A group of students, numbering around 50, had remained to chant afternoon prayers. At that moment, “Counter demonstrators poured into the plaza, screaming at the Jews to ‘Get out or we will kill you’ and ‘Hitler did not finish the job.’ I turned to the police and to every administrator I could find and asked them to remove the counter demonstrators from the plaza, to maintain the separation of 100 feet that we had been promised. The police told me that they had been told not to arrest anyone . . .    

“The police could do nothing more than surround the Jewish students and community members who were now trapped in a corner of the plaza, grouped under the flags of Israel, while an angry, out of control mob, literally chanting for our deaths, surrounded us. . . .  There was no safe way out of the Plaza. We had to be marched back to the Hillel House under armed S.F. police guard, and we had to have a police guard remain outside Hillel.”

The only real question at this moment, however, is what SFSU president Wong intends to do about the fact that the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) incited to violence against the Jewish people?

 

Read it all here

Mohammad Hammad of SFSU: Still Life with Knife

Mohammad Hammad, the president of GUPS studies International Relations at San Francisco State University. In what might very well be the most disturbing image we've seen since this story broke, Mohammad has posed with a knife on his Tumblr account, and has written: 

“I seriously can not get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier….” 

The Tumblr post has since been removed, but it lives on through the wonders of the web.

Mohammad Hammad of SFSU

This very real threat was exposed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center on Dec.2

Copies of the picture were forwarded to SFSU President Leslie Wong by Amcha and the Wiesenthal Center, and in a phone conversation earlier today with Wong’s office, Center officials warned that such avowedly violent statements, especially when linked with another recent GUPS campus event where participants used a stencil saying, “My heroes have always killed colonizers,” pose a potentially significant threat to the university’s Jewish students.
“It is outrageous and unacceptable that the leader of a University-funded group would invoke a message of death and violence,” said a Wiesenthal Center official.

 From Jared Sichel in the LA Jewish journal:

When contacted on Dec. 2, a member of GUPS said that the group would release a statement on Dec. 3. But by Dec. 3, the phone number appeared to have been disconnected. An email sent to GUPS by the Journal did not receive a response.

 According to Mohammad Hammad’s Facebook page , the 21-year-old was born in Ramallah in the West Bank and is studying international relations at SFSU. The Journal was not able to reach him for comment.

 On Dec. 3, Ellen Griffin, SFSU’s associate vice president of communications, wrote in an email to the Journal that the university had investigated the incident and confirmed that Hammad was the person in the photograph.

According to a statement by Lee Wong, president of SFSU, the university’s police “conducted a threat assessment” and determined that SFSU’s students are safe.

 “We will continue to explore all aspects of the incident and take additional actions that may be warranted,” Wong’s statement read.

 Incidentally on his LinkedIn profile, Mohammad writes:

I am an International Relations student minoring in Political Science and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. I plan on getting into the global political field of work and do what I can to better the ongoing situation in Palestine.

I suppose stabbing Israeli soldiers just isn't going to sound as promising on a resume.