Illustrative: Signs cover the fence at a pro-Palestinian encampment on April 28, 2024. Photo: Max Herman via Reuters Connect.

Adelphi University in Long Island, New York has placed its Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter on probation for a year, citing the group’s social media activity as promoting a degree of hatred that would make any Jewish person feel “targeted” and “unsafe.”

The group’s troubling online activity — which included calling for Israel to “burn” and keeping “these Zionists off our campus” — was first reported by an Adelphi University professor, Tuval Foguel, who filed a complaint through the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. Adelphi administrators saw the situation as he did.

“The number and content of the social media posts over a protracted period of time was found to be subjectively and objectively offensive and so severe or pervasive to constitute a hostile environment towards those who identified of Jewish,” the university said in a letter to Foguel. “When looking at this from a reasonable person standard, it would be reasonable to infer that if someone who is Jewish viewed these posts, they may feel targeted, or unsafe, in their educational program or activity and may decline to participate or change their participation as a result.”

Adelphi University is not the first college to suspend its SJP chapter.

In May, George Washington University (GW) suspended SJP until spring 2026, punishing the group for a series of unauthorized demonstrations it held on school property.

The move marked one of the severest disciplinary sanctions SJP has provoked from the GW administration since it began violating rules on peaceful expression and assembly, as well as targeting school officials for harassment, following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. Until the suspension is complete, SJP is barred from advertising and may only convene to “complete sanctions or consult with their adviser,” according to report by the campus newspaper.

Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania suspended SJP in February, following the group’s surprise but unsuccessful attempt to take over an administrative building.

SJP had raided the college’s Parrish Hall dressed like Hamas fighters, their faces wrapped with and concealed by keffiyehs. By the time the college formally warned the students that their behavior would trigger disciplinary measures, they had shouted slogans through bullhorns, attempted to break into offices that had been locked to keep them out, and pounded the doors of others that refused to admit them access.

“Adelphi’s decision that its SJP chapter, like SJP chapters at colleges across the country, has created a hostile environment for Jews is an important victory for Adelphi’s beleaguered Jewish community,” the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law said in a statement on Thursday, commenting on the latest action taken against SJP. “Hopefully, this is the beginning of a real effort on Adelphi’s part to redress the antisemitism that SJP and, sadly, some of its faculty allies, have fomented on campus.”

It added, “SJP statements that Adelphi correctly describes as ‘calling fro the harm of Jewish community members, dehumanizing Jewish individuals, and inciting violence/aggression toward Jewish individuals’ have no place on a college campuses, or anywhere else for that matter.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.