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The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent | Est. 2002
Nearly 50% of West Bank Palestinians Says Israel Does Not Have A Right To Exist
What "From The River To The Sea" Actually Means
After the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, thousands of college students marched through the streets chanting, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." Most of them likely had no clue which river and sea were at issue. And they probably also gave zero thought to what it would mean for Palestine to be "free." The college students likely never heard the far more accurate version of the chant in Arabic, which translates to "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab." In short, the only Jewish state in the world would cease to exist, and all Jews would be expelled.
A recent poll relates sentiments among Palestinians towards a Jewish state:
West Bank Palestinians are split on whether Israel has a right to exist, and whether its existence could be brought to an end at some point, according to a survey conducted by Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies.
The poll finds that 41% of respondents say Israel has a right to exist, compared with 46% who say it does not. In a separate question, 42% say they believe it would be possible to bring about the end of Israel's existence, either in the near or distant future. Conversely, 32% say ending Israel's existence is impossible. . . .
No proposed political framework for resolving the conflict receives majority support. Twenty-seven percent favor a two-state solution; 22% support a single binational state with full equal rights; 26% favor a Palestinian state "from the river to the sea" — encompassing all of what they consider "historic Palestine" — with no permanent Jewish presence; and 17% favor a Palestinian state throughout the entire territory in which Jews would be permitted to live as citizens or residents.
I don't pretend to know how to resolve the situation, but Americans who seek to opine on the subject should at least know how Palestinians would respond if their land was "free."
Use of Flock Cameras Is Not a Fourth Amendment "Search," District Court Rules
The first post-Chatrie ruling on the question.
For reasons explained in my draft article, The Fourth Amendment After Chatrie, there is good reason to believe that the Supreme Court's June ruling in Chatrie v. United States will trigger a rethinking of how the Fourth Amendment applies to automated license plate reader systems such as those provided by Flock Safety. There was an oral argument in the Eleventh Circuit on this question on July 29 that you can listen to here, but there has been no ruling yet on that from the Eleventh Circuit. Last week, however, the United States District Court for the Central District of California became the first court I'm aware of to weigh in on whether the use of Flock cameras is a Fourth Amendment search after Chatrie.
The new ruling, United States v. Riley, concludes that use of Flock cameras was not a search. In the case, police investigating two kidnappings queried the Flock cameras of two California cities, obtaining four photographs each of the whereabouts of the defendant's car. According to the court, this was not enough of a privacy invasion to constitute a Fourth Amendment search:
The ALPR database searches used during the Culver City and Carson investigations are thus clearly distinguishable from and less extensive than the "near perfect surveillance" achievable through the historical CSLI at issue in Carpenter and the Google Location History data at issue in Chatrie. The ALPR data in this case could not create "an all-encompassing record" of Defendant's whereabouts. Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 311. And although some of Defendant's path in the Dodge Charge and Chevrolet Malibu may be inferred, there is no indication in the record that law enforcement could recreate the complete paths that Defendant traveled in those cars, even in combination with information from other sources, such that officers could create a "detailed log of [Defendant's] movements" from the data at issue here. Id. at 312. Nor did this surveillance provide the "intimate window" into Defendant's personal life that concerned the Supreme Court in Carpenter. Id. at 311. That is to say, the ALPR data did not reveal defendants "familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations." Id. Furthermore, the record does not show that the ALPR data here allows police to "reconstruct 'retrospective[ly],' and with no real effort, [Defendant's] comings and goings in any area. Chatrie, 146 S. Ct. at 2208 (alteration in original) (quoting Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 312).
For these reasons, the record here does not reveal a privacy threat analogous to the issues addressed in Carpenter and Chatrie. And it does not present "dragnet type law enforcement practices" constituting a Fourth Amendment search. United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 284 (1983).
This is just a trial court decision, of course, and I assume it will be appealed to the court of appeals. Other courts are considering the same question, and we don't know how they will rule. But given the public interest in the issue, I thought I would flag the new opinion. As always, stay tuned.
Montreal Economic Institute Webinar on Legal Challenges to the Trump Tariffs Against Canadian Goods
I will be one of the speakers.
