You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
The University of Maryland won’t allow student groups to hold events on the one-year anniversary of the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, The Baltimore Sun reported Monday.
“Numerous calls have been made to cancel and restrict the events that take place that day, and I fully understand that this day opens emotional wounds and evokes deeply rooted pain,” Darryll J. Pines, president of UMD, wrote in a letter to the campus community on Sept. 1. “The language has been charged and the rhetoric intense.”
Pines said that “out of an abundance of caution, we concluded to host only university-sponsored events that promote reflection on this day.” All other events scheduled before or after Oct. 7 will happen “in accordance with time, place and manner considerations of the First Amendment.”
War-related campus protests unfolded across the country last academic year, including at UMD, and many colleges and universities are anticipating more demonstrations this fall.
According to The Baltimore Sun, Jewish organizations and other individuals have pressured UMD to cancel a vigil planned by the university’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. One organization in particular, End Jew Hatred, authored a petition calling for a ban on “antisemitic protests on Oct. 7” on college campuses across the United State and Canada—specifically citing UMD as an example—a petition that now has more than 22,000 signatures.
While the Jewish Student Union said its members were “relieved that SJP will no longer be able to appropriate the suffering of our family and friends to fit their false and dangerous narrative,” members of the university’s chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace said they were “angry” that the university canceled an event “intended to create a space for all to mourn all losses without impediment or questioning.”
Vowing not to “back down to threats by Zionists,” SJP posted a statement on Instagram Monday saying its request to reserve space for the Oct. 7 event “violated no policies and was fully within our rights as a recognized student organization at UMD.”
By canceling the event, the statement continued, the university “capitulated to the racist campaign against our organization—a pressure campaign which employed charged and threatening language—as an excuse to manufacture vague safety concerns and a premise for canceling our peaceful event.”
