UCLA Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) Groups for Alleged Misconduct Against UC Regent

From a message just circulated by the UCLA Chancellor:

Dear Bruin Community:

At UCLA, there is always room for discourse and for passionate debate of different points of view. In fact, they are vital to institutions of higher learning. Discourse helps us question our ideas and see new perspectives, and it ultimately leads to growth. Rigorous, healthy dialogue is central to everything we do to advance knowledge.

What there should never be room for is violence.

No one should ever fear for their safety. Without the basic feeling of safety, humans cannot learn, teach, work and live — much less thrive and flourish. This is true no matter what group you are a member of — or which identities you hold. There is no place for violence in our Bruin community.

That is why I am personally letting you know that the UCLA Office of Student Conduct has issued an interim suspension today to two registered student organizations, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine (GSJP), based on its review of initial reports about the groups' involvement in an incident last week at the home of UC Regent Jay Sures.

As has been reported publicly, both in the press and in social media posts by the groups themselves:

• On February 5, 2025, individuals affiliated with the student groups harassed Mr. Sures and members of his family outside his home.
• Individuals surrounded the vehicle of a Sures family member and prevented that family member's free movement.
• Individuals pounded on drums, chanting and holding signs with threatening messages such as "Jonathan Sures you will pay, until you see your final day."
• Individuals vandalized the Sures home by applying red-colored handprints to the outer walls of the home and hung banners on the property's hedges.

The Office of Student Conduct is undertaking the standard process for addressing potential violations of UCLA's student group conduct code. It is conducting an administrative review, and this suspension will remain in effect during the review. If these reports prove true as part of this review, disciplinary action may be taken.

Any act of violence undermines the foundation of our university. As a citizen of the world, I know that no one can promise a society free of violence. But as your chancellor, I can commit to you that whenever an act of violence is directed against any member of the university community, UCLA will not turn a blind eye. This is a responsibility I take most seriously.

I'd like to know more about what exactly constitutes the "harass[ment]," which in this context is pretty vague. I'd also like to know the context behind the "you will pay" message (since in some contexts this might be a threat of professional or political retaliation and in others it might be a threat of illegal conduct).

But certainly students should indeed be punished for blocking people in their cars or vandalizing their homes. The e-mail doesn't mention investigation of any students who were involved, but I hope they too would be punished to the extent they participated in the forbidden conduct (or conspired to do so). And when this sort of action is part of an officially organized student group event, the group can also itself be suspended for it.

Comments

[Jay Ash]

> • Individuals pounded on drums, chanting and holding signs with threatening messages such as "Jonathan Sures you will pay, until you see your final day."
> • Individuals vandalized the Sures home by applying red-colored handprints to the outer walls of the home and hung banners on the property's hedges.

I hope to see televised the students claiming that by "pay until your final day" and applying red-colored handprints reminiscent of the lynching of two Jews who went the wrong way in the West Bank, they really just meant "pay professionally, like a loss of clients or something"

[Ed Grinberg]

Remember the three stooges testifying before Congress a year ago?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_United_States_Congress_hearing_on_antisemitism
The Republicans on the committee kept asking them: "Does advocacy of genocide violate your school's disciplinary policies?" And they'd reply (something like): "Not unless it is accompanied by actions." Their position was: There will be no disciplinary action until the "anti-Zionist" protesters actually start massacring the Jewish students / faculty. This from heads of institutions that have been imposing strict "political correctness" on their students & faculty for years (decades?).

[David Nieporent]

• Individuals vandalized the Sures home by applying red-colored handprints to the outer walls of the home and hung banners on the property's hedges.

For those who don't know, this is a reference to an incident in which a crowd of Palestinians lynched two Israeli reservists who had mistakenly strayed into a Palestinian area. They were arrested by PA police and taken to a police station. And then a mob stormed the police station and killed them.

There is an infamous photo of one of the lynchers proudly displaying his blood soaked hands to the crowd out the window of the police station. (The photo can be seen at the link below.) And extremists in the pro-Palestinian movement — including people supporting Hamas after the 10/7 attack — have adopted the bloody red hands as a symbol of their support for terrorism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Ramallah_lynching

[Rossami]

Thank you. I assumed there was some symbolism behind it but had never heard that story.

