Highlights: Florida’s university system chancellor, responding to a push by Gov. Ron DeSantis, directed state universities Tuesday to disband campus groups with ties to the national Students for Justice in Palestine organization, marking the first punishments handed down to colleges here amid the Israel-Hamas war.
In a memo to school leaders, the state ordered a “crack down” on campus events led by the pro-Palestinian organization that the DeSantis administration claims amount to “harmful support for terrorist groups” like Hamas, which attacked Israel in early October.
“Based on the National SJP’s support of terrorism, in consultation with Governor DeSantis, the student chapters must be deactivated,” state university system Chancellor Ray Rodrigues wrote Tuesday.
Florida is targeting the groups over a “toolkit” published by the national organization that has received growing attention from officials. Rodrigues, for his part, seized on a portion of the toolkit that labeled the attack, now known as “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” as “the resistance” and claimed that “Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.”
The punishments doled out to student groups come as state policymakers, such as DeSantis and Florida’s only Jewish Republican state lawmaker, state Rep. Randy Fine, have pressed university leaders to penalize anti-Israel dissent on campuses across the state.
Any reason this wouldn’t be blatantly unconstitutional as a prior restraint of protected speech?
We have reached the point that they don’t care anymore. The point is to make headlines. If they spend a few million defending it against a constitutional test that they ultimately lose, they don’t care. They’re thinking that they can get national (or at least state level) political points out of it, and they really don’t have anything else to spend their money on that’s worth more than that.
Obviously we all think (and hope) that this kind of thing will be overturned, but they just don’t care.
I can’t see how it isn’t, but once terrorism is invoked it seems like any abuse is acceptable
Doesn’t matter; Florida’s so-called “conservative” governor is all too eager to waste taxpayer dollars to defend the inevitable lawsuits.
Freedom of association as well?
Why does free speech only seem to cut one way?
We have to have free speech because corporations are humans who need to be free to pollute the political process with money, but oh no you can’t gather and talk about things I hate.
This will likely only last until it hits Federal courts. DeSantis has a terrible record there.
I freely attended Iraq war protests, the government was not perfect but nowhere near as bad as what Florida is doing now.
This is a very clear violation of the first amendment. Their rhetoric is ghastly and apologism for Hamas is beyond the pale.
But this is a free country. College students must be free to advocate for their own ideas, no matter how fucked up they are, unless they get to the point of actually inciting violence here in the US.
Are they even advocating for Hamas? I had the impression they were seeking support for Palestinians (innocent civilians). Not the terrorist group.
Objectively speaking, any group that goes against a larger power is a resistance no matter the moral assignment of their actions. In engineering, any element that drains power from a circuit is resistance to the flow of thatpower. This claim as such is a non statement.
Rodrigues, for his part, seized on a portion of the toolkit that labeled the attack, now known as “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” as “the resistance”
Yeah, they are. That’s really, really gross. If I was a member of a local org whose national org told me to refer to a massive terrorist attack on civilians as “the resistance” I’d either quit the local org or demand it disassociate.
You should also watch out for people who say “from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free”. They might be just naive, but the Arabic original version of that phrase is an explicit call to genocide or at best ethnic cleansing.
“I hate it when they fight back, they’re much easier to stand with when they just let Israel kill them”
You have a right to be a dumbass, to freely associate with other dumbasses, and make some noise with your dumbass opinions. In fact I encourage it. As long as dumbasses are able to scream and do so the rest of us sane normal people are protected in their right to not be dumbasses.
Not a single person who was at the Mall of America protests Jan-6 and stayed there was arrested or fined. They exercised their dumbass rights.
If they were worrying about supporting terrorists, they’d also pull support from the You g Republicans group
Or make some effort to stop the Nazi rallies 🤷♂️
Florida doesn’t need a new Gov, needs a revolution
Just close the border and let it flood.
I live here, and I agree wholeheartedly. All the worst conservatives from every blue state moved here and have made it, and will continue to make it, worse
Is this the true? I mean, do those people moving made that much of a difference? I’m honestly curious
Yeah, they unilaterally raised the prices of homes by having new York/California purchasing power, South Florida specifically was trying to cater to them by trying to invest in crypto speculation (whoopsies), and a lot of them are remote workers making double six figures in a region that has historically suppressed wages
Suddenly the party of free speech is not so keen on it…or they never were.
