The campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) filed a federal petition against this university for its blanket ban on all events scheduled for Oct. 7, announced student activists and their legal team at a Tuesday press conference near the entrance to UMD’s campus.
The lawsuit came in wake of a fiery controversy earlier this month between the local Jewish community and pro-Palestinian student activists, after the latter reserved McKeldin Mall, a central spot on campus, for Oct. 7.
Feeling pressured to act, President Darryll Pines announced a ban on all student-led events for the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s massacre. SJP’s booking was thus scrapped.
Lawyers from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Palestine Legal, who gave brief statements at the conference near the entrance to campus, will represent the petitioning students.
Gadeir Abbas, an attorney for CAIR, said the university intended to “suppress Students for Justice in Palestine from advocating and promoting their message on their campus” and violated students’ First Amendment rights.
However the ban did not just target SJP, and in fact led to the cancellation of another October 7 vigil, planned by Maryland Hillel, the Jewish Student Union and two pro-Israel groups.
The mainstream Jewish community was by-and-large relieved by Pines’ decision, but the JSU admitted in a statement that the university action was still “not ideal.”
Many students from the University of Maryland were deeply upset by the university’s allowance of an anti-Israel event to be held in the center of campus on October 7, the day that Hamas invaded Israel in what was the deadliest attack on a Jewish population since the Holocaust.
After the severe backlash, President Daryll Pines announced that the university would only permit “events that promote reflection” on October 7.
The press conference began with Kimberly Syuardi, CAIR’s outreach coordinator, who announced the lawsuit pushing back against the cancellation of what she said was a “vigil organized by Palestinian and Jewish student advocates for Palestine.”
Abbas said we should “trust the United States Constitution” rather than “the hysterical, kneejerk reactions of campus officials.”
He added that students want to mark October 7 as the beginning of an ongoing genocide that has been enabled by the United States.
“These students want to mark the beginning of an ongoing genocide, committed by a foreign country with American weapons. That is protected by the First Amendment, whether or not Dr. Pines likes that message… This isn’t up to them. This is up to the Constitution,” he said.
Ahmad Kaki, the legal assistant for CAIR, read a statement from Palestine Legal’s Tori Porell discussing the history of student protests.
“Throughout history, students have been at the forefront of speaking out in favor of civil rights and for divestments from apartheid, to South Africa to Palestine,” Kaki said, citing the backlash against the October 7 vigil as “anti-Palestinian.”
He added that the university’s decision will intimidate Palestinian students from expressing solidarity from the pressure of what he called “lobby groups or individuals who oppose Palestinian rights.”
Daniela Colombi, a representative for the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine, spoke about how the club’s mission is to raise awareness of human rights violations committed against Palestinians perpetuated by Israel, referring to the country as the “settler-colonialist Zionist state of Israel.”
Colombi pointed out how Pines previously took part in protests against South African Apartheid at UC Berkeley, where they also called for divestment, yet now opposes divestment from Israel on this campus. In her view, the university was allowing October 7 to be “monopolized by one viewpoint.”
She added that the decision to cancel all student events on that day was “genocide denial in favor of Zionist ideology.”
The final speaker was Abel Amene, another member of the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine, who discussed the university’s ties to the United States military.
Amene cited a VICE news report that goes over the rankings of universities in America based on how closely tied they are to the military establishment, listing Maryland as at the top. He cited those ties as reasons why the university wants to distract students on the systems that “perpetuate genocide.”
According to Amene, the groups that vocally opposed the Oct. 7 event utilized racism as a distraction from the plight of Palestinians against Israel, which he termed a “racist genocidal project” whose purpose is to build an ethnostate on historic Palestine.
Amene also alleged that by cancelling the vigil, the university affirmed negative stereotypes against Black, Arab, Muslim and Palestinian students, whom he said comprise the majority of SJP.
Amene claimed the event that Students for Justice in Palestine planned for October 7 was to pass out flyers to educate people on the history of the Palestinian people and culture.
Justice, equality, and liberation for all oppressed people were the values that SJP hoped to promote on October 7, according to Amene. He ended his speech with a chant calling on the university to divest from Israel.
“We will not stop, we will not rest — disclose, divest,” he repeated slowly, until other students accompanying him at the press conference joined in the chant.
The University System of Maryland, University of Maryland and President Pines have not yet commented on the lawsuit.
