Anti-Israel Faculty at UPenn Call for Ouster of President Following Search of Protester’s Residence

The University of Pennsylvania’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapter, an inter-campus network of anti-Zionist educators which has promoted antisemitic tropes and expressed support for terrorism, is calling for the removal of interim president Larry Jameson following the execution of a search warrant at the residence of a pro-Hamas student activist who is suspected of vandalism.

According to The Daily Pennsylvanian, nearly a dozen Penn law enforcement officers, with assistance from the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD), executed the search of the student’s off-campus dwelling earlier this month to recover evidence related to a Sept. 12 property crime in which red paint was smeared on the university’s statue of Benjamin Franklin.

Since then, FJP, currently involved in another campaign to push Hillel International off campus, has blamed Jameson for the measure and accused him of using the justice system to punish political dissidents. It is now circulating a petition which calls for a no-confidence vote against Jameson, an action which could precipitate his being ousted from office.

“The University of Pennsylvania administration has allowed armed police to terrorize their own students for exercising their right to principled protest,” FJP said in an open letter. “Penn Police is the largest private police department in the state of Pennsylvania and one of the largest in the country. Its increasing policing and surveillance of Penn and West Philadelphia community members and its ongoing patrolling outside its university-area jurisdiction is unacceptable. It has become a renegade police department with no oversight from university administration.”

Penn’s administration, however, has said that it did not directly sanction the search, telling the Pennsylvanian that “any legal action taken by [the University of Pennsylvania Police Department] is based on the violation of laws in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, not the policies of the university.”

The University of Pennsylvania has been enmeshed in dozens of crises and scandals resulting from the behavior of anti-Zionist students and faculty. In July, it suspended four protesters who illegally occupied a section of campus last semester by pitching a “Gaza solidarity encampment,” where students lived for weeks and from which they refused to leave unless administrators agreed to boycott and divest from Israel.

Extremist anti-Zionist activity exploded at the university long before the encampment. Last September, the school hosted “The Palestine Writes Literature Festival,” which included speakers such as Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta, who once promoted antisemitic tropes, saying in an interview, “Jews were hated in Europe because they played a role in the destruction of the economy in some of the countries, so they would hate them.” Another controversial figure invited to the event was former Pink Floyd vocalist Roger Waters, whose long record of anti-Jewish snipes was the subject of a documentary released last year.

Antisemitism fueled by anti-Zionism exploded at the university long before the “encampment” was set up, an action which followed Israel’s military response to Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7 of last year.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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