 Image: Faculty for Justice in Palestine logo |
Campuses with SJP chapters are troubled campuses. Campuses with Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapters are even worse off because the professors who operate these quasi-official organizations with impunity will always foment new troubles, spawn new anti-Israel clubs, and wield antisemitism in the name of academic freedom. They will be even harder to bring under control than their students.
What is FJP?
Hatem Bazian founded the first SJP chapter in 1993 at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is a continuing lecturer at the department of ethnic studies. Over the years, hundreds of schools formed chapters, and a leadership organization called National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) appeared in 2010.
Faculty for Justice in Palestine, on the other hand, is a new phenomenon, arising only after October 7, 2023. There are currently between 130 and 170 faculty chapters.
Records for individual FJP chapters are often sketchy, making precise founding dates difficult to determine. At some schools, like Rutgers University, faculty are open about their membership and sign their chapters' letters and statements, but members at most schools prefer anonymity.
At some schools, membership is extended to staff members, thus Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP). Yale University has both.
Others are even more inclusive. At the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, there is a Faculty, Librarians, Alumni, Graduate Students, and Staff for Justice in Palestine that uses the quasi-acronym FLAGSJP. At Duke University, members quibble over the word "faculty," hence the "Duke Academics and Staff for Justice in Palestine." The University of San Francisco has "Educators for Justice in Palestine."
National Leadership
By late 2023, a leadership entity appeared, calling itself National FSJP. As its Spring 2025 "Communiqué" explains, "The National FSJP network of chapters emerged to stand by students as they opposed pro-Israeli policies during a Democrat-led federal government."
Just as the NSJP controls the messaging and tactics of every campus SJP chapter, so too the anonymous "Steering Committee" of the National FSJP appears to control each of the Network Chapters it lists on its website.
The committee's first of six "Principles of Unity" asserts that "FSJP supports and amplifies the work of Students for Justice in Palestine and other pro-Palestinian student groups and campus unions."
As though reciting a loyalty oath, the anti-Israel, groupthink copy-and-paste professorate at each university dutifully repeats the mantra, as per FJP-Yale: "We support and amplify the work of SJP and other pro-Palestinian student groups." The only variations in their statements are the "other pro-Palestinian student groups." Duke University ASJP "amplifies the work of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and other student groups at Duke and in the broader Triangle area." The Pratt Institute FSJP "supports SJP and JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace)." Portland State University FJP "supports SJP and Students United for Palestinian Rights (SUPER)." At Brown University, one group calls itself the Brown Faculty Coalition for Justice in Palestine and another calls itself the Brown Academics for Justice in Palestine.
SJP's "Towfan Al-Aqsa Statement" claims that "Resistance comes in all forms – armed struggle, general strikes, and popular demonstrations. All of it is legitimate, and all of it is necessary," and NSJP's "Day of Resistance Toolkit" proclaims that SJP is not merely "in solidarity with this movement" but rather is "PART of this movement." As "amplifiers" of SJP, the thousands of FSJP academics are also "PART of this movement."
Who Is In Control?
One might suspect that anti-Israel faculty groups guide anti-Israel student groups on most campuses, and this appears to be the case at Brown University. Perhaps that's because Brown, has academia's #1 Palestinian professor (now that former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi has retired from Columbia University). I refer to Beshara Doumani, Brown's Mahmoud Darwish professor of Palestinian Studies. A Washington Free Beacon investigative report uncovered emails from Brown SJP's October 8, 2023, "emergency meeting" showing students sought guidance from Doumani before issuing their first post-massacre statement.
National FSJP's third "principle of unity" claims that it "works in close collaboration with" Birzeit University, where Doumani served as president from 2021 to 2023. That makes him at least the spiritual leader of the SJP at Brown.
Students Teach Teachers
Brown may be the outlier, though. At most schools, FSJP defers to SJP as moral mentors, at least rhetorically. Again, the National FSJP provides the template, this time employing the humility trope of teachers learning from their students – "The bravery and ingenuity of students across the country teach and lead us" – and the individual chapters follow.
Harvard's FSJP is particularly deferential to students. Its "Membership Statement" announces a "vision of an emancipated future under our students' courageous leadership." After the Harvard "encampment" was broken up in May 2024, Harvard's FSJP claimed the students' "acts of civil disobedience have safeguarded our most basic freedoms of speech and association."
Even Brown's Academics for Justice in Palestine expresses its "highest gratitude for the leadership of students" and vows to "match their courage and leadership and identify ways to build and contribute to student efforts."
What To Do With FSJP?
The AMCHA Initiative, a non-profit that documents and fights antisemitism in academia, has found "a strong correlation between anti-Zionist faculty presence and the severity of campus antisemitism, including physical assaults, threats, and harassment targeting Jewish students." Schools thus far have dealt with their SJP problems by suspending, banning, and "de-recognizing" their SJP chapters, but dealing with their FJP problems will be more difficult.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) will defend professors' rights to do on campus, in class, and online virtually anything covered by the first amendment, so no university presidents will ever tell their professorate that they cannot issue political statements and form political groups.
Or will they?
Conclusion
The AAUP's 1915 Declaration of Principles of Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure asserts that academic freedom consists of three elements: "freedom of inquiry and research; freedom of teaching within the university or college; and freedom of extramural utterance and action." The third element covers a great deal, but it does not cover giving aid and comfort to a terrorist organization, much less declaring membership in a violent movement run by terrorist organizations.
No school would tolerate a group of professors who formed a chapter of the KKK, Aryan Nations, or American Nazi Party. None should tolerate faculty who support Hamas, Hezbollah, the PFLP, or any other terrorist organization.
Every school with a chapter affiliate of the National FSJP should denounce and investigate their faculty, staff, academics, educators, or librarians "for Justice in Palestine." Tenure or not, no one has a right to be "PART of this movement," and anyone who is should not be able to hide behind the veil of academic freedom.
Chief IPT Political Correspondent A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is also a Milstein fellow.
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