On October 26, Republican Senator Josh Hawley successfully passed a resolution through the United States Senate effectively condemning Palestine solidarity organizing on college campuses.
The resolution “denounces the rhetoric of anti-Israel, pro-Hamas student groups as antisemitic, repugnant, and morally contemptible for sympathizing with genocidal violence against the State of Israel and risking the physical safety of Jewish Americans in the United States.”
A number of student organizations across the country were specifically named, including several Students for Justice in Palestine chapters at the University of Virginia, New York University, University of North Carolina, Ohio State University, and students at Harvard University who penned a pro-Palestine letter following the October 7 initiation of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. The resolution also denounces a specific student, former President of the Student Bar Association of New York University School of Law Ryna Workman who expressed unwavering support for the Palestinian cause, and was ousted from her presidency because of it.
In a press release announcing his victory, Hawley urged further action by the Department of Justice against student organizers, urging the DOJ to “investigate pro-Palestinian student groups’ potential ties to Hamas.”
Hawley’s resolution was initially blocked by Senator Chris Van Hollen, who expressed concerns that it smeared students who engaged in pro-Palestine protests. However, in the subsequent days, Hawley and the mainstream media machine were able to drum up significant fear mongering around pro-Palestine student actions, such as student projection at George Washington University proclaiming “glory to our martyrs” and “your tuition is funding the genocide in Gaza,” referring to the widespread practice of US universities investing in Israeli occupation. On October 26, not a single US Senator blocked Hawley’s resolution.
Kojo Acheampong, member of the African American Resistance Organization at Harvard, and signatory to the solidarity letter specifically mentioned in Hawley’s resolution, told Peoples Dispatch, “This is a Senate attack on students, basically. This has the potential to make people more fearful of speaking on the right side of history.”
