Brown University is temporarily suspending its local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine as it investigates allegations of “threatening, intimidating, and harassing actions” by the group’s members during a recent anti-Israel campus protest. 

Under the terms of the suspension, SJP will lose “all rights and privileges associated with being a recognized student group” which includes hosting group events, reserving spaces on campus for meetings, and actively recruiting new members. 

“Given the severity of alleged threatening, intimidating and harassing actions during an event on campus, Brown University has initiated a review of the event and required the Brown chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine to cease all organization activities pending full review of the matter,” a University spokesman, Brian Clark, told Brown’s campus newspaper, the Herald. 

The rowdy demonstration in question took place on October 18 and was organized to protest the decision by Brown’s highest governing body, the Corporation, to reject a student-led divestment initiative which would have required the university to boycott companies with ties to Israel. 

The Corporation, during its vote on October 8, determined that divestment would “greatly jeopardize” the university’s ability to “educate future leaders and produce scholarship” and contradict its principles of academic freedom, university leaders wrote in a school-wide email. If the Corporation chose to divest, they added, “it would signal to our students and scholars that there are ‘approved’ points of view to which members of the community are expected to conform.” 

Students affiliated with SJP assembled first on the Main Green before walking down to the university’s medical school. According to a school-wide email sent two days after the event by the executive vice president for planning and policy, Russell Carey, the protester’s “deeply concerning” and “entirely unacceptable” conduct included “banging on a vehicle” and “screaming profanities at individuals,” even hurling  a “racial epithet” toward “a person of color.” 

As previously reported in the Herald, some demonstrators temporarily blocked a Brown University shuttle bus carrying members of the Corporation while crossing an intersection. 

The university informed SJP organizers on Thursday that they were under temporary suspension pending an external investigation. Over the past year many other universities have suspended or outright de-recognized local chapters of SJP for violating campus policies, including Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, and Brandeis.  

Chapters of SJP across college campuses have used Hamas’s October 7 massacre and the ensuing war in Gaza to reignite efforts to pressure universities to divest from Israel. Last spring, Brown University’s president, Christina Paxson, brokered a deal with anti-Israel protesters to place the divestment proposal, known as Brown Divest Now, to a vote. In exchange, the student protesters agreed to clear out their encampment on the university’s Main Green and not stage protests through commencement. 

Meanwhile, the national chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine  is currently facing a lawsuit which claims that it has effectively become the terrorist arm of Hamas on American college campuses. Citing a manifesto that was disseminated by the group shortly after the October 7 attacks, the suit alleges that SJP is “not merely organizing to assist Hamas’s ongoing terror campaign abroad — they are intentionally extending their aid to fomenting chaos, violence, and terror in the United States.”