The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, has designated an initial three universities as “institutions of particular concern” due to their threat toward the safety of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Jewish, and other students and faculty who stand against occupation, apartheid, and genocide. These three universities are The George Washington University (GWU), the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Emory University.
In April and May 2024, students across the country took part in a long American tradition of civil disobedience to protest their university’s involvement in Israeli apartheid, occupation of Palestinian land, and genocide of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. According to researchers at Princeton University, 95% of demonstrations occurring between October 7 and May 12 have been peaceful, with “no reports of encampment protesters engaging in physical violence or destructive activity.”
Still, rather than engage in conversation with student protesters, multiple university leaders censored voices calling for Palestinian human rights, weaponized university policies and introduced arbitrary ones with the seeming intent of suppressing free speech, and even authorized police violence against their own students, staff, and faculty. Among the most egregious incidents occurred at GWU, UCLA, and Emory, where students not only reportedly experienced racial, religious, and ethnic discrimination from pro-Israel voices, but were also targeted by their own university administrators for participating in anti-genocide protests. For GWU this targeting apparently pre-dates last fall.
We urge students and staff considering these universities to instead apply to institutions that favor academic freedom and that will not possibly subject them to viewpoint discrimination or inappropriately deploy campus policies and other methods as a tool to advance anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic racism.
The George Washington University (GWU)
The George Washington University (GWU) has reportedly failed to protect its students from religious, racial, and ethnic discrimination, actively suppressed the free speech of students protesting against genocide, and itself carried out an apparently years-long campaign of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia, making it among the most hostile campuses for anti-genocide voices, particularly those of Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab heritage.
GWU has claimed that “diversity is crucial to an educational institution’s pursuit of excellence in learning, research and service.” Its administrators have proudly taken credit for GW students’ involvement in protests against South African apartheid in the 1980s – even as GWU was reportedly the “only school in the Washington D.C.-area to remain invested in South Africa during this time.” GWU’s apparent past failures to support its students in their calls against apartheid are once again repeated today, as the institution has persistently met students of diverse backgrounds with discrimination, harassment, and even police violence after protesting against Israeli apartheid, occupation, and now genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
In late 2023, Muslim and Palestinian students called on GWU to provide protection to students amid a rise in Islamophobic attacks on campus. They reported having their hijabs ripped off, being spat on, and being confronted by other students. As a result, Muslim and Palestinian students reported feeling unsafe on campus, leading them to refrain from attending events, posting online, or wearing clothing that expresses their Muslim and/or Palestinian identity. While these students called on university administrators to protect them, University President Ellen Granberg reportedly continued to make public statements in October that largely focused on condemning the October 7 attacks while refusing to acknowledge the Israeli government’s subsequent attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the impact on her Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students.
Rather than defend their own students against anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia, university administrators apparently turned their attention to targeting anti-genocide student protesters. In one October statement, President Granberg seemingly suggested that there was a “celebration of terrorism” on campus, which was believed by student activists to be a reference to a vigil held by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) to mourn the lives of Palestinians in Gaza. In November 2023, the student group was disciplined after projecting statements on a campus library, although the students maintain that their action did not violate any specific university policy banning projections. GW suspended the student group and placed its president, Lance Lokas, an Arab American student organizer, on disciplinary probation. Months later, Lokas was reportedly targeted again by the university following allegations that he failed to comply with the sanctions placed on him. In April, the university was reportedly forced to drop all charges against Lokas and the vast majority of those against the SJP chapter.
However, GWU seemed to continue its targeted harassment of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and other anti-genocide student organizers after the establishment of a student sit-in, or ‘protest encampment,’ on April 25, which was raided and destroyed by local police two weeks later. Police officers reportedly pepper-sprayed and brutalized protesters, forcing them to set up an impromptu medical area to treat those injured. As the police were clearing the encampment, students’ prayer mats, English translations of the Qur’an, and other Islamic materials were visibly destroyed and thrown into a garbage truck, before being crushed and taken to a landfill to be disposed of. Administrators not only authorized police violence against their own students but even reportedly attacked them. According to GWU parents, Provost Chris Bracey had visited the encampment before it was destroyed and reportedly physically assaulted a student, knocking down the camera of a woman filming an interaction with him.