On Wednesday, September 23, from 12 to 1:30 PM, eastern time, the Montreal Economic Institute will be hosting an online webinar on legal challenges to the Trump tariffs against Canada, entitled "Trump Tariffs: How the American Court System Can Help Restore Free Trade in North America." I will be one of the speakers, along with Marc Wheat (general counsel of Advancing American Freedom), and Andrew Hale (economic and trade policy expert at AAF).
Additional information and free registration are available here.
We will, I expect, cover various illegal imposed tariffs against Canada, including the Section 301 tariffs (which I wrote about here), and the Section 338 tariffs (see here and here). I will also discuss how best to avoid such harmful and tariff actions in the future.
Defamation via Songs and AI-Generated Video? U Tenn Coach's Claim Can Go Forward
"[D]efendant purportedly posted more than 20 videos ... attacking plaintiff's character with 'blatantly false allegations of wrongdoing' and 'highly offensive and demeaning fake [AI] videos.'"
An excerpt from Judge Thomas Varlan's long opinion today in Ross v. Lambert (E.D. Tenn.):
Plaintiff alleges that he is an accomplished track and field athlete who has held numerous collegiate coaching positions over the past ten years, including Head Coach and Director of Track and Field at the University of Tennessee ("UT") beginning in 2022…. [I]n May 2023, plaintiff advised defendant [an employee of the program] that he was being terminated from his position at UT. Plaintiff claims that he gave defendant the option to voluntarily resign in lieu of being fired for cause, which defendant accepted.
Defendant subsequently filed an EEOC complaint against plaintiff and UT, plaintiff asserts, but this case was closed without a finding of probable cause against either plaintiff or UT. Then, on or about May 30, 2024, defendant sent a demand letter to UT's Office of General Counsel, threatening to sue UT and plaintiff for "wrongful termination and discrimination" if he did not receive a $150,000 payment from UT.
Plaintiff alleges that, within the demand letter, defendant made a series of "patently false and inflammatory allegations" against plaintiff, which included statements claiming that plaintiff and plaintiff's son were involved in "doping." Defendant also warned in his demand letter that he would go to the media if UT did not settle. In response, UT rejected defendant's demand, citing to his "baseless" and "highly offensive" attack on plaintiff's reputation, and advised defendant that it was unwilling to engage further with defendant on the matter.
Firing of Employee for Kirk-Murder-Related Post Wasn't a Clear First Amendment Violation,
so the individual defendants are entitled to qualified immunity, a court rules (citing cases where employees were fired for right-wing speech that many had likewise found offensive).
An excerpt from Judge Benjamin Settle's longish opinion Monday in Bromm v. Lewis County (W.D. Wash.):
Plaintiff Paul Bromm was employed as a part-time Deputy Coroner with Lewis County. After conservative activist and media personality Charlie Kirk was shot in September 2025, Bromm shared memes and made other posts on his Facebook that appeared to make light of the killing, even suggesting it was deserved.
Bromm was placed on administrative leave and then terminated for his posts. Bromm sued Lewis County, the City of Centralia, and five individual defendants, asserting 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claims premised on alleged violations of his First Amendment right to free speech, and that defendant [County] Commissioner Sean Swope "doxed" him in violation of RCW 4.24.792.
The court dismissed Bromm's First Amendment claim against the individual defendants, finding that it was barred by prosecutorial immunity (as to a prosecutor) and qualified immunity (as to the others). The government defendants didn't move for summary judgment. Here's the underlying post, followed by the meat of the qualified immunity analysis:
Doxing Suit over Post Criticizing Government Employee's Kirk-Murder-Related Post …
rejected on First Amendment grounds.
An excerpt from Judge Benjamin Settle's longish opinion Monday in Bromm v. Lewis County (W.D. Wash.):
Plaintiff Paul Bromm was employed as a part-time Deputy Coroner with Lewis County. After conservative activist and media personality Charlie Kirk was shot in September 2025, Bromm shared memes and made other posts on his Facebook that appeared to make light of the killing, even suggesting it was deserved.
