NNWN / New York, 2017-06-20

Perturbed by the discrimination of being Jewish, at the university, an NGO, a group of San Francisco State University(SFSU) students, and members of the local Jewish community late on Monday knocked the doors of a US Federal court in California against San Francisco State University for antisemitism.

The law suit filed by the NGO, the Lawfare Project,  alleged that “SFSU has a long and extensive history of cultivating anti-Semitism and overt discrimination against Jewish students” which has led to students being afraid to wear “Stars of David or yarmulkes on campus." The NGO has blamed the "SFSU and its administrators for what they called fostered this discrimination… which has been marked by violent threats to the safety of Jewish students on campus.

Besides, the Lawfare Project, and the global law firm Winston & Strawn LLP is another plantiff in the case. The Defendants in the case are the Board of Trustees of the California State University System, SFSU President Leslie Wong, and several other University officials and employees.

In the case, the petitioners decided to approach the court following the alleged complicity of senior university administrators and police officers in the disruption of an April 2016 speech by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat. At that event organized by SF Hillel, Jewish students and audience members were allegedly “subjected to genocidal and offensive chants and expletives by a raging mob that used bullhorns to intimidate and drown out the Mayor's speech and physically threaten and intimidate members of the mostly-Jewish audience.”

The lawsuit asserts that “campus police - including the chief - stood by, on order from senior university administrators who instructed the police to ‘stand down’ despite direct and implicit threats and violations of university codes governing campus conduct.”

According to the complaint, “SFSU continues to affirm its preference for those targeting the Jewish community… by claiming to handle such incidents successfully by removing the Jewish students from their lawful assembly without allowing them the opportunity to exercise their free speech rights." Further, the case notes that “no actions were ever taken by SFSU against the disruptive students, no disciplinary charges were ever filed, and no sanctions were ever imposed against the groups or students responsible for committing these acknowledged violations.”  

"Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the underpinning of the modern American ethos of equal protection and anti-discrimination. This case isn't about Jews, it's about equal protection under the law," says Brooke Goldstein, Lawfare Project Director. This was not the isolated incident. Several incidents have happened in the past .  The lawsuit asserted that "SFSU has repeatedly denied Plaintiffs' student groups, including Hillel and the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi equal access to campus events that welcome other non-Jewish student organizations at the University.”