According to the Lawfare Project, attorneys representing five student and two non-student plaintiffs filed a second amended complaint against San Francisco State University on March 29, alleging that the school has “fostered a pervasively hostile, anti-Jewish environment, knowingly and intentionally discriminated against Jewish and Israeli students and community members, and failed to protect their civil rights and physical safety.”
Under California’s Public Records Act, the amended complaint supplements an earlier report that SFSU failed to release detailed findings of national origin discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Lawfare Project reports that in the past nine months since legal action has been taken, students have endured even more physical threats by peers and have been ignored by campus administrators. Professors have demonized Jewish and Zionist students through public statements; a posted a message on the Facebook page of an official SFSU Academic Center that asserted that Jewish and Zionist students’ existence on campus was a “declaration of war” against Arab and Muslim students; and through flyers and posters that announce “Zionists are NOT welcome” and “Zionists support genocide.”
The Lawfare Project reports that General Union of Palestine Students president Mohammad Hammad wrote “graphic and lurid Tumblr posts describing his desire to set children on fire, radicalize his classmates, join Palestinian terrorist organizations and behead Israeli soldiers.” When one of Hammad’s classmates, an Israeli student, reported that she feared for her safety, they removed her from the classroom rather than discipline or force Hammad to leave the class.
Executive Director of the Lawfare Project Brooke Goldstein said “Jewish students at San Francisco State University are afraid to publicly display their identities and live in fear of systematic discrimination, harassment and even death threats. If any other minority community faced similar treatment on campus, the university would be rightly outraged.”
She noted that “the Lawfare Project exists to protect and defend the civil rights of the Jewish community. We will not rest until American college students are safe, welcome and treated equally on the campuses they call home.”