Bromm was placed on administrative leave and then terminated for his posts. Bromm sued Lewis County, the City of Centralia, and five individual defendants, asserting 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claims premised on alleged violations of his First Amendment right to free speech, and that defendant [County] Commissioner Sean Swope "doxed" him in violation of RCW 4.24.792.
Here's the court's analysis as to doxing (I discuss Bromm's First Amendment claim in a separate post):
Bold, perhaps; but not Brave and not Right
Steven Calabresi gets it only half right in his defense of Trump's handling of the Iran war
Steven Calabresi writes, here on the VC, that our President has been "bold, brave, and right," and "done all the right things," in pushing ahead attacking Iran. "We should all be very grateful," he writes, "for President Trump's boldness, bravery, and steadfastness with respect to this war."
Respectfully, I disagree. Trump's Iran policy is, I suppose, "bold." A nuclear attack on Canada would also be "bold," as would aiding and abetting an attack on the US Capitol to prevent election certification, or draining the Rio Grande to make it easier to spot unlawful entrants. Boldness in pursuit of flawed policies and unlawful ends and downright stupidity -- all of which are on display here in the handling of this war -- is not a virtue.
Prof. Calabresi spends most of his time in his essay showing that "Iran is our mortal enemy — that it is a "revolutionary theocracy that wants to pave the way to an entirely Shiite Islamic World," that it is "committed to regime change in the United States," that it "wants to destroy the United States and all that it stands for." And that the possibility that Iran can acquire nuclear weapons is both "appreciable" and "unacceptable."
I happen to agree with him on all that. But that's not the question before us, which is: Given all that - that a nuclear-armed Iran poses an unacceptable risk to our country and to the world - what should we do about it? How do we reach the goal of a non-nuclear Iran? Have our President's actions brought us closer to the goal?
Calabresi begins his defense of Trump's decisions in paragraph 9: Read More
The Anti-Nazi Law
In the 1930s, New Jersey passed the most sweeping hate speech law in American history. [UPDATE: Originally erroneously posted under Eugene Volokh's byline; this post is from guest-blogger Samantha Barbas.]
In the 1930s, there were Nazis in America. In the summer of 1934, residents of Griggstown, New Jersey watched with alarm as tents emblazoned with swastikas were erected on the banks of the Delaware and Raritan Canal. Two hundred boys ranging in age from eight to sixteen, dressed in khaki shirts, black rubber-soled shoes, and brown stockings rolled below the knees, conducted military-style drills before swastika flags that were four feet long. These exercises were part of a youth summer camp called Wille und Macht (Will and Might), sponsored by the Friends of the New Germany, the largest Nazi organization in America, with more than ten thousand members.
Camp Wille und Macht opened shortly after the Friends of the New Germany held a massive rally attended by twenty thousand people in New York's Madison Square Garden. Nazi storm troopers stood at attention atop a red-draped platform. On each side of the stage were black columns decorated with the German eagle bearing the swastika. The Nazis wore swastika armbands and uniforms consisting of military trousers, Sam Browne belts, high boots, and white shirts. Seven hundred policemen patrolled the Garden, attempting to rein in rowdy counterprotesters including the Young Communists' League and the "Anti-Nazi Minute Men."
The presence of Nazis in the United States led to widespread calls for hate speech laws. It set off an intense dialogue around the question: Does the First Amendment provide freedom of speech to those who would, if in power, destroy freedom?
Samantha Barbas Guest-Blogging on "Hate Speech: The Legal and Cultural History of an American Dilemma"
I'm delighted to welcome Prof. Samantha Barbas (Iowa), who will be guest-blogging this week and next about her new book. From the publisher:
The United States has no hate speech laws; hate speech is generally considered to be free speech under the First Amendment. In this crisp guided history, acclaimed legal historian Samantha Barbas chronicles the country's legal and cultural battles over the regulation of hate speech in the last hundred years. Charting the historical context for current debates, she ultimately argues that, however emotionally appealing they may seem, hate speech laws undermine civil rights and democracy.
The American policy on hate speech evolved from influences such as the civil rights movement, which contended that the most effective way to combat hate speech wasn't through proposed laws. Rather than imposing restrictions, the US has developed an array of mechanisms other than law, including counterspeech and public education, that have been relatively effective at dealing with hate speakers and hate groups. Though not perfect, our method of addressing hate is less dangerous than government censorship and less likely to be weaponized against the powerless.
