A civil rights complaint filed against the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) Tuesday accuses the university of discriminating against Palestinian-American students and others who supported Palestine during campus meetings.Palestine Legal filed the Title VI complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR). The organization demands a civil rights investigation into what it describes as a pattern of censoring and creating a hostile environment for students of Palestinian heritage and others who voice support for Palestine.CBS 2 obtained a copy of the complaint, which accuses UIC faculty and staff of creating a hostile student environment on multiple occasions. This includes barring students from attending an informational session about a university-sponsored summer study abroad program in Israel due to their Arab and Palestinian heritage.The first meeting at the heart of the complaint occurred in January on Zoom. Members of a student organization, Students for Justice in Palestine, said they attempted to join the Zoom to ask questions and express their concerns about the trip.
Oh, please. "Express their concerns?" SJP boycotts Israel! The students had no interest in going on summer study program in Israel. They wanted to join the meeting: to disrupt and harass the organizers, and intimidate the students who wanted to get more information about the program, and ultimately to pressure UIC to cancel any programs in Israel.
To give you an idea of how hateful the UIC chapter of the organization is, they had a campaign to boycott Israeli restaurants in the Chicago area.
Here is an excerpt from their Activism 101 booklet that gives you a taste of how they express "concern:"
SJP UIC wrote an article about the January Zoom session in April, and they cannot even capitalize the name Israel:
[T]he administration is working to stop students from raising important questions about study abroad trips to “israel” and other events platforming speakers from “israel” without acknowledging Palestinian rights.This January, the Study Abroad Office (SAO) and its “Elements in Motion” program announced that it would be holding informational sessions about a new program in israel—as if israel were just another place to visit and study, rather than the site of ongoing atrocities of racism and settler colonialism.
This isn't measured criticism. This is simple, obsessive hate.
The organizers of the conference wanted to protect the attendees and facilitators from being insulted, harassed and demeaned by SJP - the same way SJP UIC demeans all Zionists and Israelis as being unworthy of being treated like humans.
Their legal complaint claims that they were only there to express "concern" when we have hundreds of examples where SJP and similar organizations have eagerly trampled on the rights of Israelis and Zionists to speak on campus, where they have threatened the lives of artists performing in Israel, and where they have openly supported violence against Jews in Israel.
According to the complaint, the organizers barred people with Arabic names from entering the Zoom session. I have no idea if it is true. But clearly the organizers wanted to speak without impediments to the students who were interested in the program, and they know very well who SJP is and the disruptive things they have done in the past.
SJP, on the other hand, wants to ensure that Jews on campus are always uncomfortable, always on edge, always afraid. And then they pretend that they are the victims.
From the Israel haters' perspective, under the aegis of "equal rights," they cannot lose: if they are allowed to disrupt the programming, they win; if they are stopped from disrupting the program, they claim they are being discriminated against and they win again. They either successfully trample on the free speech rights of people who don't hate Israel - or they claim they have had their own free speech rights violated.
It is a game, and with the current rules of the game on too many campuses, it is rigged against Jews.
(h/t Andrew)
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