Highlights: Florida’s university system chancellor, responding to a push by Gov. Ron DeSantis, directed state universities Tuesday to disband campus groups with ties to the national Students for Justice in Palestine organization, marking the first punishments handed down to colleges here amid the Israel-Hamas war.

In a memo to school leaders, the state ordered a “crack down” on campus events led by the pro-Palestinian organization that the DeSantis administration claims amount to “harmful support for terrorist groups” like Hamas, which attacked Israel in early October.

“Based on the National SJP’s support of terrorism, in consultation with Governor DeSantis, the student chapters must be deactivated,” state university system Chancellor Ray Rodrigues wrote Tuesday.

Florida is targeting the groups over a “toolkit” published by the national organization that has received growing attention from officials. Rodrigues, for his part, seized on a portion of the toolkit that labeled the attack, now known as “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” as “the resistance” and claimed that “Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.”

The punishments doled out to student groups come as state policymakers, such as DeSantis and Florida’s only Jewish Republican state lawmaker, state Rep. Randy Fine, have pressed university leaders to penalize anti-Israel dissent on campuses across the state.

    • SatanicNotMessianic
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      1 year ago

      We have reached the point that they don’t care anymore. The point is to make headlines. If they spend a few million defending it against a constitutional test that they ultimately lose, they don’t care. They’re thinking that they can get national (or at least state level) political points out of it, and they really don’t have anything else to spend their money on that’s worth more than that.

      Obviously we all think (and hope) that this kind of thing will be overturned, but they just don’t care.

    • spider@lemmy.nz
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      1 year ago

      Doesn’t matter; Florida’s so-called “conservative” governor is all too eager to waste taxpayer dollars to defend the inevitable lawsuits.