A University of Florida Palestinian student group has filed a lawsuit against the State University System’s chancellor seeking to block a directive to shut down UF’s chapter of National Students for Justice in Palestine.
The federal lawsuit, which was filed in the Northern District of Florida on Nov. 16, comes in the wake of a memorandum from Chancellor Ray Rodrigues that contends the National SJP group has allied itself with the Operation Al-Aqsa Flood terrorist attack on Oct. 7 that killed 1,400 Israelis.
“... The National Students for Justice in Palestine (National SJP) released a ‘toolkit’ which refers to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood as ‘the resistance’ and unequivocally states: ‘Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement,’” Rodrigues said in the Oct. 24 memorandum.
State officials are seeking to deactivate two National SJP chapters at the University of Florida and the University of South Florida.
“Based on the National SJP’s support of terrorism, in consultation with Gov. (Ron) DeSantis, the student chapters must be deactivated,” the memorandum states. “These two student chapters may form another organization that complies with Florida state statutes and university policies.”
DeSantis, who is running for president, and the State University System have condemned the attacks by Hamas in Israel.
Officials at the two universities have not yet taken action against the chapters as they review their legal actions.
“The university’s practice is not to discuss pending litigation,” a spokesman for the University of South Florida, Kevin Watler, told the Florida Record in an email. “We continue to work with the State University System Chancellor’s Office to review the matter. The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at USF has not been deactivated.”
The lawsuit, which has the support of the ACLU of Florida, contends that the policy to deactivate the USF student chapter represents a violation of the students’ rights to free speech and association.
The deactivation order has already impeded the student chapter’s organizing and advocacy efforts in support of the rights of Palestinians, according to an ACLU news release. In addition, the ACLU of FLorida says the chancellor’s directive poses slippery-slope risks.
“If Florida officials think silencing pro-Palestinian students protects the Jewish community – or anyone, they’re wrong,” the interim executive director of the ACLU of Florida, Howard Simon, said in a prepared statement. “This attack on free speech is dangerous: Today it is pro-Palestinian students, tomorrow it could be any other group the governor’s dislikes.”
The founder and director of Palestine Legal, Dima Khalidi, compared the student chapter members to activists in earlier generations who fought for civil rights and against segregation.
“Students for Justice in Palestine sits squarely in that tradition,” Khalidi said in a prepared statement. “It is precisely because these principled students pose a challenge to the status quo that they are being targeted with McCarthyist censorship, but the First Amendment simply does not allow for it.”
The State University System will use all tools available to it to limit campus demonstrations that go beyond free speech and amount to “harmful support for terrorist groups,” the chancellor said. Such tools may include adverse employment actions or suspensions of school officials, Rodrigues said.