GWU’s blatant anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim racism is, however, not novel; it appears to be a part of a long history of hostility and discrimination toward Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students and affiliates. In 2015, GWU reportedly threatened disciplinary action against a Palestinian student after he hung a Palestinian flag from his dorm window; the university later apologized and claimed that it had been acting in compliance with a university policy, even though others had reportedly hung other flags outside their windows without issue. In 2022, GW’s SJP chapter and Lance Lokas were wrongfully charged with damaging the property of GW Hillel. It was reported that GW’s own Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement leadership had called the police on student activists. In 2023, GWU came under federal investigation after a complaint filed by Palestine Legal alleged that “Palestinian students and students perceived to be Palestinians had been denied access to mental health services, disproportionately investigated by campus police… and subjected to racist anti-Palestinian comments in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
GWU administrators’ anti-Palestinian activities are only part of an apparently embedded institutional culture where Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism are permitted. In March 2024, a class action lawsuit was filed against GWU by Dr. Farid Hafez, an Austrian Muslim scholar and professor, who charged GWU’s Program on Extremism and its director Dr. Lorenzo Vidino with carrying out a malicious smear campaign “constructing and disseminating false narratives linking [Hafez and others] to the Muslim Brotherhood.” A report authored by Dr. Vidino had reportedly formed the basis for a search warrant legitimizing Operation Luxor, a 2020 police operation in Austria that targeted dozens of organizations and individuals like Dr. Hafez with raids and asset seizures and was later deemed unlawful by Austrian courts. GWU’s continued employment of Dr. Vidino, who has been identified for years by researchers at Georgetown University as “connected to numerous anti-Muslim think tanks in the United States and Europe,” could be interpreted as either tacit approval or institutional apathy regarding his reportedly Islamophobic activities.
As an institution of higher education, GWU appears to have failed to live up to its own standards of free speech and failed to meet its obligations to protect all its students from discrimination.
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
The University of California, Los Angeles has not only authorized the use of police violence, including tear gas and rubber bullets, against its own students, but has even enabled violent counter-protesters to harass, intimidate, and brutalize their student population, seemingly due to their activism in support of Palestinian human rights. Its seeming disregard for the safety of its own students and affiliates has made it among the most dangerous university campuses today for Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Jewish, and other anti-genocide students.
UCLA has touted its commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The institution has previously taken credit for the work of student protesters advocating for racial equality and indigenous rights in the civil rights era, claiming that “for a century, UCLA has been a model for student activism and civic leadership.” However, when Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Jewish, and other anti-genocide student protesters attempted to take part in that century-long tradition of student activism, UCLA not only reportedly failed to protect them from external attacks but further sought to silence them.
On May 2, UCLA authorized police officers in riot gear to clear the UCLA student encampment protesting against genocide in Gaza, where more than 200 protestors were arrested. Officers in “body armor, helmets and face shields” reportedly launched flares over the encampment, and at least one officer is seen on video “shooting rubber bullets into the crowd.” A professor reports that “students and faculty were left on the ground bleeding, gassed or concussed while private security personnel and LAPD riot police stood by without intervening.” While California Highway Patrol denied claims that its officers fired indiscriminately at protesters, “independent accounts from the scene and reviews of video, including by CalMatters and The Times, found officers did shoot into crowds, and aimed weapons at parts of protesters’ bodies that they should not have.”
While UCLA saw it fit to use police violence against students protesters, it reportedly did not see reason to intervene when, the previous evening on April 30, masked pro-Israel counter-protesters entered campus with “bear mace and other chemical irritants, hammers, knives, stink bombs, high grade fireworks, baseball bats, [and] metal and wooden rods” and brutally attacked students at the encampment for hours with no law enforcement intervention. Videos emerged of counter-protesters beating students with poles and wooden boards, shooting fireworks at the encampment, spraying individuals with chemical irritants, and perpetrating other acts of violence, leaving multiple students in need of serious medical attention. Counter-protesters could be heard on video threatening and mocking the student protesters, even chanting “the score is 30,000!”—a disturbing reference to the number of Palestinians killed by Israel at the time.
Even after officers began to arrive more than two hours later, counter-protesters continued to attack the encampment, as officers stood by and refused to protect the protesters from the pro-Israel mob. Protesters had reportedly begged campus security to intervene. A UCLA alumnus was reportedly told that “the violence ‘was their fault.’” Students, family, and friends reportedly inundated the UCLA Police Department with calls “only to be told that the situation was ‘under control’ and have operators hang up in their face.” Weeks following the incident, university officials “still had not explained why security officers stood by for hours while the attack was underway.”
However, the April 30 attack was the culmination of days of violence and harassment targeting student protesters, during which UCLA not only failed to intervene but even seemed to enable the counter-protesters. In the week leading up to April 30, counter-protesters reportedly entered the encampment and verbally harassed the student protesters, yelling obscene slurs, racist insults, and violent threats, including “f*** Allah,” “Hamas would kill you f***,” “Palestine is a graveyard,” and “you’re a terrorist.” They reportedly sexually harassed Black women, threatened to rape them, and called them ‘slaves’ and other racial slurs. Counter-protesters also reportedly physically assaulted students in the encampment, spraying them with chemical irritants and emptying a backpack full of mice injected with an unknown substance into the encampment. Reports indicate that UCLA campus security did not intervene to keep the pro-Israel mob away from the encampment, nor did the university administration take any tangible action to protect the student protesters from the violent counter-protesters.