And the jacket blurbs:
Federal Judge Refers Philly DA to Department of Justice for Potential Prosecution
Judge concludes "progressive prosecutor" Larry Krasner and a deputy engaged in unethical--and potentially unlawful--conduct in their zeal to undo a criminal conviction.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is perhaps the nation's most prominent "progressive prosecutors." Among his priorities as Philly's DA has been to facilitate sentence reductions and the undoing of criminal prosecutions where there are allegations of prosecutorial misconduct or actual innocence claims. The zeal with which Krasner's office has pursued these aims has raised eyebrows, however.
In June, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rebuked Krasner's office for withholding evidence and violating its duty of candor to the court when conceding that a death row inmate was entitled to a new trial, and that these failings were not an isolated occurrence. Rather, according to Justice "There have been numerous instances of untrustworthy concessions, lack of candor, misrepresentations of fact, lack of adequate investigation, and avoidance of hearings" by the office's Conviction Integrity Unit. Accordingly, the court ordered that the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office would receive notice and a right to intervene in any case in which Krasner's office offered concessions to those seeking post-conviction relief.
Yesterday, federal district court judge Paul Diamond concluded that the ethical and legal problems in Krasner's office may be even more serious that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had found. In a blistering order, he concluded that Krasner and one of his deputies, Matthew Stiegler, may have committed criminal misconduct in a case in which the office sought to undo a criminal conviction, despite a weak legal basis for doing so. Among other things, Judge Diamond accused them of dishonesty to the court, efforts to evade discovery of their conduct, and conspiring to falsely blame a junior attorney for errors in a legal filing for which Stiegler was responsible.
Judge Diamond disqualified Krasner and Stiegler from further work on the case due to their conflict of interest and, more notably, referred them to the U.S. Attorney's office for investigation and potential prosecution.
From Judge Diamond's opinion:
Checkers (or Is It Draughts?) Infighting Leads to Court
Some excerpts from the long opinion yesterday by Judge Beth Bloom (S.D. Fla.) in Rudnitsky v. Int'l Checkers Ass'n of N. Am. Inc.:
Between 2002 and 2024, [Alexander] Rudnitsky became United States National Champion five times and World Veterans Champion twice in the game of checkers. During that time, Rudnitsky was one of the most active members of [defendant] ICAONA. Indeed, between 2022 and 2025, Rudnitsky served as Vice President of ICAONA. Between 2002 and 2024, ICAONA functioned de facto as the sole organization of its type in the United States.
In 2005, ICAONA became a member of the World Draughts Federation ("FMJD") and obtained the right to conduct U.S. qualifying championships for FMJD international tournaments. As a result, all players from the United States had to go through ICAONA to access FMJD national and international competitions. That also meant that ICAONA established conditions for admission to competitions and rules governing participant conduct, including mandatory membership and financial contribution requirements. One such rule prohibited any mention or promotion of alternative organizations during tournaments.
In 2024, Rudnitsky and his colleagues created an alternative nonprofit organization—the National Draughts Federation of the USA ("NDF"). The primary goal of NDF was to develop international draughts in Florida and the United States through (1) creating and developing an annual international tournament, the MIAMI OPEN, (2) the creation of new social projects in draughts, (3) the development of youth and junior programs, and (4) the popularization of the game at the local community level in Florida. After its creation, NDF announced and began preparing for the 2025 MIAMI OPEN, which was to be held in Florida. The tournament was included in the FMJD calendar.
Today in Supreme Court History: September 16, 1787
9/16/1787: The Constitutional Convention finalizes Constitution.
Open Thread
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Warning Notice to Man Who Sent Critical E-Mail to ICE Acting Director Likely Violated First Amendment
An excerpt from the longish opinion today by Judge Rudolph Contreras (D.D.C.) in Streever v. Mullin:
Americans have long voiced their displeasure with their government. The Declaration of Independence itself is a list of grievances between Americans and the British government. And Americans have not always indulged in the elevated prose of the Declaration. Government officials have long endured "vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks."
