Students are seen at an anti-Israel protest encampment at Stanford University during the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Stanford, California, US, April 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria

A Santa Clara County, California grand jury has indicted, on federal charges of vandalism and trespassing, nearly a dozen pro-Hamas students who commandeered then-school president Richard Saller’s office in June 2024.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, anti-Israel activists associated with the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) raided Saller’s office, locking themselves inside using, the Stanford Daily said at the time, “bike locks, chains, ladders, and chairs.” The incident was part of a larger pro-Hamas demonstration in which SJP demanded that the university adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as the first step to its eventual elimination.

Twelve students in total had participated in the action, including one non-student, but the 12th student has reportedly become a “cooperating witness,” having agreed to tell on his friends in exchange for evading criminal penalties. The remaining 11 are accused of causing some $300,00 in damages to Saller’s office and the administrative building in which it is located. As such, “Stanford is demanding restitution,” according to an email the group’s lawyer, Jeff Wozniak, sent to the Daily for publication on Thursday.

“The legal team supporting the 11 have demanded a dialogue with the university, but so far no response has been received,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, SJP maintains that the group acted morally, if not lawfully, telling the Daily, “Students acted to break through indifference, to force attention on an injustice that holding signs outside an office could never achieve.”

Before occupying Saller’s office, the anti-Israel group assembled a collection of tents on White Plaza — widely referred to as a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” Despite living there for several weeks, the university declined to negotiate terms with its members, a rebuff SJP called “gravely insulting to Palestinians and pro-Palestinian students on campus.”

Refusing to be ignored, SJP raided Saller’s office with other students, forming a human chain and covering security cameras with tin foil. SJP then reiterated its terms, demanding that no criminal charges be filed against its members and that any disciplinary proceedings currently underway be terminated.

Saller and his provost, Jenny Martinez, said that was a step too far, noting that the president’s office was not the only building which SJP attempted to storm and occupy.

“The situation on campus has now crossed the line from peaceful protest to actions that threaten the safety of our community,” they said at the time. “This began with the recent attempted occupation of Building 570 and has now escalated into today’s deeply unfortunate events. In the interest of public safety, the encampment has been removed. There continue to be many ways for members of our community to engage in the peaceful expression of diverse viewpoints on important global issues, in a manner consistent with our university policies. We value that continued peaceful and reasoned debate but forcefully condemn any actions like those that were taken today.”

Prior to the start of criminal proceedings, Stanford imposed severe disciplinary sanctions on the accused students, including withholding their degrees.

US college campuses saw an alarming spike in antisemitic incidents — including demonstrations calling for Israel’s destruction and the intimidation and harassment of Jewish students — after the Hamas terror group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. In a two-month span following the atrocities, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recorded 470 antisemitic incidents on college campuses alone. During that same period, antisemitic incidents across the US skyrocketed by 323 percent compared to the prior year.

To this day, Jewish students report feeling unsafe on the campus. According to a new survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS), the vast majority of Jewish students around the world resort to hiding their Jewishness and support for Israel on university campuses to avoid becoming victims of antisemitism.

A striking 78 percent of Jewish students have opted to “conceal” their religious affiliation “at least once” over the past year, the study found, with Jewish women being more likely than men to do so. Meanwhile, 81 percent of those surveyed hid their support for Zionism, a movement which promotes Jewish self-determination and the existence of the State of Israel, at least once over the past year.

Among all students, Orthodox Jews reported the highest rates of “different treatment,” with 41 percent saying that their peers employ alternative social norms in dealing with them.

“This survey exposes a devastating reality: Jewish students across the globe are being forced to hide fundamental aspects of their identity just to feel safe on campus,” ADL senior vice president of international affairs Marina Rosenberg said in a statement. “When over three-quarters of Jewish students feel they must conceal their religious and Zionist identity for their own safety, the situation is nothing short of dire. As the academic year begins, the data provides essential insights to guide university leadership in addressing this campus crisis head on.”

The survey said additionally that 34 percent of Jewish students reported knowing a Jewish peer whom someone “physically threatened on campus,” while 29 percent reported difficulties in attaining religious accommodations from their professors, confirming months of reports that Jewish students face both social and institutional discrimination at universities.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.