It appears that UCLA enabled the harassment of its students: while the university did not authorize the students’ peaceful protest, it reportedly granted permission for counter-protesters to place a massive flat screen TV with powerful speakers adjacent to the encampment, which played graphic footage including a children’s song reportedly used by “Israeli soldiers as a form of ‘noise torture’ on Palestinian captives.” Even after the dust had settled, the university did not appear to investigate or hold accountable the counter-protesters who carried out such acts of violence, tacitly endorsing racial, religious, and ethnic discrimination against their own students.
Emory University
Among the most hostile campus environments exists at Emory University, where administrators not only authorized police violence against anti-genocide student protesters but have also for months enabled an environment where their own students and community members were free to discriminate against Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab students with impunity.
Emory University has acknowledged the “sustained oppression, land dispossession, and involuntary removals of the Muscogee and Cherokee peoples” from the land on which its campuses are now located. It contends that “diversity is foundational to academic excellence” and that its community is “open to all who have a commitment to the highest ideals of intellectual engagement.” Still, Emory University has failed to protect and even itself attacked a diverse coalition of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Jewish, and other students protesting against the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, as well as Israeli apartheid and occupation of Palestinian land.
On April 25, at Emory University, police officers attacked students, faculty, and other protesters following the establishment of an anti-genocide student encampment. Reports included the “use of teargas on the crowds, in addition to stun guns and rubber bullets being deployed against the protesters.” In one video, an individual is held to the ground by officers while another officer holds a stun gun to their leg. Videos also appear to show two professors among those arrested, including one who was reportedly held to the ground, arrested, and charged with battery of a police officer after she attempted to ask officers why they were holding a student to the ground. While the university initially released a statement indicating that protesters were “not members of [Emory’s] community,” Emory University President Gregory L. Fenves was later forced to admit that the university’s earlier claim that protesters were not affiliated with the school was “not fully accurate.”
In the months prior to the attack on students, numerous reports emerged that the university had failed to protect and, in some cases, even allegedly endorsed racial, religious, and ethnic discrimination against its own students, leading the U.S. Department of Education to open an investigation into the university. For example, in the weeks following October 7, a Muslim student reportedly overheard a girl loudly say to a friend that her family members would “keep saying we need to kill all the Palestinians” before laughing with her friend. Another student posted a message on his social media, reportedly threatening to “fist fight anyone with a pro palestine [sic] sign on campus.” An Arab student was reportedly harassed by another student, who asked her “Are you a terrorist?” before telling her “I think all brown people are terrorists. Everything I say is not sarcastic. I’m not joking,” and then later claimed to be joking.
Despite the persistent attacks on Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students, Emory administrators refused to intervene. In one instance, an Emory parent reportedly “verbally accosted a Muslim student,” accusing them of supporting violence. When the student asked the university to intervene on the student’s behalf, they were reportedly informed that “[the university’s staff] could not stop the verbal harassment because of Emory’s open expression policy.”
In another instance, on LinkedIn, an alumnus reportedly listed and tagged the full names of at least four students and a faculty member affiliated with Emory Students for Justice in Palestine (ESJP) and called ESJP a “terror-related” organization, asking the university to expel students affiliated with it. The post was reportedly “liked” by several students, alumni, and faculty, who have not “faced any consequences for supporting clearly anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic expression.” When students met with a dean of the business school for support with social media posts targeting them, the dean reportedly said that “when students say ‘Free Palestine,’” — a call for Palestinian human rights — “they are associating themselves with terrorism.”
However, it seemed that Emory was only willing to stand by its “open expression policy” when it sanctioned attacks on Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students. In other situations, where students sought to engage in open expression in support of Palestinian human rights, administrators and staff reportedly acted to silence them. In one incident, the Emory College Instagram account, the official page run by Emory College of Arts & Sciences, reportedly failed to share ESJP’s posts advertising a vigil for Palestinians in Gaza, despite having a policy of sharing all student club information on its Instagram page. In October, the page also reportedly deleted a post it had shared from ESJP mourning the loss of Palestinian lives, while reposting statements from other groups. Emory’s hostile environment therefore appears to be the result not just of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian bias from fellow students but also an apparent institutional culture in which administrators enable discrimination against and harassment of Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, and other anti-genocide students while silencing their activism.