Today is no different. Plaintiff David Streever expressed his displeasure with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") by sending a three-paragraph email to the agency's Acting Director, Defendant Todd Lyons. Mr. Streever compared Acting Director Lyons to an infamous Nazi and predicted that he would become "a sad, despised man who eats himself alive with shame at [his] own pathetic weakness."
What is different is how the government responded in this case. ICE dispatched agents to Mr. Streever's home and delivered to him a "WARNING NOTICE." The notice threatened him with prosecution if he did not "discontinue" his criticism of ICE. Because that notice likely violates Mr. Streever's First Amendment right to free speech, the Court will grant, in part, Mr. Streever's motion for preliminary injunction, enjoining Defendants from relying on the Warning Notice, issuing similar threats, or making good on the threats in the Warning Notice…..
Doctor/Political Candidate Has Standing to Sue Over Medical Board Investigations Related to His Public Comments about the COVID Pandemic
From today's decision in Jensen v. Minn. Bd. of Med. Practice, written by Eighth Circuit Judge David Stras and joined by Judges James Loken and Lavenski Smith:
Years of investigations by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice caused Dr. Scott Jensen to speak less and spend more. Either would be enough for a court to hear his case, so we reverse….
Like the rest of the country, the COVID-19 pandemic divided Minnesotans. Some public officials, including Governor Tim Walz, pushed for aggressive measures to "stop the spread" of the virus. Others like Dr. Scott Jensen, then a state senator, had a different view. He opposed vaccine mandates and believed it was a mistake to close businesses and schools. He ran on that message as the Republican nominee for governor in the 2022 election.
Not everyone liked what he had to say. So much so that, from the pandemic's start until mid-2022, the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice received 18 complaints about him. The objection was almost always the same: Dr. Jensen was "spreading misinformation" and posed a "danger to public health." … [T]he 18 complaints led to four investigations. At the start of each one, the Board sent him a letter detailing the allegations. Two asked him to "respond[ ] in writing[ ]" and reminded him that, "as a licensee of the Board," he was "required to cooperate fully." When he replied to those, he provided the Board with hundreds of pages of information, including news stories about the pandemic, medical studies, and patient records.
One, which lasted more than a year, took on a life of its own. Like the others, it began with a letter informing him that the Board was investigating an allegation that he had "politiciz[ed] public health." He cooperated, but the Board waited until after the election to request an "in-person conference." The notice listed multiple possible violations, including "unethical or improper conduct" and "depart[ing] from or fail[ing] to conform to the minimal standards of acceptable and prevailing medical practice."
The subject line underscored the high stakes involved: "In the Matter of the Medical License of Scott M. Jensen, M.D." He hired a lawyer and spent countless hours preparing. After the conference ended, so did the investigation.
Jensen sued, claiming the investigations violated the First Amendment, and the court held that he had standing to raise this claim (even though he was challenging just the investigations, and not any actually implemented disciplinary measures):
Journal of Free Speech Law: "Gags and Grievance: The Labor Origins of Whistleblowing," by Sarah Milov
Part of a Knight First Amendment Institute Symposium on Managing Government Employee Speech in a Democracy, which the Journal is publishing.
The article is here; the Introduction:
In 1909, Urban Walter, a 28-year-old mail clerk, founded a small magazine with large ambitions. According to its masthead, the Harpoon was "a magazine that hurts." It was founded in pursuit of one goal: to oppose the Post Office Department's imposition of a "gag order" on any discussion of the train wrecks that killed scores of railway mail clerks annually and maimed many hundreds more. These gag orders, first promulgated by the Postmaster General in the late 19th century and later expanded by executive orders issued by Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft, prohibited civil servants from petitioning or giving information to Congress, or advocating for improved pay or working conditions except through their departmental head. The Harpoon defied the order, promising to give the "fullest publicity" the dangerous conditions—both physical and organizational—of the work.