[Krayt]

"Ok" sign for neo-Nazis bad, red bloody handprints for murdering Jews a virtue signal for the cool, with it kids!

The "extreme ends" of the political spectrum have wrapped around.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And the IDF should have killed them all.

[Larry Fine]

That would have been justice. Instead they were traded for hostages.

Everyone who cheered the hostage taking or posted positively about it on social media should be killed.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

You're calling for the death penalty for speech you don't like.

What are you called?

[Social Justice is neither]

I'm sure it was mostly peaceful harassment and terrorizing of them.

[Commenter_XY]

Why weren't charges filed with the police regarding the property damage?

[Brett Bellmore]

I assume they were still trying to sweep it under the rug at that point. Now the zeitgeist is shifting, and they know that sweeping college antisemitism under the rug is institutionally risky.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm sure you do assume.

Who knows? I hope they throw the book at them.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"I'd like to know more about what exactly constitutes the "harass[ment]," which in this context is pretty vague."

Really?!?

In what is still "real" Maine, i.e. north of the Kennebec River, no one would have said anything if the occupant(s) trapped in a vehicle had pulled a shotgun off the gun rack and started squeezing off live rounds. Likewise, the assault on the house -- as long as they didn't hit any innocent bystanders, the response would be that "they got what they deserved."

At the very least, there should have been perps arrested -- or is the State of California suggesting that the Sures family needs to be driving MRAP vehicles with plow blades on front...

Punishing the group isn't enough -- its leadership should be expelled as well, merely for being on the e-board. And as to those who had visas -- emphasis on "had."

[Dr. Ed 2]

And why did it take A FULL WEEK for interim sanctions?

[Krayt]

A week seems kind of fast. I'd expect them to be just getting around to addressing Feb. 5th incidents from 2023.

[Stephen Lathrop]

A critical question raised is whether this foretells an even-handed, or a one-sided, policy to keep peace and protect discourse. If it is the latter, it is less likely to prove useful.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm not sure this actually becomes an issue, until pro-Israeli and pro-Jewish demonstrators also start committing assaults, vandalism, and issuing terrorist threats. You can't expect symmetric enforcement in the absence of symmetric offending.

[Larry Fine]

Trump has a plan to deport terrorists like these and we should support it. They are anathema to the American project.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

You know, some of them (if not most of them) are US citizens. Yet you want to "deport" them...

[Old Smokin' Egg]

Volokh writes, "And when this sort of action is part of an officially organized student group event, the group can also itself be suspended for it."

The question that occurs to me is: How do we decide that the illegal actions are "part of" the event, as opposed to incidental? It's fairly easy to decide that if we've got good evidence of the event's organizers encouraging those actions—say, an announcement like "Join us in putting red handprints on So-and-so's house", or event organizers supplying buckets of red paint.

But what if we don't have strong evidence that the illegal actions were intended or encouraged by the organizers? To what extent can we penalize them on grounds that illicit conduct was foreseeable—"If you hold an anti-X rally, you have to realize that some of the more excitable participants will vandalize cars with pro-X stickers"?

This kind of ambiguity seems like it'd lend itself to abuse by enforcers. Let's suppose the University adminstration's sentiment is strongly pro-X. Then any illicit activity carried out incident to an anti-X demonstration was obviously foreseeable, and the organizers should be penalized. On the other hand, any violence to persons or property arising from a pro-X event was clearly unintended by the organizers, and the responsibility for it belongs solely to the individuals who actually carried out the misdeeds.

[Ama Valde Intellectum]

All of which argues for banning ALL protest by students in a student capacity.
What about me paying the big damn tuition bill

[Dr. Ed 2]

"As has been reported publicly, both in the press and in social media posts by the groups themselves:[emphasis added]

If the group is bragging about having done it, it did.

Conversely, if it didn't, there are ways of letting people know that it didn't.

[ReaderY]

It’s worth pointing out that symbols do not have absolute meanings and need to be interpreted in context. For example, a bloody hand is one of the symbols of a Baronet, a minor rank in the British nobility.

But it’s pretty clear from the context that that wasn’t at all what these students meant. It wasn’t merely an act of vandalism. It was a threat of violence.