After anti-Semitic incident against the president, the University of Connecticut rejects dialogue with pro-Hamas group

UConnDivest, an offshoot of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), demonstrates at the University of Connecticut. Photo: UConnDivest/Instagram

University of Connecticut administrators have canceled a planned meeting with UConnDivest (UDC), a splinter group of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), after the group created a cartoon that a local newspaper said was anti-Semitic and depicted Jewish President Radenka Maric.

Accordingly The Hartford CourantUDC distributed an illustration on Monday depicting Maric as a devilish figure with red horns against a background of money and rockets. With this tactic, the SJP is continuing a smear campaign against Maric that it has been waging across southern Israel since the October 7 Hamas massacre. It includes creating altered images in which she is forced into the face of a clown – with the graffiti “I ❤️ genocide” on her forehead. In other communications, the SJP accuses Maric of being both a puppet and a puppeteer, someone who enables a genocide against Palestinians and, as she said in May, is “inherently on the side of the interests of the ruling class.”

Maric's administration, which sought to calm the campus months after ordering the arrest of around two dozen pro-Hamas protesters, nevertheless agreed to several meetings with UCD to discuss its demands for a boycott of Israel and amnesty for protesters who face criminal charges despite repeatedly violating school rules and promoting anti-Semitic tropes. The first of a series of meetings took place in late August. They were to continue throughout the fall semester, but after UCD's latest outburst, the administration has said its patience has run out and a dialogue with students cannot continue.

“Whatever the intention, these images are examples of grotesque and unacceptable anti-Semitism that countless Jews will immediately recognise,” senior university officials at UCD said in a letter on Thursday, parts of which were published by the Hartford Courant. “It is deeply wrong and dangerous to use such images. Depicting a Jewish civil servant with 'devil's horns' or as a pig, or using obscene and vulgar expressions are not amusing caricatures – they are dark and disturbing images that are deeply rooted in history and have been associated with hatred and violence for centuries. Moreover, they are openly misogynistic.”

The letter continues: “We have witnessed statements and actions that are deeply disturbing, contrary to our values ​​as an inclusive community, and make further meetings or discussions with your student group untenable at this time.”

The UCD responded to the letter by announcing that it would continue its conduct until its demands, which included a personal meeting with Maric, were met.

“UConnDivest is fighting to end the genocide of Palestinians and to end the violence and oppression imposed on so many other peoples around the world,” the group said in an Instagram post. “UConnDivest will never stop speaking out against human rights abuses and fighting for what is right. Our Palestinian brothers and sisters are forever in our hearts.”

Write to the CurrentThe group accused the university of fabricating allegations of anti-Semitism to circumvent Israel's war against Hamas.

“UConnDivest condemns the government's use of anti-Semitism to deflect criticism of its involvement in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” it said.

Pro-Hamas and anti-Zionist groups are already resuming the disruptive behavior they displayed last academic year, when Jewish students across the United States were attacked, spat on, and threatened with mass murder.

In August, pro-Hamas students at Cornell University vandalized an administrative building, spray-painting “Israel Bombs, Cornell pays” and “Blood is on your hands” and smashing the glass doors. Earlier this month, several Rutgers University resident doctors walked out of an anti-Semitism education program after a speaker said Hamas' anti-Semitism and desire to destroy the world's only Jewish state sparked the October 7 massacre. Weeks earlier, a masked man had poured red paint over Columbia University's Alma Mater sculpture to symbolize the bloodshed.

Anti-Israel activities on college campuses have reached critical levels across southern Israel in the 11 months since the October 7 Hamas massacre, according to a report released Monday by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

The report, titled “Anti-Israel Activism on U.S. Campuses, 2023-2024,” reveals a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activities, including assault, vandalism and other phenomena, and paints a grim picture of the American higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hatred.

The report added that 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers occurred on 10 college campuses, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan having a combined 90 anti-Israel incidents, 52 and 38, respectively. Harvard University, the University of California, Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University and others filled the rest of the top 10 spots. Violence, the report added, was most common at universities in the state of California, where in one case anti-Zionist activists beat a Jewish student for filming him at a demonstration.

The ADL also provided concrete figures on the number of pro-Hamas protests that took place on campuses across the country after October 7. The General According to the report, 1,418 anti-Zionist demonstrations took place at 360 universities in 46 states during the 2023-2024 academic year, an increase of 335 percent over the previous year.

“The anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist vitriol we have witnessed on campus is unlike anything we have experienced in the past,” ADL Executive Director Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement announcing the report. “Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, the anti-Israel movement's relentless harassment, vandalism, intimidation and violent physical attacks go far beyond the peaceful expression of a political opinion. Administrators and faculty must do much more this year to ensure a safe and truly inclusive environment for all students, regardless of religion, nationality or political views, and they must start now.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.