Walter was frequently ill with respiratory issues, exacerbated by moldy mailbags and the dusty, lamplit conditions on the mail car. To explain why he spent his precious "lay-off" time in a small print shop in Phoenix, Arizona, Walter invoked the highest of constitutional ideals. "No public official is great enough to take away the guaranteed rights of American citizenship," Walter explained. "The very constitutional rights" of "lesser public servants" were abrogated by an order that, under penalty of swift removal, prohibited a clerk from discussing his working conditions publicly and from complaining to Congress. Under what Walter saw as the pretext of maintaining "efficiency of service," postal officials had robbed 15,000 railway postal workers of their right to speech and right to petition the government. In so doing, officials had also undermined the public good by keeping Americans ignorant of the conditions under which their mail was delivered.
Urban Walter and the railway postal clerks who read and wrote for the Harpoon understood their fight for speech rights not in individualistic and expressive terms, but as a precondition for public accountability. Because of the transient, hidden nature of railway postal work, disclosure of the clerks' working conditions was the public's window into a job that also bore upon public safety. In 1909 alone, 27 railway mail workers were killed, 98 "seriously injured," and 617 "slightly injured"—the highest number of deaths on record. Under Walter's framing, the disclosure of dangerous working conditions implicated the "public good," and not just the narrow interests of an individual worker.
At the same time, Walter and other railway postal workers saw these gag orders not as a blunt instrument of "efficiency," but as an explicitly anti-union tactic designed to forestall the organization of an effective railway postal workers organization. Walter and other postal clerks fought to affiliate with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) through a breakaway faction of the Department-dominated Railway Mail Association (RMA). Many of those clerks were fired—dismissed for the "good of the service," or because of their "pernicious activity." Walter was one such worker. He sent Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock "an advance copy" of Harpoon's first issue, instructing the economy-minded Taft appointee to "carefully peruse" the enclosure. In response, the Department's informed him that his (untendered) resignation had been accepted. A clerk sent Walter a dead rat that he had found inside the drinking water of his car. A photo of the rat appeared in the Harpoon. The clerk was also fired. Other supporters of the magazine were threatened with dismissal—which intensified the newspaper's support, producing a culture of insubordination in defiance of executive orders and in support of public employee speech.
Distortion by Omission: The New York Times and "Pro-Palestine" Demonstrations
If you are someone who gets their news primarily from the New York Times and NPR, as many liberal-leaning Americans do, you often get a distorted picture of what is going on the US and the world. This is often less because of outright errors in reporting, and more about what isn't said.
For example, each outlet barely covered the widespread nationwide rioting that accompanied Black Lives Matters protests in summer 2020. I still meet people who think the the primary violence that summer was from police manhandling protestors, and are completely unaware of the deaths, injuries and massive property damage attributable to rioters.
Similarly, I keep encountering people who have no idea that there was widespread antisemitic violence, intimidation, and threats on college campuses after Oct. 7, 2023, and instead think that university officials and later the Trump administration had no justification for clamping down on what they perceive as peaceful "pro-Palestine" protests. And that's because they are being misinformed by sources like the Times and NPR.
Case in point: In a puff piece in yesterday's New York Times about a lawsuit filed by Mahmoud Khalil, alleging discrimination by Columbia University against Palestinian students and their "pro-Palestine" allies, the Times reports: "The 2023 and 2024 protests divided the Columbia campus, with thousands joining in, and others, including some Jewish students, saying they were too disruptive or made them feel unsafe."
Here, relying on a recent article of mine, is some of what happened at Columbia, limited to violence, threats, and intimidation--and this involves only the incidents that were publicly reported:
In October 2023, an Israeli Columbia student was assaulted in front of Butler Library by a former student who was no longer affiliated with the university. The assailant allegedly struck the student with a stick; police arrested and charged the suspect. During a separate student walkout "for Palestine," a Jewish student was allegedly shoved by a Columbia classmate wearing a keffiyeh and subsequently swarmed by protesters.
Another incident outside Butler Library was more explicitly antisemitic. According to a subsequent civil-rights complaint, an individual confronted a Jewish student while yelling "Free Palestine" and "Fuck the Jews." The assailant allegedly made the motivation explicit, telling the student that he had singled him out "because you are a Jew."
Other physical incidents followed. Columbia student Jonathan Lederer was assaulted while carrying Israeli flags on April 20, 2024; the source cited in my article reports that a suspect threw a rock at him. Lederer was assaulted again on December 11, 2024, while once again carrying an Israeli flag; this time, the assailant reportedly punched him and called him a "Nazi." In another incident, a Jewish Columbia student wearing a kippah was spat upon and told, "I hope you guys suffer."
These individual confrontations occurred against a background of increasingly intimidating mass protests. Demonstrators at Columbia shouted "Fuck the Jews," "Death to Jews," and "Fuck Israel," attempted to instigate fights, and screamed at a rabbi who was praying with students.
At one demonstration, protest organizer Mohsen Mahdawi used a megaphone to direct protesters to push back a small group of pro-Israel students. Columbia officials themselves later acknowledged that the campus had experienced "threatening rhetoric and intimidation."
Protesters also targeted a Columbia class dealing with Israel, distributing flyers bearing such slogans as "The enemy will not see tomorrow" and "Burn Zionism to the Ground." Jewish organizations characterized the messages as incitement.
Perhaps the most notorious individual episode involved Columbia student protest leader Khymani James. James publicly declared that "Zionists don't deserve to live" and said that people should be "grateful that I'm not just going out and murdering Zionists." Columbia suspended him, and even the White House condemned his statements.
What happened afterward is also significant. Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), the umbrella organization for anti-Israel groups on campus (and to which Khalid was attached), initially apologized for James's statements. It subsequently withdrew the apology and expressly endorsed "armed resistance." James likewise disavowed his expression of regret.
There was another feature of the protests that mattered to many Jewish students: anonymity. At Columbia, as elsewhere, many demonstrators concealed their identities with masks, keffiyehs, and other face coverings while participating in protests that included rhetoric such as "Globalize the Intifada."
Whatever one's view of that slogan in isolation, its effect can be different when it is shouted by anonymous demonstrators amid actual incidents of assault and intimidation. Students encountering such protesters cannot necessarily know whether the masked people endorsing violent "resistance" are strangers, classmates, or people living in their own dormitories.
The situation escalated dramatically during the spring 2024 encampment, when students blocked up a section of campus.
The escalation culminated in the occupation of Hamilton Hall. Protesters broke into the building, vandalized it, and held two custodians against their will, while calling them "Jew-lovers."
Columbia's own findings provide important evidence about how this environment affected Jewish students.
The university's Task Force on Antisemitism reported that Jewish students described not only verbal harassment and social ostracism, but also being physically targeted and feeling unsafe in their dormitories.
By April 2024, the situation had become sufficiently alarming that a Columbia campus rabbi advised Jewish students to leave campus and return home as soon as possible because of concerns about their safety.
To recap, Jewish and Israeli students were assaulted. A student wearing a kippah was spat upon. A Jewish student was told explicitly that he was being targeted because he was Jewish. Demonstrators shouted "Death to Jews," attempted to instigate fights, and pushed pro-Israel students backward. A prominent student leader had declared that "Zionists don't deserve to live" and said others should be grateful he was not murdering them. Protest organizations embraced "armed resistance." Masked demonstrators participated in increasingly lawless protests. And eventually protesters broke into a university building, vandalized it, and held employees against their will. Columbia's own antisemitism task force found Jewish students reporting that they had been physically targeted and felt unsafe even in their dormitories.
With that in mind, we can see that the Times' description--The 2023 and 2024 protests divided the Columbia campus, with thousands joining in, and others, including some Jewish students, saying they were too disruptive or made them feel unsafe--is not itself inaccurate. It's what it leaves out that leaves reader uninformed.
Bonus: The article also reports: "In a statement, Adam Guillette, the president of Accuracy in Media [a defendant], said his group had 'repeatedly delivered accountability to Columbia's pro-Hamas radicals,' using language that echoed the Trump administration's description of pro-Palestinian campus protesters."
The leaders of Columbia's anti-Israel protests defended Oct. 7 within days, and were led by Students for Justice in Palestine, a pro-Hamas organization. So while not every protestor was pro-Hamas, the protestors, writ large, were indeed pro-Hamas radicals, but the Times wants you to think that this is just a Trump thing.
